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Counterculture legend Mick Farren reads at La Luz de Jesus Gallery
01.22.2010
09:50 pm
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In his 60+ years on Earth, Mick Farren has worn many hats. He’s one of the founders of the “underground” press in Britain, he was the doorman at the psychedelic UFO Club (where Pink Floyd and the Soft Machine got their starts), a political activist, a well-respected science fiction novelist, a TV and media columnist, a poet, and, not least, he was the lead singer of the proto-punk band, The Deviants. His autobiography Give the Anarchist a Cigarette is an indispensable volume in any library about the ‘60s and ‘70s. In short, the man is a counterculture legend, and one of the last of the “gonzo” journalists.

Saturday night, Farren will be reading at La Luz de Jesus Gallery from his recently published anthologyZones of Chaos (which features an introduction by sci-fi great Michael Moorcock) accompanied by fellow Deviant, guitarist Andy Colquhoun.

La Luz de Jesus Gallery, 4633 Hollywood Blvd, Saturday, Jan. 23, 2009, 6 ?

Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.22.2010
09:50 pm
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The Unknown God: Wilfred T. Smith and the Thelemites
01.14.2010
01:37 pm
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Recently finished Martin Starr’s epic “The Unknown God: W.T. Smith and the Thelemites,” published by Teitan Press, an immaculately researched history of Aleister Crowley’s neo-religion Thelema after Crowley’s personal story trails off. Crowley’s life has been documented ad nauseum, what hasn’t been is the history of his ideas after his death and what happened to the people who took them seriously (“By their works shall ye know them”). Martin Starr fixes that historical oversight here, providing fascinating insights not only into occultism during the two World Wars (including all the bickering infighting between the various occult orders?

Posted by Jason Louv
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01.14.2010
01:37 pm
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Hitchens on J.G. Ballard
01.13.2010
11:06 pm
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Wonderful short essay from Christopher Hitchens, writing about British novelist J.G. Ballard on the occasion of the publication of The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard.

From The Atlantic:

For all that, Ballard is arguably best-known to a wide audience because of his relatively ?

Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.13.2010
11:06 pm
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Fabled Bodhi Tree bookstore closes after four decades
01.13.2010
07:11 pm
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Sadness in the streets! The Bodhi Tree, one of the best bookstores, period, and THEE very best New Age and Spirituality bookstore anywhere on the planet is closing. Although in recent years I’ve not gone there nearly as much as I used to, in the mid-90s, I went to the Bodhi Tree every single Saturday morning without fail and poured over the shelves of the used books annex. There I found Leary first editions, tons of rare Crowley and even signed firsts of Terence McKenna’s The Invisible Landscape and True Hallucinations. I’d comb through this store sometimes twice a week. For book hounds into the occult and weirdo culture in general, the Bodhi Tree was like an intellectual candy shop. I felt great pride to see my own books and DVDs for sale there. But sadly, those days have passed. With Amazon and Barnes & Noble taking massive bites out of the profits of niche booksellers—Shirley MacLaine probably shops on Amazon—it’s hard to run a business on fumes. Even storied operations like the Bodhi Tree, in the end have their life cycles. I wonder what it will reincarnate as?

From the LA Weekly:

Owners Phil Thompson and Stan Madson informed their staff last Wednesday that the cozy Melrose Avenue shop, a nationally renowned and much beloved spiritual center, will be shutting its doors in a year’s time.

After some eight months of discussion, Thompson and Madson decided to sell the property to a local business owner who leases space to several other nearby retailers. The Bodhi Tree opened in 1970. Land values in the area have risen dramatically since then. Meanwhile, the business of selling print books has been on a steady decline. For years, real estate agents had been circling the Bodhi Tree like vultures. In the end, selling the property became a much more profitable option than continuing to sell books.

Thompson and Madson started the bookstore when they were in their 30’s. They are now both in their early 70’s. They were aerospace engineers who left a life of science for one of contemplation and meditation.

“Twenty years ago we felt like it was an expanding situation,” says Madson. “We were concerned the store was getting too big. We had a staff of 100. Publishing was expanding. Spirituality was expanding. But what changed was that the market became widely dispersed.”

Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.13.2010
07:11 pm
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I Feel Casablanca Records, Parliament Sells Itself
01.08.2010
05:10 pm
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Before records labels like Slash and Dangerhouse came along to consume my youth, there was, of course, Casablanca Records.  With KISS, Meatloaf, Parliament and Donna Summer under its roof, the label straddled a number of seemingly incongruous musical worlds.

