The Collective is quite excited about The Black Angels’ second psych fest Friday March 13th through Sunday March 15th in psychedelia’s womb, Austin Texas. We will have the ever psychotropic Vic Fox reporting for us and taking some far out photos…those of us up in Seattle lament not being able to get down south for the trip but Vic will let us live vicariously through her this year. Rumors of a Spindrift interview and some watering hole shenanigans are floating around…we can’t wait to see what goes down.
More information about the fest is available when you click the photo….
Another Portable Shrines freak out at Seattle’s most venerable institution of freakiness and facial hair.
Show starts early, 9pm on the nose and is done by 12:00 for all the worker bees. Don’t miss the terrifying return of Nice Smile. Backward Masks (Out of body rock) To Get Her Together (Portland groovers) Nice Smile (first show in many a mooon)
Long haired freaks make the scene this monday at the Funhouse in Seattle. The Box Elders (awesome stoner power pop with fringe and headbands from Omaha, Nebraska!) Dinosaur & the Missing Link (teenage cavemen rock with skin and bone) Backward Masks Light Show Society (make your pineal gland tingle)
The Forest City Rockers Motorcycle Gang are cooler than you because they party in graveyards, have great taste in music and only have one bike…everyone else runs.
While bopping around arthur magazine an ad caught my eye asking the viewer if they “wanna start a commune?”. Being the ever avid commune/cult junkie I could not resist the click.
It seems like an interesting idea that takes the traditional communal living model (or intentional community, check out this excellent resource Intentional Communities) and expands it outward. They are creating, and asking others to create, communes out of cul-de-sacs, apartments and such by joining together with your neighbors to share, barter and commune. It is a concept worth pondering to bring people together locally in a culture growing ever geographically separated while communicating and creating virtual communities through technology. There are even some shirts and bags sporting the logo if that is your thing. This venture is sponsored by ecoshack an experimental design lab and studio based out of Joshua Tree and LA that “designs and builds small-scale, modular projects that invent new ways to live lightly on the earth.”
The hippie communal concept will always be far more romantic, and there are still a few original communities out there. Some interesting decades old communes still subsisting:
The Farm in Summertown, Tennessee has gone through changes since the early 1970′s but is still around.
In the Northwest the Love Israel Family, no longer a traditional commune, is now more along the lines of ecoshack’s modern communal idea.
Also, I recently stumbled across a favorite film its entirety on youtube. Rebecca Miller’s “The Ballad of Jack and Rose”. The setting is a disbanded commune in 1986 and focuses on the relationship betwen Jack and his daughter Rose who are the two last residents. Highly recommended on so many levels beyond the setting….
