Sunday, August 9, 2009
Drag City Press and Music
There is a great Record Label/Book Publisher out of Chicago called Drag City. We have recently picked up some of their books. Two great recommendations from the order we received:GALACTIC ZOO DOSSIER issues 8Edited/Created by STEVE KRAKOW
It's been exactly two years this month that everybody's favorite hand-written-and-drawn psychedelic fanzine, Galactic Zoo Dossier #7 hit it and quickly went out of it (print that is). And it was exactly two years earlier that Galactic Zoo Dossier #6 did the same. This tells us (you) two things: one, that for summer reading and whiling away the hours with head-expanding psychedelic research trips, you can't beat the Galactic Zoo Dossier! Two, you gotta get your copy quick, or you'll be living in the harsh reality of getting stone sold out agin'. But why wait for it? As always, the Galactic Zoo Dossier delivers tasty tidbits on all your favorite obscurities: The Blue Things, The Gods, Kim Fowley, The Cake, Del Shannon, Hoyt Axton and more! Plus interviews with Vashti Bunyan, Djin Aquarian, Peter Walker and Bill Ham! Plus comics galore! Pin-ups! And of course, another round of Damaged Guitar God and Astral Folk Goddess trading cards — and a CD of further Unearthed Expansive Sounds. If it's too much, it must be the new Galactic Zoo Dossier. Available from any self-respecting book- or record-store on July 21, 2009 (for at least a month or two).
How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life by John Fahey
The truth, Winston Churchill once stated, must be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies. Guitarist John Fahey, whose folk-informed work has inspired musicians as dissimilar as George Winston and Jim O'Rourke, adheres to that principle throughout this conversationally voiced collection of ostensibly fictitious but semiautobiographical short stories. Fahey is no stranger to the written word: in the 1960s he published a volume on blues guitarist Charley Patton, and his albums have frequently included voluminous, fanciful liner notes. Fans looking for illumination of his guitar playing might be disappointed by this book: he spends more time spinning tall tales about a periodically horrific post-WWII suburban childhood and the many remarkable people he's met (from compassionate blues musician and fishing enthusiast Bukka White to pompous Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni, whom Fahey claims to have punched out) than he does discussing his musical methodology. But his writing flickers with the same black humor and ambivalent mysticism that imbues his music.