Above is a jazz album, Incandescence, released by trumpeter and composer Sarah Wilson and her sextet, that I bought after I heard one of her songs on a Cleveland jazz station. It was released on Bandcamp, a cool website and app that brings musicians and listeners together.
Jazz artists get little exposure in the modern culture, and I like the album, but I am mainly posting to bring your attention to Bandcamp. If you haven't tried it, it's a place where independent artists can post their music for sale (or even give it away). Typically, Bandcamp lets you listen to music before you decide whether to buy it. Purchase prices are generally quite reasonable and also allow the customer to stream the music from the useful Bandcamp smartphone app.
My collection of purchased material currently has 23 items, and many of the albums are by artists connected in at least some fashion with RAW fandom. So, for example, my music from Bandcamp includes The First Trip, a Tales of Illuminati soundtrack by Steve Pratt; Jukebox Musical by Danny and the Darlings, another Tales soundtrack; Ambient Blue by Starseed (e.g., Rasa's band); Tank Girl by Noah 23 and Squat the Condos by Prop Anon. Of course, I also have good stuff by people with no connection to the topics of this blog, such as Sundown: Whispers of Ragnarok by Sassafras (e.g., Ada Palmer's Norse Myth song cycle), and The Time Curve Preludes by Emanuele Arciuli and Costanza Savarese, music by a modern composer I like, William Duckworth.
Bandcamp is worth taking a few moments to explore if you are into music.
Following up on Tuesday's blog post, I want to provide a "listener's guide" to Bandcamp, a website where independent musicians and small record companies offer their recordings for sale, and where I have purchased a number of items, including from musicians whose names will be familiar to this blog. While the website is known to be useful to musicians, I hope to make the point that it is also a good website for listeners who love music.
Bandcamp is a U.S. company that was founded in 2007. Here is how Wikipedia explains how it works:
"Artists and labels upload music to Bandcamp and control how they sell it, setting their own prices, offering users the option to pay more, and selling merchandise.
"Users can download their purchases or stream their music on the Bandcamp application or website only once or, by preserving the purchase voucher, unlimited times. They can also send purchased music as a gift, view lyrics, and save individual songs or albums to a wish list. Uploading music to Bandcamp is free. The company takes a 15% commission on sales made from their website, which drops to 10% after an artist's sales surpass US$5,000, plus payment processing fees."
The selling point for artists is that they get to keep a lot of the money once they make a sale. I used to purchase music from independent artists I support from Amazon's digital music platform, but I have switched to using Bandcamp when possible. From now on, when I can purchase music from Bandcamp, that will be my first choice, as I want to support the artists I like.
Once you pay for an album or a song — I would describe the pricing as generally reasonable, while admitting that prices vary — you can stream it as often as you like in the useful Bandcamp smartphone app, or at the website, and you can download music files in a variety of formats, not just MP3 files but in other formats, including FLAC files that have high audio quality. In addition, you can create playlists, and download those playlists for playback when you aren't connected to the Internet or cellular data. Prop Anon has not yet made his Squat the Condos album available as an album on Bandcamp, but I was able to purchase the individual tracks, put together a playlist that recreates the original CD, and blast it out in my car as I ran errands Sunday. All of the music you have purchased is visible in one place on the app.
Here are examples of artists and recordings available on Bandcamp: Prop Anon, but see also the Hail Eris hard rock band, also his project;All Around the World, the Oz Fritz the "audio document of sacred spaces with their acoustic and consciousness altering properties"; Steve "Fly" Pratt (but scroll down the page for "Steve Fly recommends," which is his stuff, too, and see also Robert Anton Wilson meets Steve “Fly Agaric” Pratt); and Rasa's Starseed band. Rasa makes all of his stuff easy to access in one place, which is kind of how I wish other folks would do. All of this music, and much else, can be streamed at least once before you buy it, a nice "try before you buy" feature. You can also access the Noah23 catalog.