But as the LA Weekly’s Gustavo Turner points out in his review of Larry Harris’ new book And Party Every Day: The Inside Story of Casablanca Records, these worlds were all linked, albeit tenuously at times, by Casablanca’s visionary-in-chief (and Harris’ cousin), Neil Bogart.  A genius at both label promotion and self-indulgence, Bogart passed away from cancer in ‘82, but not before becoming one of the defining figures of the ‘70s.  Here’s a snip from Turner’s review:

They struck gold, big-time ?

Posted by Bradley Novicoff
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01.08.2010
05:10 pm
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Marvin the Paranoid Android Performs His First Single Release “Paranoid Android” (1981)
01.03.2010
11:16 pm
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Ahem, Radiohead? From Youtube user Kjd100:

Marvin, the manically depressed robot from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy TV series (were *you* old enough to stay up and watch it?) makes a special “personal appearance” on the BBC’s flagship Kids’ TV show to “perform” his first vinyl single release. (Don’t know what you think, but I reckon he’s miming!) As ever, Stephen Moore provided the voice, with a special recording for the part where Marvin speaks to the BP presenters.

(via Nerdcore)

 

Posted by Tara McGinley
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01.03.2010
11:16 pm
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Liber Chronicarum
12.17.2009
07:49 pm
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Impressive illuminated manuscript overload from BibliOdyssey. Check out manuscript versions of the destruction of Jerusalem, the geocentric model of the universe and all kind of other goodies. Most excellent.

(BibliOdyssey: Liber Chronicarum)

Posted by Jason Louv
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12.17.2009
07:49 pm
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Thee Industrial Poppy Cult Has Come
12.16.2009
04:44 pm
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Dangerous Minds friends Feral House / Process Media are having a Winter Solstice Mega-Sale. FH/Process are the publishers of the recently mega-covered books Thee Psychick Bible and Love Sex Fear Death. They have a buy-2-get-1-free sale. Which means that you could buy the two books above and get a copy of any of their fine books… including the just-released Opium for the Masses. Which means you could be in a candy-colored-cloud and doing godawful sorcery in NO TIME. FH says:

For you Solstice gift givers, we offer you a special HOLIDAY BOOK SALE: for the next three weeks only, buy any two books from Feral House and get a FREE book of your choice! (Book must be of equal or lesser value to the least expensive book). Offer good until January 1, 2010.

(Feral House / Process Media: Thee Industrial Poppy Cult Has Come)

Posted by Jason Louv
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12.16.2009
04:44 pm
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The Jason Louv Self-Promotion Post
12.12.2009
12:10 am
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Being that it’s my 28th birthday, I suppose I can allow myself the leeway to obscenely promote myself.

A big hello to those who follow my posts here as 1/4 of the Four-Headed Culture Vulture known as Dangerous Minds (wait… correction… 1/5th. Welcome Brad Laner!). Many of you already know me, but for those who don’t, check out my webpage here. I’m a writer and editor. I put together the following books (after starting my publishing career working with Richard Metzger at a publishing house that will go unnamed):

Generation Hex

Ultraculture Journal

Thee Psychick Bible: A New Testameant

These books are, of course, about how to use your brain to warp reality. If that sounds fun, you’ll probably enjoy all three of them. I also write a ton about pop culture theory, the weird, the outr?ɬ

Posted by Jason Louv
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12.12.2009
12:10 am
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Salinger On Why “Catcher” Will Never Be A Movie
12.10.2009
12:50 pm
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The Catcher In The Rye as a play or film?  Not if J.D. Salinger has anything to say about it:

I keep saying this and nobody seems to agree, but The Catcher in the Rye is a very novelistic novel.  There are readymade “scenes”—only a fool would deny that—but, for me, the weight of the book is in the narrator’s voice, the non-stop peculiarities of it, his personal, extremely discriminating attitude to his reader-listener, his asides about gasoline rainbows in street puddles, his philosophy or way of looking at cowhide suitcases and empty toothpaste cartons—in a word, his thoughts.  He can’t legitimately be separated from his own first-person technique.

The letter from which the above is culled is currently on sale for $54,000.  You can see a copy of it here.

(via LettersOfNote)

Posted by Bradley Novicoff
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12.10.2009
12:50 pm
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