Download 50+ Issues of Legendary West Coast Punk Music Zines from the 1970–80s: Damage, Slash & No Mag

in Archives, Magazines, Music | July 13th, 2016

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If your under­stand­ing of ear­ly punk derives main­ly from doc­u­men­taries, you’re sore­ly miss­ing out. As I wrote in a post yes­ter­day on inter­na­tion­al trea­sure John Peel—the BBC DJ who exposed more than a cou­ple gen­er­a­tions to care­ful­ly-curat­ed punk rock—finding such music before the inter­net could be a daunt­ing, and excit­ing, adven­ture. With­out a doubt the best way die-hard fans and curi­ous onlook­ers could get a feel for the music, man­ners, and per­son­al­i­ties of any num­ber of local scenes was through mag­a­zine cul­ture, which dis­sem­i­nat­ed trends pre-Tum­blr with a spe­cial kind of inten­si­ty and aes­thet­ic per­son­al­iza­tion. Punk pub­li­ca­tions doc­u­ment­ed first­hand the doings of not only musi­cians, but visu­al artists, activists, pro­mot­ers, man­agers, and, of course, the fans, offer­ing points of view unavail­able any­where else.

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The breadth and range of local punk rock fanzines, from the UK, the States, and else­where, can seem stag­ger­ing, and the qual­i­ty curve is a steep one—from bare­ly leg­i­ble, mimeo­graphed broad­sheets to large-for­mat newsprint affairs with pro­fes­sion­al lay­out and type­set­ting, like leg­endary titles Touch & Go and Search & Destroy. The lat­ter pub­li­ca­tion emerged from the rich, but often over­looked San Fran­cis­co scene and fea­tured fre­quent con­tri­bu­tions from Dead Kennedys’ singer Jel­lo Biafra, who appears on the cov­er of anoth­er San Fran­cis­co ‘zine, Dam­age (top), “as fine an exam­ple of the [punk ‘zine] form as any you care to name,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds. Thanks to Austin-based archivist Ryan Richard­son, you can down­load 13 com­plete issues of Dam­age, from 1979 to 1981, in one large PDF.

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Through his project Cir­cu­la­tion Zero, Richard­son has made oth­er punk mag­a­zine col­lec­tions avail­able as well, in “an attempt to answer some ques­tions…. Are col­lec­tions bet­ter off inside insti­tu­tion­al libraries or in the hands of col­lec­tors? Should ancient in-fight­ing pre­vent bring­ing the punk print hey-day to a new gen­er­a­tion?” Obvi­ous­ly on that account, he’s come to terms with “eggshell walk­ing over copy­right issues” and decid­ed to deliv­er not only Dam­age but two more sem­i­nal titles from the West Coast punk scene’s gold­en age: Slash and No Mag. Each down­load is fair­ly large, includ­ing as they do “sin­gle search­able PDFs” of print runs over sev­er­al years. In the case of Slash, we get a whop­ping 29 issues, from 1977 to 1980, and Richard­son gives us 14 issues of No Mag, from 1978 to 1985. Because “some pub­li­ca­tions stuck around for a long time,” he writes, “I’ve picked a rea­son­able stop­ping point based most­ly on when my fas­ci­na­tion pre­cip­i­tous­ly declines head­ing into the mid-80s.”

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Even so, these col­lec­tions are mag­nif­i­cent rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the most fer­tile years of the move­ment, and they cap­ture some of the most nec­es­sary pub­li­ca­tions for fans and schol­ars seek­ing to under­stand punk cul­ture. “The impor­tance of Slash,” Dan­ger­ous Minds writes, “to the L.A. punk scene, and real­ly to the world­wide punk scene in gen­er­al, can­not be over­stat­ed.” The edgi­er, “filth­i­er” No Mag’s “trans­gres­sive art and pho­tog­ra­phy, along with the inter­views of now-leg­endary bands, make this run a cru­cial his­tor­i­cal resource.”