Prop Anon, who has a biography of Robert Anton Wilson coming out this fall, also has had a musical career. Here is a discography, courtesy of Prop, with a bit more information from me:
1. Prop Anon Todo Corazon (EP). I don't have more information, sorry.
2. Prop Anon Squat the Condos, an album. Rap music, released in released in 2013. You can buy the individual tracks on Bandcamp, then put together a playlist to replicate the CD, as I have done. Here is the correct tracklist:
1. AGIT-PROP 2. Konkrete Giants 3. Nights Like This 4. Consciousness is the Key 5. Calling Down the Earth 6. Luxury Condos 7. Ayahuasca Metropolis 8. Nammo Tasso 9. Nammo Tasso (DJ Nihilist Remix)
Note that the Nammo Tasso remix is pretty different from the original track; you are not being ripped off if you buy both.
3. Hail Eris, four song EP, hard rock album, Prop with backing band, remixed by Oz Fritz, available on Bandcamp.
The only information I could find on this album is from this blog: Prop says, "The music on this EP is Heavy, Strong, Groove oriented. The other musicians on the record are: Scott Yacovina on Drums, Gabe Saladino on guitar, and Jeff To on Bass. Other absolutely vital musicians involved were Mason Lucas, as well as Joe Mulvanerty and Ham from Black47. These guys helped get the ball rolling, and now the present line up is myself and Laura Kang, aka Thee Semiotic Alchemyst."
Prop also performs the lead vocal on the song "DDK (Bowing to the Buddha remix) by the artist Goyopod, also on Bandcamp.
Steve "Fly Agaric" Pratt's Discography
Steve pointed me to Discogs, explaining, "Best place is Discogs, however, this list includes my work as DJ with live bands (garaj Mahal, Gregory james Band), collabs with John Sinclair (on drums) and compilation albums and some Live CD's that are not really proper album releases."
Steve also says, "I've a new album/book for release this year, (Deep Scratch Remix) although no publisher or label interest yet, but I suppose I have to tell them about it." Information here. And note that this link also connects you to Steve's music on Bandcamp. Please note also that the same link provides information about Mr. Pratt's books, as well as his music projects.
Note that Rasa recommends two of the albums, Live on Mount Shasta and Entering the Ambient Temple. Rasa wrote (in a December 2021 email), "In some ways, I think Live in Mt. Shasta is “classic” but I think that because all the music was recorded after we had invested heavily in some spectacular sound equipment. We have a couple of good friends who think our best music is on Entering the Ambient Temple.
"Maybe I agree with that. It’s an older recording, and the sound seems a bit raw to me, but not bad. Tim Leary’s old friend Brummbaer thought this was our best album, and he used a bit on his video tribute to Leary."
Note that all of the Starseed albums are on Bandcamp, and when you buy there, Rasa gets to keep 90% of the money. I wish I had bought my copy of Ambient Temple there; I bought it at Amazon. I did buy the Starseed Ambient Blue album on Bandcamp. Note that you can stream Starseed's music on Bandcamp before you decide to buy it.
Other RAW affiliated music
This of course does not totally cover musicians who have some kind of affiliation or affinity with Robert Anton Wilson, don't miss my blog post on the connection between David Lowery (of Cracker and Camper van Beethoven) with RAW.
The Canadian rapper Noah23 is a RAW fan. Prop says Noah23 is "very good." He has many releases, I don't know what to recommend, but on Reddit, Occult Trill and Jupiter Sajitarius are said to be good. His releases are on Bandcamp. Prop recommends "Faded." and another Reddit posting recommends the Fry Cook on Venus album. "Faded" is a track on the Rock Paper Scissors album. Noah23's new album is called Ikosia Tria, which means "23" in Greek, review from Scatched Vinyl with 8/10 rating.
Ambient Blue is the new album by Starseed, the California based band featuring Rasa on sitar and guitar, Bastian on synthesizer and Marlis Jermutus on tambouris. This new release has Rasa on guitar and Bastian on synthesizer, with the cover painting a detail of Marlis' painting Gravity #27. Available at Bandcamp; I bought it and sat up late last night listening to it on my new Bluetooth speaker, which really brought out the sounds. (You can do downloads in various formats, including FLAC which are high fidelity but will take up a bit of space.)
A couple of questions for Rasa:
How long has it been since your last release?
Our last release was in 2014… Prana, I’ve been busy since then. [Running Hilaritas Press and the Robert Anton Wilson Trust, etc. -- The Mgt.]
I see you added guitar and synthesizer, tell me about your "new artistic direction." Is it more like a German synthesizer band?
