Blog

Joe Keithley reads fromI Shithead, a Life in PunkFriday, November 12th, 7:00 PMfree
 
Joe Keithley, aka Joey Shithead, founded legendary punk pioneers D.O.A. in 1978. Punk kings who spread counterculture around the world touring with bands like The Clash, The Ramones, The Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Nirvana, PiL, Minor Threat. D.O.A. are also the subject of two tribute albums.
 
But punk is more than a style of music: it?s a political act, and D.O.A. have always had a social conscience, having performed in support of Greenpeace, women?s rape/crisis centers, prisoner rights, and anti-nuke and anti-globalization organizations. Twenty-five years later D.O.A. can claim sales of more than 500,000 copies of their eleven albums and tours in thirty different countries, and they are still going strong.
 
I, Shithead is Joe?s recollections of a life in punk, starting with a bunch of kids in Burnaby transfixed with the burgeoning punk movement, and traversing a generation disillusioned with the status quo: stories of riots, drinking, travelling, playing, and conquering all manner of obstacles through sheer determination. And through it all, Joe reveals that the famous D.O.A. slogan, talk – action = 0 is, for him, more than a soundbyte. The book also has an introduction by music producer Jack Rabid, publisher of seminal New York music magazine Big Takeover.
 
Joe Keithley will sign copies of I Shithead at the event
 
Checkout his website at: www.suddendeath.com

DOs & DON?Ts Book Release Event
With Gavin McInnes co-founder of Vice Magazine
Saturday, September 11th, 8:00 PM
 
Written by Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes, Vice Magazine has put out a compilation of every “DO & DON?T” they have ever ran in the pages of their magazine (over ten years worth). There?s also hundreds more never before seen entries making the book weigh in at a grand total of 300+ pages of street fashion critiques, humor and venom. Vice started in Montreal as a small zine but grew into a “multi-channel brand” and moved to New York City.
 
For this event Gavin will present a slideshow of his 20 favorite DOs & DON?Ts from the book and then answer audience questions.
 
More info is at:www.viceland.com/dosanddonts/

Chuck Palahniukbook event sponsored byQuimby’s and the Chicago Public LibraryTuesday, September 28th, 6:00 PMFREEat the Harold Washington Library
 
Join Chuck Palahniuk as he tours in support of the paperback release of Diary. Chuck Palahniuk, the bestselling author of Fight Club, Choke, and Lullaby continues his twenty-first-century reinvention of the horror novel in this scary and profound look at our quest for some sort of immortality.
 
The Event will be at the Harold Washington Library. Located at 400 S. State St. Chicago IL 60605
 
More info is at: http://www.chuckpalahniuk.net

Calling on trans-activists, border crossers,and trespassers of all kinds!
Join PILOT at Quimby?s
Thursday, September 9th, 7:00 PM
FREE
 
SEPT 9TH is a PILOT TV Opening!
Come for the release of the PILOT artist book series, featuring a full-length CD. Also there will be free posters, videos, and down and dirty talking all over, even some street performance and a petting zoo.. Free milk and cookies will be served. This is your chance to meet the PILOT organizers and learn how to participate when PILOT TV happens in Chicago this fall, October 8-11 2004.
 
The Evenings festivities will also feature general foofiness and finesse from: TRI-STATE area (musical boys in docksiders) A COLONIAL ACT (duo ballet performance) and much more…
 
PILOT is Experimental Media for Feminist Trespass (a 4-day autonomous television studio)
 
Confused more info is at www.PilotChicago.org
 

Ladyfriend/Free Advice Zine TourSaturday, August, 21, 7:00pm
 
Don?t miss the Ladyfriend / Free Advice Interactive Zine Tour when it hits
Chicago! Ladyfriend zine is a biannual small-press publication celebrating
female friendship, among other things. Free Advice zine collects audio
advice from strangers on the street and presents their words of wisdom free
of charge in a handy, printed zine format… stick around and give your own
two cents at the end of the show! Artist and Zinester Christa Donner
launches new issues of both publications teams up with Chicago ladyfriends
Jennifer Justice, Steph Levi, Misty Funk, Maria Gigante and Lauren Portada
to read stories out loud, play a human-sized board game with audience
members, and lots of other fun, fun stuff.
 
