Look at all the crazy stuff I made this fall for Expozine!
1. A New Prose Work.
Drift is a connected series of ruminations on Montreal, as seen peripherally while I am biking or walking to and from various far-flung thrift shops, book stores and the like. With passing references to Situationism, Kerouac, Nin, urban decay and urban renewal, dumpster diving, Corey Frost, a vivid hallucination, The Jughead Double Digest, Lou Reed, The Place Where I Get Tapes, Dreyer’s Joan of Arc, The Big ‘O’, Leon Trotsky, a Hell’s Angel hit, Restaurant Émile Bertrand, the Twin Towers, The Incredible String Band, The Weather Underground, unusual and sparsely-attended poetry readings, Tony Conrad, Angus MacLise, John Cale and Jack Smith, and the qualities of ‘chance’. It features cameo appearances by The Great Antonio, Dave The Candlemaker, Leonard Cohen and Artie Gold, and ‘a drug deal gone terribly wrong’ in the tradition of Quentin Tarantino. Anna Levanthal wrote an incisive preface on commission (for a twooney!) at last year’s Expozine. In chapbook format, it includes several photos of a vanishing Montreal by the author.
2. Two New Sound Works.
Solo is a CDR of tracks featuring myself exploring the variety of sounds available on a shitty pawn shop acoustic guitar. Some of the tracks are straight-up bedroom recordings, done on a failing Aiwa portable stereo cassette recorder. Other tracks have been mutated, chopped up, looped, sliced and diced with the ‘SoundStudio’ program on my E-Mac. Features the ambient sounds of the knife sharpening truck, a thunder storm, and an alien abductee interview. Beyond self-indulgent.
Mono is a CDR of tracks featuring Shawnda and myself messing around with drums, keyboards and guitar in a basement one day in 2006. Recorded on Shawnda’s mono portable cassette recorder, and digitally tweaked by myself a couple of years later, using the fabulous ‘SoundStudio’ program on my E-Mac. Super-intense! “For those who like to rock,” as The Friendly Giant said.
3. A 20 Year Retrospective of Poetry Recordings (I kid thee not!).
Last summer I threw together a bunch of my poetry recordings on a CDR for my brother. After I’d sent it off, I began to think, “Gee, I could probably put together a great little retrospective with some of the less embarassing stuff in my archives.” I went through my old cassettes and found a lot of great stuff – the collection includes a track performed by The Fluffy Pagan Echoes, several tracks performed by Officious Little Students (ie. me and Victoria), an audio art piece by me and Derek, not to mention my solo efforts, done on the radio, at home, in the studio and on stage. I Am Burdened With A Past: poetry recordings 1986-2006 (in a bootleg style) is a CDR with 34 tracks of only the finest in hippie punk punk hippie switchblade flower power fuck you poetry. It comes in a groovy chapbook format, with all the poetry texts, and a running commentary by yours truly.
4. A DVD! No Way!
Oilers is a poem I wrote in a attempt to make an impression at an Anarchist Poetry Night in May, 2005. I discovered this puppy had legs, and performed it incessantly for the next couple of years. In 2006 I recorded it and released it as a mini-CDR, and at the end of the same year it was published in a beautiful format in Four Minutes to Midnight no. 8. Then Victoria got hold of it and made a videopoem with my audio track and her images. (She actually did some editing / re-recording / arrangements on the audio track, which really work well.) The video was presented at last spring’s Anarchist Bookfair (in their film screening room), and this month in Vancouver‘s Pacific Cinémathèque, at See The Voice: VisibleVerse 2008. A limited number of DVD copies of Oilers will be available at Expozine.
5. Free poetry.
3 Free Poems (and a picture) is a cute little giveaway broadside to tempt you to linger at my table while I stare intensely at you.
6. I also have new work in Four Minutes to Midnight no. 10.
The design-savvy 4MM crew will be tabling at Expozine too, with their latest masterwork hot off the presses! Dig it.
EXPOZINE 2008, MONTREAL’S SEVENTH ANNUAL
SMALL PRESS, COMIC AND ZINE FAIR!
Expozine, Montreal’s annual small press, comic and zine fair, will have its largest edition by far take place on Saturday, November 29 and Sunday, November 30, 2008, from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. at 5035 St-Dominique (Église Saint-Enfant Jésus, between St-Joseph and Laurier, near Laurier Métro). Free admission.