Found­ed in 1978 by Bruce Kalberg and Michael Gira—before he moved to New York and start­ed pun­ish­ing noise-rock band Swans—No Mag’s cat­a­log includ­ed the usu­al roundup of L.A. punk heroes: X, Fear, the Germs, Sui­ci­dal Ten­den­cies, along with sev­er­al for­got­ten local stal­warts as well. This par­tic­u­lar rag—as an L.A. Week­ly piece detailed—“fre­quent­ly bor­dered on the porno­graph­ic… forc­ing [Kalberg] to man­u­fac­ture it in San Fran­cis­co, where print­ers are appar­ent­ly more tol­er­ant.” It may go with­out say­ing, but we say it all the same: many of these pages make for unsafe work view­ing.

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Cir­cu­la­tion Zero gen­er­ous­ly makes these invalu­able col­lec­tions avail­able to all, osten­si­bly free of charge, but with the under­stand­ing that read­ers will “decide what your expe­ri­ence was worth and then donate” to char­i­ties of Richardson’s choice, includ­ing the Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion and Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders. You’ll find down­load links for all three titles on this page, and dona­tion links here. How­ev­er much, or lit­tle, you’re able to give (on your hon­or!), it’s worth the time and cost. Whether you’re an old-school punk, a new fan learn­ing the his­to­ry, or an aca­d­e­m­ic cul­tur­al his­to­ri­an or the­o­rist, you’ll glean an ines­timable amount of knowl­edge and plea­sure from these archives.

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via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 834 Rad­i­cal Zines From a Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Online Archive: Glob­al­iza­tion, Punk Music, the Indus­tri­al Prison Com­plex & More

The Night John Belushi Booked the Punk Band Fear on Sat­ur­day Night Live, And They Got Banned from the Show

The Cramps Play a Men­tal Hos­pi­tal in Napa, Cal­i­for­nia in 1978: The Punk­est of Punk Con­certs

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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New Web Comic Revisits the Artists & Writers at the Bloody ’68 Convention: Jean Genet, William S. Burroughs & More

in Comics/Cartoons, History, Politics | July 13th, 2016

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Draw­ing of William S. Bur­roughs by Nathan Gelgud/The Paris Review

Amer­i­ca’s polit­i­cal cir­cus will soon roll through Cleve­land and then Philadelphia–the sites of the Repub­li­can and Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tions. And, not with­out some mer­it, there’s con­cern that the car­ni­vals could turn vio­lent, as hap­pened in 1968, when Chicago’s may­or Richard Daley, backed by 23,000 police and Nation­al Guards­men, assault­ed pro­test­ers in the streets. A fed­er­al report lat­er called it a dis­play of “unre­strained and indis­crim­i­nate police vio­lence.”

This week, that tumul­tuous ’68 con­ven­tion is being com­mem­o­rat­ed in a com­ic over at The Paris Review. Issued in dai­ly install­ments by illus­tra­tor Nathan Gel­gud, the comic–simply titled “Uncon­ven­tion­al”–looks at the writ­ers, artists, and demon­stra­tors who attend­ed the con­ven­tion. Part 1 fea­tures poet, singer, activist Ed Sanders. Part 2 puts Jean Genet cen­ter stage (who knew he was there?). Part 3 focus­es on Nor­man Mail­er, who was always ready for a fight. Part 4 gives us the inim­itable William S. Bur­roughs, and Part 5, Ter­ry South­ern. You can fol­low the series here.

