From American Tapes to Wolf Eyes, John Olson is one of the most influential musicians of the past two decades, the obvious bridge between free jazz and noise music. Wikipedia lists over 75 projects with which Olson worked and over 100 Wolf Eyes’ recordings. Olson is now a discerning and sharp-witted author too: LIFE IS A RIP OFF, published by Jack White’s imprint Third Man Records, is a collection of surprisingly untraditional record reviews which Olson wrote over the course of 365 days. He will read from his book on Saturday October 8, accompanied by some of his many instruments.
Local writer-performance artist Alan Hoffman will open for him and debut his novella AUDITIONS about internet-porn casting-couch videos.
LIFE IS A RIP OFF: THE COMPLETE BOOK is 12 months of record reviews—one record a day, every day, for one year. Yes, John “Inzane” Olson aka Inzane Johnny of the bandWolf Eyes aka American Tapes did that. And he reviewed everything from death metal demo cassettes to the Staples Singers’ gospel. Enter into the OLZONE and find out about music you’ve never known, bands from places that you’ve never heard, and then read his review of KANSAS. Reading LRIP will make you re-realize why blues is relevant, why every punk band in America matters, why jazz is good for the heart, and metal will always ride by your side.
“To write music op-ed this good, you have to tap the primordial sap sack, to butterfly stroke the ancient ooze of tune begatment, cave dwell with the knuckle draggers, scratch symbols into the dirt with the freaks and make it rain. He do and it did.” —Henry Rollins
“[Life is a Rip Off] is the best way [John Olson] can add another cubist layer to the sound and visuality he’s already presented for the last twenty or so years. He’s sharing something the people who don’t know him personally don’t get enough of—his textual, syntactical brain, stained as it is with dollar-store spray paint.” — Ben Hell Hall, Detroit artist.
“When John agreed to write a record review a day, back in 20xx, I wasn’t too keen on the idea. Not because I didn’t think he could do it – but that I knew he would do it, even if it became a years-long all-encompassing obsessive task.” —Tovah Olson, The Dead Machines.
“[John Olson] didn’t just introduce me to different worlds, the man introduced me to entire universes.” — Bryan Ramirez, Killertrees Records
“Wolf Eyes . . . sounds like a crumbling Velvet Underground bootleg that’s been burned to ashes.” — NPR, Sept 2015
It’s the 25th anniversary of Quimby’s Bookstore, and Marz Community Brewing Co made a beer to celebrate this milestone. Quimbrew is a pale wheat ale with rooibos tea packaged in 500 ML bottle with label art work designed by Laura Park.
This special edition beer is available for pre-purchase at The Beer Temple and comes with the 132 page zine: Ever Evolving Bastion of Freakdom: A Quimby’s Bookstore History in Words and Pictures.
Ever Evolving…is an oral history of the notorious and glorious Quimby’s Bookstore, in the tradition of Gillian McCain and Legs McNeil’s Please Kill Me. The story of the early days of Quimby’s up through today. Pictures, graphics, juice, from employees, shoppers, consignors and artists that have frequented the store’s hallowed doors. This special “ashcan edition” is a limited print run zine to celebrate the store’s silver jubilee, and was created to accompany the Marz Community Brewing Quimbrew beer pre-purchase.
Signal 05 a Journal of International Political Graphics and Culture ed. by Josh MacPhee (PM Press) $14.95 – Dedicated to documenting and sharing compelling graphics, art projects, and cultural movements of international resistance and liberation struggles.
My Damage: The Story of A Punk Rock Survivor by Keith Morris with Jim Ruland (Da Capo Press) $24.99 – Over the course of his forty-year career with Black Flag, the Circle Jerks, and OFF!, vocalist Keith Morris battled diabetes, drug and alcohol addiction, and the record industry…and he’s still going strong.
*ZINES*
Library Excavations #3 Periodical Business by Marc Fischer (Half Letter Press) $6.00 – From the publisher’s website, written by Marc Fischer: “The Chicago Public Library’s Harold Washington Library Center is home to a vast collection of bound business periodicals. The many shelves are filled with titles that will be foreign to industry outsiders. Some date back to the late 1800s. These are primarily publications sent directly to business executives and their company offices, or to institutional libraries, rather than newsstands. The beauty of a public library is that visitors with zero credentials can enjoy decades’ worth of these insider publications, without ever improving our work wardrobes or falsifying our credentials. This booklet is also an appreciation of the binderies that collate and sew these magazines into indestructible bound volumes. The foil stamped titles on the hard covers have a leveling effect, allowing us to consider Modern Power Systems alongside Quick Frozen Foods, as though power plants and pizza are equally important. These photos were taken in July and August 2016. I hope that they will entice others to explore these periodicals, and interrogate the value systems, ideologies, and visual pleasures they contain.”