Right after Prana was released, I moved to California, and a year later Christina and I started Hilaritas Press. We’ve been playing music, but I’ve been putting most of my time and energy into publishing. I have been picking up the guitar often during the day to try to teach myself to play the blues in the last years. I think it’s that blues infusion that permeates the first four tracks of the new album, and gives the album its name.. The last two tracks are about as abstract as we are likely to get, and they may suggest something that might come out of Germany, as you suggested. That makes sense as Bastian is from Berlin and began programming and playing synthesizers back when groups like Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream and King Crimson were major influences for him. Bastian branched off into esoteric studies of the musical arts, and even got a certificate years ago in Sound Healing from the Globe Institute in San Francisco. I’m not really sure what to call his style of playing, except for maybe “soundscapes.” He has a great sensitivity for creating lush audio environments. I really love playing around in those spaces he creates.
Our recent deer videos mostly feature music that came to be the new album. It was largely the warm response the music got on Youtube that pushed us to assemble this album. Hope you enjoy it.
German artist, musician, writer and mystic Marlis Jermutus has exhibited her paintings in the U.S. and Europe as a successful abstract artist. My interest in her increased after I read her memoir, From Now to Now.
After I read the book, I interviewed her about art and her friendship with Robert Anton Wilson, figuring that many people who read this blog would be interested in reading it.
Marlis Jermutus and Robert Anton Wilson in a restaurant.
RAWIllumination.net: Do you want to publish "From Now to Now" in German? Do you think Germans will be interested in your background as an artist, and in California and the spiritual scene there?
MARLIS: When I wrote From Now to Now, I sat for hours at a time with Rasa. I would tell him my story in German, with some English and Denglisch, and he would type it into the computer, translating my German and Denglisch into English, or correcting my English grammar. Over the past two years we’ve been working on translating the English version into German, and soon we’ll be looking for a German publisher.
And yes, I think Germans would be interested. In recent years the Germans became much more interested in their own stories about the war, what for years many people did not want to talk about at all. In the 1970’s, Germany had a similar psychedelic revolution of thought as what happened in America, and through that change in perspective a lot of young Germans became more aware of social injustice and the need for an evolution of consciousness. That was expressed in art, in music, in philosophy, in spirituality and in politics as well. In addition, Germans have for a long time had a romantic fascination with America, especially the Wild West. California, in many ways is the new wild west many Germans look to.
Robert Anton Wilson and Tom Sperlich, the European literary agent for Robert Anton Wilson and Timothy Leary, in a Berlin restaurant in 1992.
RAWIllumination.net: How did you come to know Tom Sperlich, Timothy Leary's and Robert Anton Wilson's literary agent in Germany? How did you meet Wilson, and what did you think of him when you met? Did you introduce Wilson to Rasa?
MARLIS: Tom Sperlich was in our friend-circle in Berlin. Because I had read a lot from both Tim Leary and Bob Wilson, we had a lot to talk about. When Tim came to Germany to speak in Hamburg at a large outdoor gathering downtown and again later that day at the university, after the university event, Tom invited Tim, my husband Joachim and me out to dinner at a famous and elegant restaurant in Hamburg. The Hamburg Bürgermeister had told Tim, the day before, he would only be allowed to speak if he did not talk about drugs. Tim agreed, but then went on to tell the crowd about the whole conversation with the Bürgermeister, which included a lot of talking about drugs. In the restaurant we sat at a table that was in a private alcove up a few steps, but Timothy Leary in Hamburg was big news and most everyone at the restaurant recognized him as we came in. We talked a lot about Tim’s reception in Hamburg during dinner, and after dinner, at the table I rolled a dessert joint to go along with our coffee. I handed the joint to Tim and he took it without comment, like it was on the menu. Soon big clouds of smoke were coming from alcove. The waiter came over, and for a moment we all had a nervous flash. He ignored the smoke and just turned to Tim and said, “Dr. Leary, we want you to know that we really appreciate you dining at our restaurant tonight.”
I met Bob the first time in Berlin when I was still in prison and had a weekend off. I attended a speech Bob gave at the Technische Universität. Privately later, we were talking in a small group, but I didn’t understand a word of his soft Brooklyn accent. I had read his books and so I knew something about what he was saying but at that time I was more watching his body language and seeing his soft humility and his humor.