To learn more about what hap­pened at that his­toric con­ven­tion, you can read Bat­tle­ground Chica­go: The Police and the 1968 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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Orson Welles Presents Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, the Most Popular High School Play of All Time (1939)

in Radio, Theatre | July 13th, 2016

If you went to high school in Amer­i­ca, you almost cer­tain­ly saw a pro­duc­tion of Our Town. If you par­tic­i­pat­ed in your high school’s dra­ma pro­gram, you almost cer­tain­ly act­ed in a pro­duc­tion of Our Town. I myself built sets for a pro­duc­tion of Our Town, doing what I could to prop­er­ly real­ize the fic­tion­al, small ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can town of Grover’s Cor­ners on my high school’s stage while remain­ing with­in its long-respect­ed tra­di­tion of min­i­mal­ist scenery. Some­times I won­der if it would have tak­en the wind out of my sails had I known that no less an auteur than the 24-year-old Orson Welles had pro­duced his own Our Town more than six­ty years before using no sets or props at all — using, in fact, noth­ing but sound.

Since its first per­for­mance in 1938, Thorn­ton Wilder’s quaint yet dark, sen­ti­men­tal yet metafic­tion­al sig­na­ture dra­mat­ic work has become the most pop­u­lar high-school play of them all (though George S. Kauf­man and Moss Hart’s com­e­dy You Can’t Take It with You gives it a run for its mon­ey). Welles adapt­ed it for radio in 1939, the year after its pre­miere on stage as well as the year after the broad­cast of his much more infa­mous radio adap­ta­tion of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (and, notably, the year before Cit­i­zen Kane). Welles and Wilder had first met at a par­ty in 1933, not long after Welles had put in a per­form­ing stint at Dublin’s Gate The­atre. “To Welles’ amaze­ment,” writes Charles High­am in Orson Welles: The Rise and Fall of an Amer­i­can Genius, “Wilder knew all about his career at the Gate,” recall­ing praise the young actor received from the New York Times.

“Wilder whisked Welles away from the par­ty on a round of late night speakeasies,” High­am con­tin­ues, “and as dawn broke, Wilder scrib­bled out notes of intro­duc­tion to friends in New York, all of whom were influ­en­tial in the the­ater.” Giv­en Wilder’s non-triv­ial role in facil­i­tat­ing the devel­op­ment of Welles’ ear­ly career, it makes sense that Welles would want to do right by Wilder’s work, and it still holds up well against the ver­sions of Our Town in any form that have fol­lowed. For a taste of how the play trans­lates to the cin­e­ma, you could do worse than Sam Wood’s 1940 adap­ta­tion star­ring William Hold­en, free to watch at the Inter­net Archive, although it uses rel­a­tive­ly elab­o­rate pro­duc­tion design and turns the orig­i­nal trag­ic end­ing into a hap­py one. For a pur­er Our Town, you’ll want to stick with Welles’ inter­pre­ta­tion — or that of an Amer­i­can high school near you.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The War of the Worlds: Orson Welles’ 1938 Radio Dra­ma That Pet­ri­fied a Nation

Orson Welles Turns Heart of Dark­ness Into a Radio Dra­ma, and Almost His First Great Film

Orson Welles’ Radio Per­for­mances of 10 Shake­speare Plays

A Christ­mas Car­ol, A Vin­tage Radio Broad­cast by Orson Welles and Lionel Bar­ry­more (1939)

Stream 61 Hours of Orson Welles’ Clas­sic 1930s Radio Plays: War of the Worlds, Heart of Dark­ness & More

Hear 22-Year-Old Orson Welles Star in The Shad­ow, the Icon­ic 1930s Super Crime­fight­er Radio Show

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Download All 8 Issues of Dada, the Arts Journal That Publicized the Avant-Garde Movement a Century Ago (1917–21)

in Art, Magazines | July 12th, 2016

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Sur­re­al­ism, Dis­cor­dian­ism, Frank Zap­pa, Sit­u­a­tion­ism, punk rock, the Res­i­dents, Devo… the anar­chists of coun­ter­cul­ture in all their var­i­ous guis­es may nev­er have come into being—or into the being they did—were it not for an anti-art move­ment that called itself Dada. And like many of those anar­chist coun­ter­cul­tur­al move­ments and artists, Dada came about not as a play­ful exper­i­ment in “dis­rupt­ing” the art world for fun and profit—to use the cur­rent jargon—but as a polit­i­cal­ly-charged response to ratio­nal­ized vio­lence and com­pla­cent banal­i­ty. In this case, as a response to Euro­pean culture’s descent into the mass-mur­der of World War One, and to the domes­ti­ca­tion of the avant-garde’s many pro­lif­er­at­ing isms.