More info is at:http://www.ladyfriend.homestead.com/events.html
 
As Always this event is FREE

Larry O. Dean reads from
I Am Spam
Friday September 10th 8PM
 
Larry O. Dean was born and raised in Flint, Michigan. As a young man he worked with Academy Award-winning filmmaker, Michael Moore, was widely published in the alternative press and also worked as a cartoonist. He attended the University of Michigan at Flint and Ann Arbor, during which time he won three Hopwood Awards. In 2004, he was recipient of the Gwendolyn Brooks Hands on Stanzas Award. Although a card-carrying college graduate, he is non-academic both by choice and temperament, and makes his living outside the pedagogical realm.
 
In addition to writing, he is a singer and songwriter, working both solo as well as with several pop bands, including Post Office and The Me Decade. Larry\’s most recent solo album is \”Sir Slob.\” He has tracks upcoming on Paisley Pop\’s dB\’s tribute album, and the Sparklefest 2004 compilation. He will begin recording a new solo album this fall.
 
After living in San Francisco for over a decade, and despite current rampant gentrification, he makes his home in Chicago.
 
This would be a reading and book signing to celebrate the release of I Am Spam, poetry collection \”inspired\” by spam emails. Published by Fractal Edge Press.
 
More info is at www.larryodean.com

The Perpetual Motion Roadshow #15
starring Megan Butcher, Bucky Sinister and Willow Dawson.
Wednesday, August 18th, 8:00pm
FREE
 
This installment of the Perpetual Motion Roadshow features poet, librarian & sex educator MEGAN BUTCHER from Ottawa, king of the roadkills BUCKY SINISTER from San Francisco, & broken-hearted comic artist WILLOW DAWSON from Toronto!
 
Having grown up on the west coast of BC, Willow knows a thing or two about the rain, although, there is not much of it where she now lives. Currently, Willow draws comics and makes handmade illustrations out of paper, glue and paint. She also collects dead bugs and wants to be Amelia Earhart when she grows up. On the road, Willow will be adding to the excitement by means of a real life drawing experience. Images created will be printed in her next zine, Not Yer Princess #3, September 2004.
 
Raised in the village of Ballantrae, Ontario, Megan Butcher has also lived in Toronto and Halifax. She is currently falling in love with Ottawa. A veteran of the stage, she has performed at LadyFest Ottawa, the Ottawa International Writers\’ Festival, the Happy Accidentalism World Tour and durtygurls. Her work has appeared in several publications, including SMUT Magazine, Good Girl Magazine, dig., Feliciter, and Pridevision.com. She has just started her own micropress, Asteroidea Press, to publish her forthcoming chapbook. She will read poems about sex and love.
 
Bucky Sinister is the author of King of the Roadkills (Manic D Press) . His work has recently been seen in the anthologies The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry (Thunder\’s Mouth) and It\’s All Good (Manic D Press). He prefers horseradish sauce to mayonnaise or mustard and will eat grilled onions on damn near anything. He snores. He took up poetry after realizing he\’d never make it in the world of competitive eating. He will be performing poems from his new book, Whiskey and Robots (Gorsky Press). Visit www.buckysinister.com for more info.
 
www.nomediakings.org

Stencil Pirates Book Event with Author Josh MacPhee Saturday, July 31st, 7:00 PM
FREE
 
Josh MacPhee has just released Stencil Pirates: A Global Survey of Street Stenciling, published by Soft Skull Press. Featuring an exhaustive collection of over a thousand photographs, Josh MacPhee\’s unique survey brings together the complex history of the street stencil with the boldest and most beautiful paint work from around the world. From three-color anti-capitalist symbolism in Australia to fly-by-night hip hop tags in Ohio, from portraiture in Paris to feminist declarations of self-defense in San Francisco, from environmentalist wheat pasting in Texas to radical circus promotion in Chile, the enormous scope of this often anonymous art form is celebrated and brought into critical focus.
 