2 Atomic Elbow thingies:
Atomic Elbow #18 by Robert Newsome $5.00
Atomic Elbow Professional Wrestling Fanzine, The Second Four Issues $10.00 – Collects issues #5-#8!
Kimchi #1 by Seth Ginsburg $2.00
Pill Bottles Make Terrible Roller Skates photo zine by Clarisse Casalino $8.00
This Cook Book is Made for Jesus by Susan Cianciolo $10.00
I Don’t Give A Shit About Your Star Sign by Franky Mariachi $8.00
Nightcore by Matthew Moen $6.00
Arty zines from Draw Down Books!
Lady Parts by Kristen Liu-Wong $14.00 – A zine of fierce females and sci-fi warrior women by American artist Kristen Liu-Wong.
Face Only A Mother Could Love by Will Bryant $10.00
Working It Out by Justyna Szczepankiewicz $14.00
Dead Ringer by Daniel Zender $14.00
Who Claims by Tim Lahan $14.00
2 zines by Nichole:
A Visitor In Myself #5 Win 16 $2.00 Pieces #13 On Being A Romantic Asexual $3.00 – Goes into Nichole’s experience of living as a romantic asexual. A little asexuality 101, mostly focuses on growing up as a gray-a in a sexual world, navigating relationships, dating site ignorance, desexualizing touch, common phrases of invalidation, and using self-transformative psychodrama to process it all. Recommended.
*COMICS & MINIS*
Donald Trump is the Antichrist by CJ & Troy Davis $3.50 – Jack Chick style! Perhaps the best way to describe this is the review of it on the publisher’s website from um, cultural critic spectral_ev who comments: “I have read many a Chick Tract but none so great as this.” You don’t need to know much more than that, that it’s awesome. -LM
New Flyer by Tim Brown $9.00
Island #10 $7.99
*GRAPHIC NOVELS*
Koyama Press graphic novels!:
Hot or Not: 20th-Century Male Artists by Jessica Campbell $10.00 – The history of twentieth-century art is filled with men, but one key component has always been missing: which of these men are boneable, and which are not. Local comics artist Jessica Campbell has created the definitive resource on the subject in this hilarious rundown of male artist hotness and notness. With scratchy-off stuff on the cover!
The Collected Cat Rackham by Steve Wolfhard $19.95
Exits by Daryl Seitchik $15.00
March (Trilogy Slipcase Set) by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin & Nate Powell (Top Shelf) $49.99 – By and about congressman John Lewis, a leader in the American Civil Rights Movement.
Sprawling Heart by Sab Meynert (2D Cloud) $9.95
*ART & DESIGN BOOKS*
Cleon Peterson by Christopher Sleboda and Kathleen Sleboda (Draw Down Books) $24.95 – Compellingly gory beheading and riots in this first monograph from this artist.
Avies Dream: An Afro Femenist Coloring Book by Makeda Lewis (Feminist Press) $13.95
*MUSIC BOOKS*
Don’t Suck Don’t Die: Giving Up Vic Chesnutt by Kristin Hersh (U of Texas Press) $14.95 – A quadriplegic who could play only simple chords on his guitar, Chesnutt recorded seventeen critically acclaimed albums before his death in 2009. Everybody from Madonna to Fugazi have covered his songs. Kristin Hersh from Throwing Muses writes about being friends with him. Now in soft cover.
David Bowie and Philosophy: Rebel, Rebel by Theodore Ammon (Open Court) $19.95 – Among the topics explored in David Bowie and Philosophy are the nature of Bowie as an institution and a cult; Bowie’s work in many platforms, including movies and TV; Bowie’s spanning of low and high art; his relation to Andy Warhol; the influence of Buddhism and Kabuki theater; the recurring theme of Bowie as a space alien; the dystopian element in Bowie’s thinking; the role of fashion in Bowie’s creativity; the aesthetics of theatrical rock and glam rock; and Bowie’s public identification with bisexuality and his influence within the LGBTQ community.
*FICTION BOOKS*
Black Wave by Michelle Tea (Feminist Press) $18.95 – It’s the end of the world! In a bookstore!