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The explic­it tenets of Dada, in their inten­tion­al­ly scram­bled way, were ecu­meni­cal, inter­na­tion­al, anti-elit­ist, and con­cerned with ques­tions of craft. “The hos­pi­tal­i­ty of the Swiss is some­thing to be pro­found­ly appre­ci­at­ed,” wrote poet Hugo Ball in his 1916 Dada man­i­festo, “And in ques­tions of aes­thet­ics the key is qual­i­ty.” Ball con­ceived Dada as a means of reach­ing back toward pri­mal ori­gins, “to show how artic­u­lat­ed lan­guage comes into being…. I shall be read­ing poems that are meant to dis­pense with con­ven­tion­al lan­guage, no less, and to have done with it.” Risk­ing a lapse into solip­sism, Ball sneered at “The word, the word, the word out­side your domain, your stuffi­ness, this laugh­able impo­tence, your stu­pen­dous smug­ness, out­side all the par­rotry of your self-evi­dent lim­it­ed­ness.” And yet, he con­clud­ed, “The word, gen­tle­men, is a pub­lic con­cern of the first impor­tance.”

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Two years lat­er, artist Tris­tan Tzara issued a more bil­ious Dada man­i­festo with sim­i­lar intent: “a need for inde­pen­dence… a dis­trust toward uni­ty.” At once intense­ly polit­i­cal and anti-the­o­ret­i­cal, he wrote, “Those who are with us pre­serve their free­dom…. Here we are drop­ping our anchor in fer­tile ground.” How right he was, we can say 100 years lat­er. “How­ev­er short-lived,” writes Corin­na da Fon­se­ca-Woll­heim in a New York Times cel­e­bra­tion of Dada’s 100th anniver­sary, “Dada con­sti­tutes some­thing like the Big Bang of Mod­ernism.” Both Ball and Tzara posi­tioned Dada as a col­lec­tive, inter­na­tion­al move­ment. As such, it need­ed a pub­li­ca­tion to both cen­tral­ize and spread its anti-estab­lish­ment mes­sages: thus Dada, the arts jour­nal, first pub­lished in 1917 and print­ing 8 issues in Zurich and Paris until 1921.

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Edit­ed by Tzara and includ­ing his man­i­festo in issue 3, the mag­a­zine “served to dis­tin­guish and define Dada in the many cities it infil­trat­ed,” writes the Art Insti­tute of Chica­go, “and allowed its major fig­ures to assert their pow­er and posi­tion.” Dada suc­ceed­ed a pre­vi­ous attempt by Ball at a jour­nal called Cabaret Voltaire—named for his Zurich theater—which sur­vived for one issue in 1917 before fold­ing, along with the first ver­sion of the cabaret. That year, Tzara, “an ambi­tious and skilled pro­mot­er… began a relent­less cam­paign to spread the ideas of Dada…. As Dada gained momen­tum, Tzara took on the role of a prophet by bom­bard­ing French and Ital­ian artists and writ­ers with let­ters about Dada’s activ­i­ties.” What­ev­er Dada was, it wasn’t shy about pro­mot­ing itself.