Stencil Pirates places street graffiti within the larger pantheon of public expression. From political to abstract and purely aesthetic ?from tagging to public announcements ? street stencils have remade the way pedestrians, artists, and even corporations think about public space. Whether as part of the anti-gentrification struggles in New York or as a powerful tool during the recent general uprising in Argentina, stencils are shown challenging not just ideas but entire sensibilities.
 
Josh MacPhee is an artist based in Chicago, IL whose work revolves around themes of radical politics and public space He also organizes the Celebrate People\’s History Poster Series and runs a small radical art distro at www.justseeds.org.
 
More info is at
www.stencilpirates.org
www.justseeds.org
www.softskull.com

Hey Kidz! Book Event with Author
Anne Elizabeth Moore and special guests
Christa Donner and Jason Kucsma
Thursday July 29th 8PM
 
Hey Kidz! is out on Soft Skull?s new Red Rattle line for young adults. A guidebook to media literacy and artistic response, Hey Kidz! serves as a respectful, straightforward how-to manual for youth who have a problem with
the way the world works, but don?t yet know how to articulate their demands, nor achieve their goals, for world change. Illustrated by underground cartoonist Megan Kelso, this book will give any young adult a solid grounding in media systems and provide them with hands-on, easy-to-follow instructions to become radical card-carrying activists. (It will even provide instructions on how to make those cards, and where to hide them during border-crossings.) With emphases on community-building, teamwork, historical research, and self-expression, this book will even prove useful for improving those skills so sought after by educational testing-based programs.
 
Christa Donner is the editor and publisher of Ladyfriend Zine. She’s also a nationally-exhibited visual artist who uses large-scale drawings and small-press comics to explore issues of women’s health and body image. Whenever she can, Donner accompanies her art with workshops focusing on self-publishing, body image, art and activism. She has led programs for Planned Parenthood, the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Institute of Art, Ladyfest East, and numerous other organizations and institutions.
 
For more about Christa’s projects visit www.christadonner.com.
 
Jason Kucsma is the co-founder and publisher of Clamor Magazine, an award-winning bi-monthly that celebrates the revolution of everyday life. Clamor won “Best New Magazine” in Utne’s Alternative Press Awards its first year and has been nominated for “Best Social/Cultural Coverage” every year since. In the summer of 2002 he was featured in Utne as one of 30 young visionaries under 30 who are changing the world. Jason is also the co-publisher of the Zine Yearbook, a yearly collection of the best art and writing from the underground press that is now in its 8th year. He currently resides in Toledo, Ohio’s Old West End and is secretly very happy the rest of the country hasn’t figured out how great the midwest is.
 
For more, visit www.clamormagazine.org.
 
Anne Elizabeth Moore?s upcoming Hey, Kidz! Buy This Book: A Radical Primer on Corporate and Governmental Propaganda and Artistic Activism for Short People will be available from Soft Skull?s Red Rattle line for young adults in July 2004. Her work has previously appeared in Punk Planet, The Onion, the Journal of Popular Culture, the Chicago Reader, Clamor, The Progressive, The Comics Journal, and The Stranger, as well as in over 30 single-shot zines. She considers herself, however, a literary activist, which means she would far prefer you go do something about her work than read more of it. From Seattle, Anne is heading up the Radical Education Roadshow, a zillion-city reading and workshop tour in conjunction with several brilliant alternative media makers in support of Hey Kidz! and alternative media in general.
 
Find out more at www.heykidz.org.

Readers from SPEC (Self Publishers Events Council) Chicago.
Monday June 28th 7:30pm
 
Part of Music with Meaning 5. For complete info: foulinc.com/mwm