arthur: august 2013

On the Trail of the Lonesome Snock: Wily folkplayer Michael Hurley (aka Elwood Snock) has charmed hip audiences for over fifty years now with his timeless surrealist tunes and sweetly weird comics, all the while maintaining a certain ornery, outsider mystique. Longtime Snockhead/Arthur Senior Writer Byron Coley investigates this wild American treasure in an enormous 11,000-word, eight-page feature replete with rare photos, artwork, comics... and a giant color portrait by Liz Devine. Snock attack! The Biophonic Man: Guitarist, composer and analog synthesizer pioneer Bernie Krause left the recording studio to find that really wild sound. What he discovered was far more profound. Interview by Jay Babcock. Illustrations by Kevin Hooyman. Giant Steps For Mankind: Stewart Voegtlin on John Coltrane's startling 1960s ascension from space bebop to universe symphonies. Dual astral/material plane illustration by Beaver. Chew the Leaves, Get in the Tank: Inside Baltimore's T Hill, new kinds of experiments with salvia divinorum are going on. Journalist/photographer Rjyan Kidwell visits Twig Harper, Carly Ptak, and the Wild Shepherdess. Buried Alive By the Sufis: Swap-O-Rama Rama founder and author Wendy Tremayne (The Good Life Lab: Radical Experiments in Hands-On Living) wanted to understand what motivated her life-long anti-consumerism. She found the answer underground. Illustration by Kira Mardikes. Gash, Crash, Ash: Nobody rides for free. Dave Reeves on the price motorcyclists pay for being better than you. Illustration by Lale Westvind. Flowers, Leaves, Anarchism: Matthew Erickson on the J.L. Hudson Ethnobotanical Catalog of Seeds. And, of course, the 'Bull Tongue' exhaustive survey of underground cultural output by your intrepid guides Byron Coley and Thurston Moore.