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The first issue (cov­er at the top), con­tained com­men­tary and poet­ry in French and Ital­ian, and art­work like that above by impor­tant Roman­ian Dada artist, archi­tect, and the­o­rist Mar­cel Jan­co. Issues 4 and 5 were pub­lished togeth­er as an anthol­o­gy, then World War I end­ed, and with trav­el again pos­si­ble, Tzara, sev­er­al Dada com­pa­tri­ots, and the jour­nal moved to Paris. The final issue, Num­ber 8, appeared in a trun­cat­ed form. You can down­load each issue as a PDF from Mono­skop or from Prince­ton University’s Blue Moun­tain Project, which also has an online view­er that allows you to pre­view each page before down­load­ing.

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Ball and Tzara were not the only assertive dis­sem­i­na­tors of Dada’s art and aims. The Art Insti­tute of Chica­go notes that in Berlin a “high­ly aggres­sive and polit­i­cal­ly involved Dada group” pub­lished its own short-lived jour­nal, Der Dada, from 1919–1920. Down­load all three issues of that pub­li­ca­tion from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dada Was Born 100 Years Ago: Cel­e­brate the Avant-Garde Move­ment Launched by Hugo Ball on July 14, 1916      

Hear the Exper­i­men­tal Music of the Dada Move­ment: Avant-Garde Sounds from a Cen­tu­ry Ago

Exten­sive Archive of Avant-Garde & Mod­ernist Mag­a­zines (1890–1939) Now Avail­able Online

Down­load 336 Issues of the Avant-Garde Mag­a­zine The Storm (1910–1932), Fea­tur­ing the Work of Kandin­sky, Klee, Moholy-Nagy & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Stream 15 Hours of the John Peel Sessions: 255 Tracks by Syd Barrett, David Bowie, Siouxsie and the Banshees & Other Artists

in Music | July 12th, 2016

For fans of what came to be called “alter­na­tive music,” the dis­cov­ery of new artists and bands felt like a gen­uine adven­ture before the inter­net irrev­o­ca­bly changed music con­sump­tion. A few offi­cial venues act­ed as guides—magazines like Trouser Press and NME, shows like 120 Min­utes, MTV’s late-night show­case of post-punk, new wave, indus­tri­al, etc. Word of mouth, local zines, col­lege radio, mix­tape gifts, and the pur­loined con­tents of old­er broth­ers and sis­ters’ record col­lec­tions went a long way. Many of us had access to inde­pen­dent record stores that stocked all sorts of under­ground odd­i­ties, often run by obses­sive know-it-alls like High Fideli­ty’s Rob Gor­don.

Ven­tur­ing into that world could be an intim­i­dat­ing expe­ri­ence. But one depend­able mark­er of qual­i­ty hard­ly ever let young seek­ers down: the name of BBC DJ and cura­tor extra­or­di­naire John Peel. Peel’s influ­ence on the musi­cal trends of the last forty years is incal­cu­la­ble, and impos­si­ble to sum­ma­rize in brief. (Learn about his lega­cy at this BBC trib­ute page.) From 1967 to his death in 2004, he record­ed up and com­ing and under­ground bands in inti­mate ses­sions at BBC stu­dios, and many of these clas­sic record­ings came out on his Strange Fruit label.

No mat­ter the band, no mat­ter the genre, the mys­te­ri­ous gray cov­er of a Peel Ses­sions release always promised some­thing worth fork­ing over one’s hard-earned lawn­mow­ing mon­ey to hear. Peel broad­cast and record­ed Nir­vana before “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” hit the main­stream; intro­duced his lis­ten­ers to now-leg­ends like Joy Divi­sion, The Smiths, and The Spe­cials; gave Bowie his first break before his Zig­gy Star­dust fame; and played Bob Mar­ley before Catch a Fire made him world famous.

These ses­sions and many more have been lov­ing­ly com­piled in one Spo­ti­fy playlist by Sebastien Van­blaere. If you have nos­tal­gic mem­o­ries of putting on a Peel Ses­sions record or cas­sette and hav­ing your mind blown by music the likes of which you’d nev­er heard before, you may find your favorites here. My per­son­al touch­stone is Siouxsie and the Ban­shees’ Peel Ses­sion record­ings, which to this day I pre­fer to their still excel­lent stu­dio releas­es (hear “Love in a Void” at the top). Some­thing about the way those focused live ses­sions were record­ed, and the imme­di­a­cy of their raw, unclut­tered mix­es, make them feel very per­son­al, like a con­cert in your liv­ing room.