Years later when my English was better, and we had become close friends, I still sometimes had trouble with some words he said, but often Rasa would translate in the moment. When my husband Bastian and I moved to California we started visiting the Wilsons regularly. That’s when they lived on Brommer Street in Capitola, just outside Santa Cruz. Rasa was bi-coastal, visiting us a few times a year for a month or three each time. When we first brought Rasa with us on a visit to Bob and Arlen, really nothing special happened, we sat around like always. Arlen was doing most of the talking. Bob agreed with pretty much everything she said, and made a few comments, but mostly just sat comfortably looking content and happy to have Arlen in his life. When Rasa and Bob started talking with each other, mostly about Bob’s philosophy, I could see that Bob liked Rasa’s honesty, intellect and humor. Later he really appreciated Rasa’s responsibility, things like helping Bob with his computer, later working with the publisher on the Email to the Universe graphics. [For more on Rasa and his efforts on behalf of the Robert Anton Wilson Trust, please see my interview. -- The Mgt.]
RAWIllumination.net: You are a vegetarian and you are also careful about when you eat. Robert Anton Wilson was an omnivore. Did you ever discuss food with him? What kind of food did he seem to like? MARLIS: We never discussed food, but Arlen got the idea from her daughter, Christina, that a vegetarian diet would be a good idea. We ate dinner with them a lot, and the food was always vegetarian. If Arlen cooked a lasagna, it would be vegetarian. If we went out to a restaurant, and we went out a lot with them, usually to a favorite Italian restaurant, Arlen would order for Bob. He sometimes had a preference for something, but she would always order the vegetarian version. It could be that with meat eaters they ate meat, but Arlen did like being a vegetarian. I don’t think Bob cared what he ate so much. Christina one time said that you could give him a cheap hamburger from a greasy diner and he would take a bite and say, “Hmmm. Delicious.”
Another of Marlis Jermutus' paintings.
RAWIllumination.net: Are you better known as an artist in the U.S., or in Germany? Did being known as the "prison artist" help you become well known quickly? (As she describes in her book, Jermutus went to prison in Berlin after being caught up in a drug raid but nonetheless began becoming known as an artist).
MARLIS: The newspaper articles about me getting special permission from the prison authorities to attend a gallery opening of my work certainly helped to bring my name to a wider audience than abstract artists usually get, but really the effect of that good publicity was more important to me as evidence to later show the judge reviewing my prison record. I wanted to show that I could be "successfully integrated back into society," and I think that did help later with the judge’s decision.
While living in Germany and Ireland I had many exhibitions with a lot of press coverage, but being known means being there, and I’ve been living in America for almost two decades now. Since 2000, I’ve had one or two exhibitions every year, and have been fortunate to have buyers for my art. The Siskiyou Arts Museum in Dunsmuir, California held a retrospective of my art in 2014, featuring examples of my art from forty-four years of painting.
Marlis at the Hirschhorn in Washington, D.C.
RAWIllumination.net: Rasa says you are "addicted to museums" and will drive for hours to attend one. What are your favorite art museums in the U.S., and who are your favorite artists, European or American? (My favorite art museum is the Hirschhorn, a modern art museum in Washington, D.C.) MARLIS: In Europe, the museums I most liked to visit were nearby, like the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Escher Museum in Den Hague, the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Hamburg, the National Staats Galerie in Berlin and the Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart, also in Berlin. In America, I’ve gone many times to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Hirschhorn and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. In California, I am a member of Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, and I visit there often.
Of the artists I like, German artists Boyce, Richter, and Kiefer. In America, I like all the avant garde, and especially Agnes Martin, Jackson Pollack and Pat Steir. I love the work of many other artists, mostly abstract, and of course, I like my own art. I love the feedback, at an exhibition opening, when a viewer connects to a painting. What they see in an abstract painting means something to them. On some level I have inspired an emotional or rational response. I don’t care which. I just enjoy that they enjoy connecting to the art.
