Counter-culture Journals (文革)

Counter-culture Journals (文革)

Monday, July 26, 2010

Kansas City music: The Futants

Music Review: The Futants:
Pass Me the Butter
Review by Pete Dulin.

The Futants picked a helluva song title for the lead track, “Those Who Danced Were Thought to be Quite Mad by the Deaf.” It’s bold and bizarre like the plotline of a B-movie airing at three in the morning. The Futants aren’t going for a sub-par horror flick soundtrack. They aim to deliver A-list progressive metal with an imaginative flair. About the name, Futants is a mashup of future and mutants. The band seized inspiration for its name from a theory by psychedelic shaman Dr. Timothy Leary, who proposed that a type of genetic wild card exists as a small percentage of the population at any given time. Futants aid humans as a species to adapt and advance in the Darwinian struggle for survival of the fittest, given the proper environmental recognition and support to exist. When Futants in the form of scientists, philosophers, artists, athletes, or other roles push our threshold to new ground, then the entire race evolves. It’s heady stuff with a sci-fi bent that gives the band ample conceptual room to maneuver as they pound out chords, crash cymbals, and unleash their message with a guttural growl.

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Thursday, July 22, 2010

Article and me on TV - I love to watch myself on TV

From: Wichita Peace and Freedom Party Examiner Steve Otto

Now and then, in Wichita. we are known for something good. This time Playboy Magazine (Aug. 2010) has designated our favorite counter culture bar Kirby’s Beer Store one of the country’s best “dive bars.”
The article explains that a dive bar gets its name from a term first used in the 1880s to describe an illegal drinking den in someone’s basement.
It also describes a place where the high and low can rub elbows together…the bums and poets…thieves and slumming celebrities.
We don’t have many thieves at Kirby’s and most of the bums take a few classes at Wichita State University. Most of the celebrities are local. We do have our artists, writers and musicians and we have our DJs. And they can be found here. It is a place where everyone gets treated the same and there are few fights. Gays are tolerated along with Goths, hippies and political radicals (even the socialists). No one will provoke anyone over his/her politics or religion.
The Playboy article also says a good dive “wears its history proudly.” Kirby’s has posters that go back to the 1970s including an old opium poster. It has a joke about Nixon and the Watergate Hotel The wall is covered with poster both old and new. If a person gets bored they can read the wall. .
Kirby’s opened some time in the 1970s and at that time there were plenty of other “counter-culture” bars including the Head, A Blackout, and the Riverside Chalet. All were known for their clientele of hipsters, drugsters and intellectuals. Only Kirby’s remains and there’s not much of the drug use going on there anymore.
The list includes:
PLAYBOY'S BEST DIVE BARS, listed by Wichita’s KWCH Channel 12
•Austin: Mean-Eyed Cat
•Boston: Lucky's Lounge
•Chicago: Cal's
•Dallas: Lee Harvey's
•Lompoc, California: Jasper's
•Memphis: Ernestine and Hazel's
•Miami South Beach: Ted's Hideaway
•Nashville: Springwater Supper Club
•New Orleans: The Saint
•New Orleans: Snake and Jake's Christmas Club Lounge
•New York City: Milano's
•New York City: Subway Inn
•San Francisco: Specs
•Washington, D.C.: The Big Hunt
•Wichita: Kirby's Beer Store

-សតិវ អតុ