While I asso­ciate Peel’s name main­ly with the post-punk niche of my youth, his eclec­tic tastes spanned the gamut. Before he gave the Ramones, The Damned, and oth­er punk bands their first major play in the mid-sev­en­ties, Peel cham­pi­oned the psy­che­del­ic space­rock of Pink Floyd, the dron­ing krautrock of Neu!, and the uncat­e­go­riz­able weird­ness of Cap­tain Beef­heart; “he was among the first (and only) DJs any­where,” writes the Hous­ton Press, “to broad­cast reg­gae, punk, hard­core, grind­core, grime and dub­step music over the radio.”

Peel’s rel­e­vance nev­er waned because his inter­est in find­ing, broad­cast­ing, and record­ing new music nev­er did either, but the playlist here most­ly rep­re­sents his pre-1990 favs, and sticks close­ly to rock, punk, new wave, and folk. See this page for a full list­ing of every John Peel ses­sion, from 1967 to three posthu­mous releas­es in 2004. And for a sense of the incred­i­ble breadth and eclec­tic inclu­sive­ness of Peel’s musi­cal tastes, vis­it the John Peel Archive, an online project cat­a­logu­ing every sin­gle record in Peel’s col­lec­tion. They’re cur­rent­ly up to 2679 of over 100,000 records total.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 120 Min­utes Archive Com­piles Clips & Playlists from 956 Episodes of MTV’s Alter­na­tive Music Show (1986–2013)

Revis­it the Radio Ses­sions and Record Col­lec­tion of Ground­break­ing BBC DJ John Peel

Prof. Iggy Pop Deliv­ers the BBC’s 2014 John Peel Lec­ture on “Free Music in a Cap­i­tal­ist Soci­ety”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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A Young Nora Ephron Gets Animated About Breasts, Feminism, Journalism & New Possibilities (1975)

in Life | July 12th, 2016

In 1975, Nora Ephron sat down with Studs Terkel to talk about Crazy Sal­ad, her col­lec­tion of essays about women and the wom­en’s rights move­ment dur­ing the 1970s. If the excerpts ani­mat­ed by Blank on Blank above reflect the entire­ty of the con­ver­sa­tion (lis­ten here), then you can’t help but notice that the gen­der issues being dis­cussed then, dur­ing that late stage of sec­ond wave fem­i­nism, haven’t gone away today. They’re still very much out there. The dif­fer­ence is the enthu­si­asm, the sense of pos­si­bil­i­ty, that Ephron could­n’t con­tain then. “It’s excit­ing.” “It’s ok being a woman now. I like it. Try it some time!” Indeed.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Simone de Beau­voir Tells Studs Terkel How She Became an Intel­lec­tu­al and Fem­i­nist (1960)

11 Essen­tial Fem­i­nist Books: A New Read­ing List by The New York Pub­lic Library

Nora Ephron’s Lists: “What I Will Miss” and “What I Won’t Miss”

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The Soviets Who Bootlegged Western Music on X‑Rays: Their Story Told in New Video & Audio Documentaries

in History, Music | July 12th, 2016

When you learn that Sovi­et music-lovers bootleged West­ern rock, pop, jazz, and more on the sur­faces of dis­card­ed x‑ray plates, you can’t help but want to learn a bit about it. We post­ed about that curi­ous Cold War phe­nom­e­non back in 2014, but much more mate­r­i­al on this cul­ture of “bone music” has emerged in the years since, includ­ing Stephen Coates and Paul Heart­field­’s book X‑Ray Audio: The Strange Sto­ry of Sovi­et Music on the Bone. They also put togeth­er the four­teen-minute com­pan­ion doc­u­men­tary above, fea­tur­ing con­ver­sa­tions with some of the actu­al par­tic­i­pants in this for­bid­den musi­cal scene which last­ed rough­ly from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s, when tape recorders came around and the cen­sors loos­ened up.

