Kamikaze Picnic 93

Believe it or not, there are still a wealth of artists creating interesting, well crafted, music projects. Most times you're not aware they're available because of lack of proper promotion to compete with countless other things, vying for your attention, online and off. Kamikaze Picnic 93 deserves your undivided attention, not because its the greatest album ever recorded. Because it's not. What it is though, is a very entertaining, intelligent production that anyone with a sense of humor and or an appreciation for genuinely eclectic art offerings will dig.There are a series of life pressing issues on Junk Island, ranging from vampires sharing cells with human inmates to a 'Junk Milk' consumption epidemic. With that said, I invite you to partake in the madness. Enjoy!

Album Intro: Jim Journals On Junkwatch

Click Here To Download Full Album FREE!
Zip file contains, mp3's, album art, liner notes and lyrics.

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The Under Dog’s Manifesto: A Guerilla Artist’s Path To Independence

Part small business basics manual, part biographical text, ‘The Under Dog’s Manifesto: A Guerilla Artist’s Path To Independence’(Published by Coffee Grind Media) provides a wealth of information to the aspiring artistprenuer or ‘anyone who’s ever felt like an underdog’ as its dedication exclaims. Very impressive is this compilation of true life experience not only from Creature its creator but also a number of successful artists in their own right that contribute real life insight, substantiating the fact that it is indeed possible to not just survive off of your art but to thrive and live well because of it. This back pocket friendly package of pulp discusses topics ranging from making a brand, to being confident in self and realizing if your skin is actually tough enough to survive the initial struggle working independently. Ultimately, it will become easier with time, experience and a bit of fine tuning.

Indie Ducky

Regnyouth used to be one of the best blogs on the net serving up tons of great music, with mini reviews and brief biographies of bands of various genres. You'd actually learn stuff, never mind discover new artists and or become reacquainted with those of which you already know and love. From what I understand, the site ‘went under’. Emerging from the ashes and brushing off every bit of cyber debris from the fall of the mighty R, comes Indie Ducky, a rather bright and crispy web place for fresh tunes. The current database is no where near as large as the one of its predecessor, but give it time and it surely will be. The site is simple, to the point, easy to navigate, and has an adorable ducky with headphones for its logo. To top it all off you’ve gottah love’em for making Hall & Oates ‘Spotlight Artists’, giving us a much needed blast of music history and nostalgia. Indie Ducky rocks! Indeed.

What Dr. Spock Didn't Tell Us by B.M. Atkinson

What Dr. Spock Didn't Tell Us or A Survival Kit for Parents by B.M. Atkinson, Jr. is an entertaining list of afflictions parents and their children acquire quite naturally in the course of living. The book, replete with illustrations (by Whitney Darrow, Jr.) of the bedevilments parents can at best mentally prepare for, succinctly describes these ailments; most are a paragraph long but a few of the more complicated dis-eases take a page to fully explain. Soon-to-be parents, nervous Nellies that they sometimes are, may miss a few hours of sleep over the adroitly named memories most veterans will laugh and cry about. If any of this bedlam is in the traditional parenting books, it surely isn’t presented in such a seriously funny manner. Parents, sit down and enjoy What Dr. Spock Didn't Tell Us, you'll need all the help (and rest and laughter) you can get. If nothing else convinces you, consider the author’s explanation and the remainder of the book’s title: An encyclopedic guide to hitherto uncatalogued afflictions, aberrations, exotic diseases of the American Child. Told ya.

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

Bird by Bird is a collected reflection on the writing process. Author Anne Lamott begins with a vignette on the origin of the writer within, then discusses writing styles while adeptly weaving in examples, writing in different instances as a child, for a child, and as an adult reflecting on childhood so her students, er, readers experience the affects of character and narrator on a story. One can appreciate the candor with which the author reveals the realities of a writer's life (although it seems more specific, perhaps a middle-class, sufficiently connected writer's life): the bumps, trips, jealousy, depressions and near breakthroughs and almost made its and little acclaim for all that effort. Though the book attempts to defy categorization, this writer has labeled it a narrative lesson plan for a writer’s workshop with real life illustrations. Lamott may be a sweet but determined gangsta issuing a thinly veiled warning to aspiring writers that this is tough work and her turf or she may be a writer with a deadline and a drawer full of notes (on writing?) jotted on index cards that, with her insistence, arranged themselves into this book.

True Notebooks by Mark Salzman

True Notebooks is the story of high-risk offenders in LA’s Central Juvenile Hall exposing their vulnerable selves in a writing class. This one opportunity to share their thoughts literally gives the few who attend room to breathe and a window to the sky instead of a tenebrous 10 by 12 cell abutting a brick wall. For their efforts, the prisoners unearth pain and fear and find joy and understanding. Salzman pens the sojourn without pity, emitting the raw energy of these prisoners, showing through his eyes and their voices that they are like so many teenagers we know…they think about girls incessantly, they clown around, they make mistakes, they have yet to discover their true selves. The author moves through scenes with dexterity as he shares his journey­ in a world not his own while contextualizing the stories of his students for whom life is a sentence not an abstraction and endings are rarely happy. Read True Notebooks and remember that life is less black and white but so many shades in between.

Plum Bun by Jessie Redmon Fauset

Plum Bun by Jessie Redmon Fauset is a fairy-tale-like story told in the context of the complex realities of early to mid 20^th century America. Set in Philadelphia and New York City, this novel is crafted with such subtlety that the casual reader may miss the depth of knowledge and life that brims below the daintily espoused language. Although she approaches despotism at some points, the author, in the voice of the omniscient narrator, builds trust with adeptly evinced setting and insight and, at times, just as deftly misleads the reader. Minor roles are made vital when Fauset presents them with all their flaws and ornament. The word “propinquity,” employed several (or one too many) times, serves as a metaphor for the protagonist and for the novel: while close in proximity and forthright in words and deeds, both are obscured as their deeper selves remain veiled to the inattentive eye. This coming of age novel takes the structure of a nursery rhyme and fills it with the stuff of life—hope, disappointment, irony, wisdom—and reminds us that each moment of the journey is a worthwhile one.

To Market, To Market,
To Buy a Plum Bun;
Home again, Home again,
Market is done.