Three New Magazines with My Stuff in Them

In recent months, I have laboured long, friends, on a couple of different pieces on musician/ actor/ painter John Lurie, whose work, humour, and sense of style I have drawn inspiration and joy from for years. (Go listen to the Marvin Pontiac samples on the Strange and Beautiful site, if you don't know what I'm talkin' about). subTerrain picked up the first major article to be drawn from my interviews with John - which deals with his illness, his paintings, his frustrations with the art world and the music industry, and his new book, John Lurie: A Fine Example of Art (which is a delightful item indeed)... and it has a west coast tie in, which I'll leave y'all to discover. Anyhow: looks like it's coming out this week!
Note: the image on the left may not reflect the final cover, as I lifted it from a launch invite they sent me, but it'll give you some idea what to look for! The painting is Of Course Animals Have Souls, by Lurie; you can view it and more of John's work here.

Also exciting to me is that the new issue of the Wire is out, which features my one-page Global Ear report on the local avant-garde music scene. Drawn up from interviews with Josh Stevenson, Heather Jean McDermid, Dave Chokroun, Dan Kibke, and J. P. Carter, it also manages to pack in about as much Olympics-dread as I could fit into a 1000-word survey of new music. Subscribers already have it, but stores may not be getting it for a few days yet. At some point - I assume soon - samples of some of the bands discussed (like, say, Ejaculation Death Rattle, or Sistrenatus, or the Her Jazz Noise Collective, or - whoever gets it together to send them sound files) will be appearing on the Wire's site.

It's always nerve-wracking when new people are publishing my writing, truth be known - kind of like leaving your baby with strangers: you never quite know if they're going to chop off its feet, or subject it to Satanic Ritual Abuse, or somefin'. It might go to explain why I feel half-ill tonight, tho' generally speaking, I've overtaxed myself these last few months (in part, due to these very articles!). I can see why most folks come home from work, thwack on the television, and open a beer...

Thankfully, there is less worry to be had re: Bixobal, the third issue of which is out, featuring my enormous interview with Peter Stampfel of the Holy Modal Rounders. It's the third piece I've done with Eric and I have no reason to think it'll be any less positive an experience than the No Neck Blues Band thing (issue 1) or the Phil Minton article (issue 2). This one you're gonna have to hunt for, tho' I gather Scratch sometimes gets in copies. There's routinely stuff by the Bishop brothers of the former Sun City Girls, and all sorts of cool outside/experimental music articles and reviews. THIS is where my heart really is, musically speaking - and check out the pic on the cover, by Climax Golden Twins' Rob Millis, of a record store in India:
Anyhow, anyone wanting to congratulate me on the subTerrain piece (or fans of John Lurie's) might wanna come down to Cafe Montmartre at 7PM tomorrow night (ie., Wednesday) for the magazine launch. I may or may not be reading/playing a portion of my Lurie interview, but I will definitely have John's new book in tow, and I'm told that Sandy Bone will be providing musical entertainment...