“This is a tru­ly fas­ci­nat­ing sub­ject that seems to cap­ti­vate peo­ple by com­bin­ing pain and suf­fer­ing reflect­ed in the X‑rays with the plea­sure of lis­ten­ing to music,” writes film­mak­er and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Michael Dzierza, who pro­duced the short video above on Coates and Hart­field­’s work with x‑ray audio in which they dis­cuss the ori­gins of their fas­ci­na­tion with this illic­it medi­um and how that fas­ci­na­tion turned into a sub­ject for a long-term mul­ti­me­dia research project.

The world of bone music also became the high­ly suit­able sub­ject for an episode of Fugi­tive Waves, the pod­cast by radio pro­duc­ers the Kitchen Sis­ters on “lost record­ings and shards of sound, along with new tales from remark­able peo­ple around the world — peo­ple with a mis­sion, a pur­pose, a sto­ry to tell”:

The Sovi­ets who made it pos­si­ble for their fel­low cit­i­zens to enjoy the sounds they craved — whether music for­bid­den for its for­eign ori­gin or music per­formed by musi­cians hail­ing from U.S.S.R. coun­tries but deemed insuf­fi­cient­ly loy­al to the regime — cer­tain­ly had a mis­sion, pur­pose, and sto­ry to tell, and their efforts have left as cul­tur­al arti­facts some of the more fas­ci­nat­ing lost record­ings and shards of sound in recent his­to­ry. Now that almost every­one in the devel­oped world takes for grant­ed their 21st-cen­tu­ry abil­i­ty to share high-fideli­ty music more or less instant­ly, it can restore a mea­sure of grat­i­tude to learn more about these med­ical records turned musi­cal records, passed in dark alleys between one trench­coat to anoth­er under the ever-present threat of impris­on­ment. The vinyl revival has hap­pened; could an x‑ray audio revival be on its way?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sovi­ets Boot­legged West­ern Pop Music on Dis­card­ed X‑Rays: Hear Orig­i­nal Audio Sam­ples

“Glo­ry to the Con­querors of the Uni­verse!”: Pro­pa­gan­da Posters from the Sovi­et Space Race (1958–1963)

How to Spot a Com­mu­nist Using Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism: A 1955 Man­u­al from the U.S. Mil­i­tary

Louis Arm­strong Plays His­toric Cold War Con­certs in East Berlin & Budapest (1965)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Dada Was Born 100 Years Ago: Celebrate the Avant-Garde Movement Launched by Hugo Ball on July 14, 1916

in Art | July 11th, 2016

What is Dada? The curi­ous may start, as with any sub­ject, at its Wikipedia page. But that entry on “the World War I–era ‘anti-art’ move­ment char­ac­ter­ized by ran­dom non­sense words, bizarre pho­to­col­lage, and the repur­pos­ing of pre-exist­ing mate­r­i­al to strange and dis­turb­ing effect,” the Onion once comed­ical­ly report­ed, “may or may not have been severe­ly van­dal­ized” into a state of mys­te­ri­ous and seem­ing­ly delib­er­ate chaos. But “the fact that the web page con­tin­u­al­ly reverts to a ‘nor­mal’ state, observers say, is either evi­dence that ongo­ing van­dal­iza­tion is being delet­ed through vig­i­lant updat­ing, or a delib­er­ate state­ment on the imper­ma­nence of super­fi­cial petit-bour­geois cul­ture in the age of moder­ni­ty.”

