Not at Quimby’s, but a cool event anyway: Mapping Events from AREA

People’s Atlas of Chicago and AREA: Two Events on January 15th 2009

Thursday, January 15th 2009 is Unofficially “Notes for a People’s Atlas of Chicago” day on the northwest side of Chicago. The first event is a collaboration with Around the Coyote Festival which involves an exhibition of all of the Peoples Atlas of Chicago maps at the Wicker Park Field House (1425 N Damen Ave, Chicago) from 5-8pm. Then head down the street from 8pm-10pm to STOP SMILING Magazine’s storefront space (1371 N. Milwaukee Ave) where to celebrate the release of “Experimental Geography” a book about mapping and art that features AREA’s Peoples Atlas project.

Contact areachicago@gmail.com for more information or see http://www.areachicago.org .

33 1/3 Event for Double Nickles on the Dime

Feb ’09
14
7:00 pm

The Minutemen–George Hurley, Mike Watt, and D. Boon–redefined punk rock with their unique hybrid of punk, hardcore, jazz, funk, acid rock, and R&B, style perhaps best exemplified on their 1984 double-album, Double Nickels on the Dime. Though still somewhat obscure to mainstream audiences, Double Nickels has consistently been cited as one of the more innovative, enduring and influential albums of the American rock underground. With songs inspired by everyone from Shostakovich and James Joyce to Husker Du and Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Minutemen presented an epic and eclectic version of punk rock before it became the cookie cutter form it is today.

The success of the Tim Irwin’s documentary We Jam Econo- The Story of the Minutemen (2006) cemented their place in the pantheon of punk. But where We Jam Econo focused on the personal and political, Michael T. Fournier’s Double Nickels on the Dime is all about their music, in particular how this extraordinary album was written and recorded. Culling from his extensive interviews with Mike Watt, as well as artists, musicians, studio owners and fans, Fournier walks you through every song on the album, revealing details like what inspired the opening notes of “The Big Foist”(the chiming of Big Ben in London) and the original track listing (the band sat around a table, drafting their own songs, fantasy-league style). Insightful and passionate, Double Nickels on the Dime tells the story of a band that were–and are–an inspiration to any band that has piled into a van and set off to unleash their music on an unsuspecting world. It’s a must have for Minutemen fans, and the perfect introduction for the uninitiated.

Michael T. Fournier is a writer, critic and historian. His writing has appeared in Chunklet, Trouser Press, and the Boston Phoenix. Fournier taught punk rock history at Tufts University in Boston for five semesters, hosting in-class visits from Maximumrocknroll columnist Al Quint, Mission of Burma’s Clint Conley, and Ian MacKaye. He currently lives in Orono, Maine, where he’s working on a creative writing master’s degree.

PANK 3 Release Event at Quimby’s!

Feb ’09
13
7:00 pm

Join contributors from the new issue of PANK, PANK 3, as they read from work.

About Pank:
PANK comes from the end of the road, the edge of things, a north shore, up country, a place of amalgamation, and unplumbed depths, where things are made and unmade, and unimagined futures are born. PANK is a ghost town around the next bend. It is hidden in caves in the withered hills. It is buried under impassable drifts of snow. An ultima Thule, PANK – no soft pink hands here. It bears old scars, fresh scabs, callous, blood, and dirt. It is serene melancholy, spiritual longing, quirk, and anomaly. PANK inhabits its contradictions.

About The Performers:

Jennifer Pieroni is editor in chief of the literary journal Quick Fiction. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the literary journals Hobart, elimae, Word Riot, Wigleaf, Another Chicago Magazine, bateau, Frigg, and No Colony. An essay of hers will appear in The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction. She was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Rachel Yoder is a student in the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa and holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Arizona. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Sun Magazine, Cimarron Review and elsewhere.

James Grinwis edits bateau, a new journal and chapbook press. He lives in Florence, MA.

Sheila Squillante is a poet and essayist whose work has appeared in Phoebe, Prairie Schooner, Clackamas Literary Review, Southeast Review, Quarterly West, Glamour, Brevity, TYPO, Unpleasant Event Schedule, Literary Mama and elsewhere. Her essay, “Student/Body,” is part of the new collection, Mama, PhD: Women Write about Motherhood and the Academy. She is the associate director of the MFA program at Penn State, and a senior lecturer in the English department.

Daniel Nester is a journalist, essayist, poet and editor. His first two books, God Save My Queen (Soft Skull Press, 2003) and God Save My Queen II (2004) are both collections on his obsession with the rock band Queen. His third book, The History of My World Tonight (BlazeVOX, 2006), is a collection of poems. His next book, How to Be Inappropriate (Soft Skull Press), a collection of humorous nonfiction, will be published in 2009. He is an assistant professor of English at The College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY.

Links:

PANK on-line

PANK Blog

Quimby’s Top 10 For the Week of 1/4/09-1/10/09

1.    FOUND Magazine #6 $5.00
2.    Slingshot Organizer 2009 Large Size $12.00
3.    Beasts vol 2 (Fantagraphics) $34.99
4.    Roy Orbison in Clingfilm by Ulrich Haarburste $10.00
5.    King Cat #69 by John Porcellino $3.00
6.    Make #7 Fall 08/Win 09 $4.95
7.    Chunklet #20 $9.99
8.    FOUND Magazine #5 $5.00
9.    Ill Ego Tanglefoot 7” Record $4.00
10. Slingshot Organizer 2009 Small Size $6.00

Matthew Vollmer, Kevin Moffett and Peter Orner read

Feb ’09
12
6:00 pm

Join us for an evening of readings featuring Matthew Vollmer, Kevin Moffett and Peter Orner, This will be a release event for Vollmer’s new collection, Future Missionaries of America (MacadamCage), and McSweeney’s Issue 30.

About the performers:

Kevin Moffett was born and raised in Daytona Beach, Florida. His collection of stories, Permanent Visitors, won the John Simmons Short Fiction Award and was long-listed for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. His stories and essays have appeared in McSweeney’s, Tin House, A Public Space, Harvard Review, The Believer, The Chicago Tribune, and Best American Short Stories 2006. He has received the Nelson Algren Award in Short Fiction, the Pushcart Prize, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction Writing.

Matthew Vollmer’s work has appeared in Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Epoch, Tin House, Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, and New Letters. His first collection of stories, Future Missionaries of America, will be published in January by MacadamCage.

Peter Orner is the author of the novel, The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and Winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, and the story collection, Esther Stories, Finalist for the Pen Hemingway Award. He recently edited a collection of non-fiction, Underground America: Narratives of Undocumented Lives, published in 2008 by Voice of Witness/ McSweeney’s. Orner’s short fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, The Paris Review, and Ploughshares and twice been a recipient of the Pushcart Prize. In 2006, Orner was granted a Guggenheim Fellowship. Born in Chicago, he currently lives in San Francisco.