Darkness has fallen across the land. An unwarranted war, secret torture camps, civil liberties eroding before our very eyes—the Republic is definitely in peril. One of the most distressing things about the current state of affairs is the docile compliance on the part of the American people to accept whatever the government decides to dish out. When will we raise our voices in protest?
I'd like to tell you about someone who already has. Four years ago a guy named Jay Babcock called me. He was researching a piece on Black Flag, and I'd been active as a music critic when the band was just beginning, so he had a few questions for me. After an hour on the phone it became clear that Jay and I had a lot to say to one another, so we decided to meet for lunch. A few days later he ambled up to the appointed meeting place (a newsstand, which I subsequently realized was significant) and there was Jay, a middle- class kid born in Riverside who looked like a sleepy-headed slacker. Jay is no slacker, though. He was 29 years old when we met and he was on fire with the idealism of youth. He spoke longingly about the underground press of the '60s, when it spoke as the voice of the people as they rose up to express their feelings about America's folly in foreign lands. Jay poured over copies of Rolling Stone from back in the day, and told me he was going to start a similar magazine. I thought okay, great, you've got zero money but I'd love to read it—go ahead.
Incredibly enough, that's exactly what he did. With minimal funds and nothing to fuel him but enthusiasm and conviction, Jay midwifed Arthur into existence in the fall of 2002. Jay's just as poor today as he was then, but Arthur's been going strong for two years, and it operates pretty much as Rolling Stone did in its early days, when politics and culture were inextricably intertwined; it celebrates the best things going in music and popular culture, provides a platform for serious thinkers with something to say, explores experiments in consciousness, and runs hard-hitting political pieces about the sheer insanity of the Bush administration. As was the case with Rolling Stone, Arthur implicitly asks the question; see how beautiful life could be? Why are we living with a government that's bringing us down so low?
Last summer Jay upped the ante when he decided to organize a two-day rock festival. Working in conjunction with L.A. concertmasters Spaceland, he pulled that off too. ArthurFest took place over three summer days at Barnsdall Park in Hollywood, and Yoko Ono and Sonic Youth came out from New York to headline. You can bet they weren't paid a lot of money and came, I'm sure, because they responded to the spirit of the event. Then, two weeks ago came ArthurBall, a two-day, four-venue event that featured lectures, film screenings and performances by some of the best young musicians in America, including Josh Homme, Joanna Newsom, and Lavender Diamond. Standing in the packed confines of the Echo on the last day of ArthurBall, watching P.J. Harvey rock with Morris Tepper, I remember thinking to myself: how on earth does Jay will these things into existence?
The highlight of ArthurBall for me was a screening of legendary filmmaker Chris Marker's rarely seen documentary on the 1967 March on the Pentagon, The Sixth Side Of The Pentagon, when 70,000 people converged on Washington to protest the war in Vietnam. Robert Lowell, Marlon Brando, Allen Ginsberg and Norman Mailer were there, anointing the event as important merely by their presence. However, the most gripping footage in the film depicts thousands of average Americans—working women nervously clutching their purses, hippies, mothers, college students—getting the crap beaten out of them by the police, simply because they opposed the actions of the U.S. government. History seems to have evaporated into the mist of the past, but in case you've forgotten, those average Americans helped finally bring an end to the war in Vietnam. I really admire Jay for digging this film up, recognizing its importance, and showing it. It's time for the rest of us to do as much.
Arthur magazine Website:
ArthurMag.com
Arthur #13 cover feature/oral history of the October 21, 1967, March on the Pentagon:
ArthurMag.com/store/index.php?ID=19
Subscribe to Feed