Hugo_Ball_Cabaret_Voltaire

This rais­es a more inter­est­ing ques­tion: how has Dada remained rel­e­vant enough to make fun of? What­ev­er its con­di­tion, its Wikipedia entry should inform you that it began in July 1916, mak­ing it — what­ev­er, exact­ly, “it” is — a cen­tu­ry old this month. On July 14th, 1916, writes the New York Times’ Corin­na da Fon­se­ca-Woll­heim, “the poet Hugo Ball pro­claimed the man­i­festo for a new move­ment. Its name: Dada. Its aim: to ‘get rid of every­thing that smacks of jour­nal­ism, worms, every­thing nice and right, blink­ered, moral­is­tic, euro­peanised, ener­vat­ed.’ ” Meet­ing at Zurich’s Cabaret Voltaire, Ball and a group of col­lab­o­ra­tors labored, briefly but excit­ing­ly, to cre­ate “poet­ry shorn of intel­li­gi­ble words, music devoid of melodies and state­ments in which the mes­sage was can­ni­bal­ized by the absur­di­ty of the lan­guage” as “a protest against a Euro­pean civ­i­liza­tion hell­bent on war.”

1024px-Cabaretvoltaire

The Onion began hav­ing fun with Dada’s mis­sion almost eighty years after the orig­i­nal move­ment itself dis­persed at the armistice of Novem­ber 1918 (though the Cabaret Voltaire itself still exists, as you can see just above), imag­in­ing a war on art launched joint­ly by Dadaists and Repub­li­cans “call­ing for the elim­i­na­tion of fed­er­al fund­ing for the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Arts; the ban­ning of offen­sive art from muse­ums and schools; and the destruc­tion of the ‘hoax of rea­son’ in our increas­ing­ly ran­dom, irra­tional and mean­ing­less age.” The fire­brands of Dada did­n’t hate art so much as they hat­ed what they diag­nosed as the “log­i­cal” and “ratio­nal” ways of think­ing that had led Europe into a peri­od of self-destruc­tion and thereto­fore unheard-of bru­tal­i­ty, and arrived at the direct oppo­si­tion to the sup­posed fruits of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion as the only mean­ing­ful response.

Enthu­si­asm for Dada trav­eled well beyond the bound­aries of Zürich to Berlin, Cologne, New York, Paris, the Nether­lands, Italy, east­ern Europe, Rus­sia, and even Japan (where it inspired a well-known tele­vi­sion mon­ster), an impres­sive devel­op­ment indeed for a high­ly provoca­tive, absur­di­ty-ven­er­at­ing cre­ative shout into the dark­ness well before the advent of any­thing like mod­ern com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy. You can get a clear­er sense — as clear as any­thing about Dada gets, any­way — of how that hap­pened from The ABCs of Dada, the half-hour doc­u­men­tary just below:

If you real­ly want to con­nect to the spir­it of Hugo Ball, Tris­tan Tzara, George Grosz, Hans Richter and the rest of the Dadaists, start with their mod­ern descen­dants and work back­ward: any move­ment that opened the space for artists like Cap­tain Beef­heart, Devo, and even, accord­ing to Ben Ratliff in the afore­men­tioned New York Times arti­cle, Kanye West in his MTV Video Music Awards speech last year was cer­tain­ly on to some­thing. Giv­en how many observers of the polit­i­cal scene in Europe and else­where say we’ve entered a grim but inevitable era — one where Kanye run­ning for pres­i­dent as he promised on MTV might actu­al­ly improve mat­ters — Dada’s pro­nounce­ments may soon come in hand­i­er than they have in… oh, about a hun­dred years.

Find more good Dada mate­r­i­al in the Relat­eds below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Three Essen­tial Dadaist Films: Ground­break­ing Works by Hans Richter, Man Ray & Mar­cel Duchamp

Hear the Exper­i­men­tal Music of the Dada Move­ment: Avant-Garde Sounds from a Cen­tu­ry Ago

Entr’Acte: René Clair’s Dadaist Mas­ter­piece (1924)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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