RAWIllumination.net: What advice would you offer to people thinking of moving to California? (In From Now to Now, she describes deciding to move to California someday under the influence of the writings of Timothy Leary). MARLIS: If people want to come to California they should be comfortable with new ideas. You may not like all the ideas, but California is fast in changing, so maybe you just wait a while and a newer idea will come along. There are a lot of opportunities for widening your consciousness here, aside from new ideas and experiences in art and science. California is beautiful, and sitting alone in such majestic, even bombastic, nature can give you the space and perspective to explore the experience of who you are separate from all the noise both inside and outside your head.
From Now to Now, an autobiography and a spiritual memoir, depicts Marlis coming to be more aware after years of spiritual seeking of what she refers to as her Higher Self. Marlis is a member of the band Starseed (the other members are Rasa and her husband Bastian Jermutus) and you may have seen Rasa's photos of her interacting with deer near Mount Shasta California.
Marlis is born in Germany during World War II. Her father is sent to the Russian Front and never returns. As she grows up, Marlis experiences the food shortages and hardship that Germans went through after World War II. (Her book acknowledges that many people do not want to hear about German suffering as a result of the war; it is undeniable, however, that many people in Germany too young to share any blame for Hitler's rise suffered during the war or after it.) Marlis suffered from sexual abuse when she was young. She was trained in what Americans would call "home economics," i.e. to be a housewife. She eventually discovered Eastern philosophies and a wide variety of music and art, despite her working class background, and became a successful abstract artist. She married four times. The apparently least conventional fourth marriage, to Bastian, 16 years younger than she,hasnow lasted for decades. She is Rasa's best friend.
Marlis Jermutus with Timothy Leary in Hamburg, Germany, in 1982
One section of the book discusses how the home of Marlis and her third husband became a kind of salon for offbeat intellectuals and rock stars. On pages 159 and 160, Marlis talks about learning about Timothy Leary's eight circuit theory of consciousness after Exo-Psychology was translated into German. Marlis also met Leary and gave him one of her paintings, and decided to someday move to California because she was excited about Leary's ideas.
Marlis' tone is very candid and direct, but also shows compassion for other people and for herself, a tone she calls "loving honesty." One of my favorite passages was on pages 128-129, when she confronts a friend who is a heroin addict:
Suddenly I said to him, "Okay, so you do heroin because of your parents. You think that because you do heroin the whole parents issue goes away? No, it becomes worse because you never do anything, you are simply escaping, but only half. Every time you fix, you always come down again, and then need to escape again. In time, your whole body becomes more and more ill, and your relationships with people are still there, only they too become worse and worse. You can't change your parents, but you can change yourself, if you want to." I paused for a short moment. "So, if you want to change, then change. If you want to keep shooting heroin, then why suffer for so long, and make others around you suffer? Why not just sit down and keep shooting and shooting, and soon you are not just half way escaping, but you are completely gone! Dead." As an absurd afterthought I added, "What do you do then?" I knew he was sensitive and thoughtful, and clever enough to listen to my harsh logic. My words were harsh, but while sitting with me in our living room, he was, in a way, suspended in a very accepting and loving field. I didn't tell him he was a bad person for doing heroin. I was simply honest with the guy. He loved that loving honesty. The next time I saw him some days later, he already looked different. His eyes were more aware, and he seemed more confident. He told me that he simply stopped. He said he couldn't get my words out of his head."
Marlis Jermutus, hanging out with one of her wild deer buddies. From Rasa's website, www.pelorian.com.
The last few chapters of the book describes how Marlis developed a sense of peace after settling in northern California. A wide variety of gurus and teachers who influenced her appear in the book. I never heard of most of them (except for Rajneesh, the Mercedes Benz guru, who RAW mentioned) but all of them seem to have Wikipedia bios.
The most colorful of the spiritual guides Marlis mentions is Jasmuheen, nee Ellen Greve, an Australian woman who claims to live only from light and breath, without food. Marlis writes, "She became the world's most famous supporter of the philosophy called Breatharianism. I resonated deeply with their fundamental idea." Marlis liked the idea of living only on light and she turning her kitchen into a sauna after she didn't need to cook anymore, and she also liked the idea of saving money. "This would have been a perfect time to live on light, saving so much money and time on getting, preparing, eating and digesting all that food every day, but living on light is both easier and more difficult than you think." In the end, Marlis decided to keep eating food. This seems to me to be the correct call.
I can recommend her fascinating memoir to sombunall of you who read this blog and will likely be interested in many of the same topics she writes about.
