Tav Falco with Erik Morse and Jello Biafra reading from Mondo Memphis

jeff — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 17:00:17 +0000

On Wednesday, November 9, 2011, Tav Falco, Erik Morse and Jello Biafra stopped by the Fiction Room at City Lights Bookstore to celebrate the release of Mondo Memphis (published by Creation Books).

Mondo Memphis is a dual, 450-page encyclopedic history and psychogeography of the city of Memphis, written by legendary performer Tav Falco and cultural critic Erik Morse. Mondo Memphis is both an original history of the gothic South and an intertext of the urban legends, rural fables and literary clichés that have made the Bluff City simultaneously a metropolis of dreams and a necropolis of terrors. Mondo Memphis is a major work on American history and culture.

What has been said about Mondo Memphis:”Mondo Memphis, the singular hybrid that is Morse & Falco’s roman noir/history of Memphis, steeps the reader in the most occult nectars of a place, a city evoked in line after tumescent line of haunted prose. Southern gothic ghosts scramble across each rippling page in mad dashes, hurtling across corrugations of text swollen with the satiety of its subject’s past, redolent corrugations tilled up out of a soil engorged with lust, madness, music and febrile civic histories. Plunge into this wealthy and eccentric masterpiece and dissolve yourself for delicious eternities in mythic Memphis.”
–Guy Maddin, film director

“this book is the bible of dixie fried rockabilly psychosis & memphis beat art underground true crime history myth. jam packed with a cast of shamanic visionary heroic characters like alex chilton, james luther dickinson, william eggleston and charlie feathers, tav falco brings to life an alternative history of the bluff city, memphis tennessee, birth place of rock and roll. read it and scream for hell”
–Bobby Gillespie, Primal Scream

Tav Falco is an American-born musician/performer, film-maker, and photographer. He has led the psychedelic rock-and-roll group Tav Falco’s Panther Burns since 1979. Their first LP, “Behind The Magnolia Curtain” (1980), featuring Alex Chilton, is now regarded as a rock and roll classic. Panther Burns still tour the world and release records regularly. Memphis has long been Falco’s adopted home town and spiritual sanctuary.

Erik Morse is a renowned American underground author, rock writer and journalist. He is a contributing writer for Frieze, The Believer, Bookforum and Modern Painters, and the author of “Dreamweapon – Spacemen 3 and the Birth of Spiritualized“.

The Music And Meaning of Thelonius Monk: An Evening with Robin Kelley

admin — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:24:35 +0000

Robin DG Kelley discusses Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, published by The Free Press

The first full biography of Thelonious Monk, written by noted historian, Robin Kelley, with full access to the family’s archives and with dozens of interviews. Kelley has been working for years with Monk Institute founder Thelonious Monk Jr., who has granted Kelley access to rare historical documents for his biography. No other scholar has ever had such access and support from the Monk family. This promisses to become a classic reading of Monk to be referenced for years to come.

Robin D.G. Kelley is a professor of history and American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California. From 2003-2006, he was the William B. Ransford Professor of Cultural and Historical Studies at Columbia Univeristy. From 1994-2003, he was a professor of history and Africana Studies at New York University as well the chairman of NYU’s history department from 2002-2003. One of the youngest tenured professors in a full academic discipline–at the age of 32–Kelley has spent most of his career exploring American and African-American history with a particular emphasis on African-American musical culture, including jazz and hip-hop. Kelley is also working on two other books: Speaking in Tongues: Jazz and Modern Africa and A World to Gain: A History of African Americans.

This podcast was recorded at City Lights Bookstore on October 29, 2009.

Live From City Lights: The City Lights Podcast » Music

Tav Falco with Erik Morse and Jello Biafra reading from Mondo Memphis

The Music And Meaning of Thelonius Monk: An Evening with Robin Kelley