Jason Stevans and the Mayan Apocalypse by Matt Goralka $10.99
*OUTER LIMITS*
Dreaming Wide Awake: Lucid Dreaming, Shamanic Healing, and Psychedelics by David Jay Brown $19.95
*MAGAZINES*
Boneshaker #43-500 A Bicycling Almanac $8.00 – Not based in Chicago, but there are Chicago-specific things in here! All old-timey and penny-farthingy. Tally ho!
School #3 Women and Japanese Culture $10.00
*LIT MAGS*
The Point #12 Sum 16 $12.00 – This issue: What is poetry for?
Black Fox Literary Magazine #14 Five Year Anniversary Issue $14.00
Parody vol 5 #1 $5.00 – The Weird Al of lit journals!
*FOR THE KIDDIES*
Burts Way Home by John Martz (Koyama Press) $17.95
Ape and Armadillo Take Over the World by James Sturm (Toon Books) $12.95
Quimby’s is proud to be participating in the Wicker Park and West Town Lit Fest! This year it runs September 15th-18th. And it kicks off at Quimby’s on Thurs, September 15th, which is our 25th anniversary! Founder Steven Svymbersky will be here with slides and video to talk about the mayhem that was the beginning of Quimby’s two and a half decades ago. And we’ve got surprise commemorative swag we’re rolling out! More details about the Quimby’s event here.
Lit Fest last year was only one day. Perhaps you recall that we celebrated it by giving people a free mini-comic and Chicago-based food puns then served them shots of Chicago-based Malort, demanding we post pictures on our Instagram of their face afterwards?:
Well guess what? Now Lit Fest is FOUR DAYS!
So now…
Wicker Park & West Town Lit Fest’s Second Year Celebrates Neighborhoods’ Literary Past and Present
Join partners from the West Town and Wicker Park neighborhoods for a weekend of programming that will entertain and educate all ages. The weekend has a full calendar of activities planned. Highlights of the weekend include our celebration to kick it off…
…and there’s stuff elsewhere too, besides Quimby’s! Check out this stuff elsewhere (see www.wwlitfest.com for the details of when and where):
*a tribute to Chicago literary legend Nelson Algren
*a community book swap at the Wicker Park farmer’s market
*a special edition of Chicago Story Slam at Subterranean music hall
*workshops, author readings, comic book signings, children’s story time and much more!
A calendar of events for each day is available on the official fest website www.wwlitfest.com. Weekend updates and photos will be available on the official Facebook Page facebook.com/wpwtlitfest Follow the fest with the hashtag #wwlitfest
Lit Fest planning partners include: Quimby’s Bookstore, Volumes Bookcafe, Chicago Publishers Resource Center, Young Chicago Authors, BookClub, 826CHI, Impossible Industries, Myopic Books, and Guild Literary Complex. Other neighborhood partners include Reckless Records, Subterranean, Wicker Park Farmer’s Market, and Chicago Public Library.
Read Local & Shop Small! Help us fight the big box on-line stores!
Don’t miss the Quimby’s Bookstore 25th Anniversary Event 9/15: Founder Steven Svymbersky Shares the Mayhem of Underground Press and the Beginnings of Quimby’s Bookstore!
Quimby’s Bookstore opened on September 15th, 1991, a tiny store at Damen and Evergreen, serving up weird, saucy and aberrant DIY zines, books and comics to a Wicker Park that was a very different place than it is now. Two and a half decades later, the store continues to offer subversive printed matter in an environment that fosters a creative artistic community that employees jokingly call, “a tourist destination for cool people” as well as events, all with an inclusive yet snarky DIY punk aesthetic.
Quimby’s is proud to welcome back founder Steven Svymbersky to the store on the occasion of the store’s 25th anniversary. Svymbersky will present a history of zines and underground comics as well as sharing memories of his years as a zine publisher and the beginnings of Quimby’s Bookstore.
Quimby’s has a variety of things planned to celebrate our silver jubilee, including: an exclusive Chris Ware print celebrating our anniversary, the release of an printed store history with stories and graphics, a commemorative t-shirt by artist Gabby Schulz, an artisanal Marz Community Brewing Quimby’s beer with a specially designed label by Chicago artist Laura Park and more surprises.
This event also kicks off Wicker Park & West Town Lit Fest’s second year, which celebrates the neighborhoods’ literary past and present. Events around Wicker Park and West Town include a story slam, book swap, workshops, author readings and signings and more.
Quimby’s has launched a print and design service! We now offer publication design, in-house risograph, letterpress, and tabloid color Laser Printing and binding for zines and comics! We can also assist in realizing your larger art book projects!
