LANDLINE by Jay Babcock

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[Landline] Come on you flower punks
jaybabcock.substack.com

[Landline] Come on you flower punks

New ancient findings, now with footnotes

Jay Babcock
Mar 17
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Share this post
[Landline] Come on you flower punks
jaybabcock.substack.com

“LANDLINE”

No. 0030

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16, 2022

Music recommendations/wishlist: bandcamp


Hello everybody,

Hope you all are hanging in there, somehow. I think very few of us are sleeping very well right now.1

The last three 2 Landlines have been special editions. Let’s return to our traditional Landline format — now equipped with footnotes — and see what happens…

1. ABOUT THAT SUBJECT HEADER

“Flower punk” is a choice bit of redneck insult/spot-on descriptor for the friendly neighborhood hippie stars (pictured below) of Crashpad #1 by Gary Panter, the legendary-in-his-own-time creator of “Jimbo” and set designer of the original Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. Crashpad, Sir Panter’s charmingly gnarly homage to ‘60s/’70s underground comix, LSD trip visions, searcher lifestyles and counterculture ideals, is now available as a proper floppy $5.99 comic book from those enhanced nuts at Fantagraphics (order direct here). Purchase three to five copies, as they will likely be “liberated” from you by friends. Heads who feel compelled to stay (crash?) longer in the Crashpad world should get it together and acquire the 11x14-inch, 80-page Crashpad hardcover edition for $39.99. Happy trails to you.

2. WHAT ELSE THAT LIBRARY CARD GETS YOU

I’ve received lots of positive feedback on the Up With Libraries bit3 in a recent Landline, including confirmation from librarians across the land that patrons’ book recommendations are generally automatically purchased as a matter of policy (within certain sensible limits, of course). So far this month I’ve made five recommendations online to the local library; four of them were approved within hours (the fifth wasn’t yet available from an American publisher). This system works. There’s a good chance your local public library system offers you this easy opportunity to help them improve their collections…look into it!

Also! In that email I neglected to mention another incredible free digital resource that many public library systems are now offering to patrons is a service called hoopladigital which allows you to stream and/or download books, comics, video, music, audiobooks and so on. The catalog is surprisingly deep. Here’s a few of the items I’ve borrowed recently:

Ridiculous, eh? I feel like I’ve only just scratched the surface of this service; please let me know what else is on hoopla that you think Landline folk would be interested in.

One more thing re: library power. The Pima County Public Library system (which includes the city of Tucson, where I live) operates a seed library that offers seeds — for native and desert-adapted vegetables, flowers, herbs and more — to all patrons, free of charge. From the website:

The Seed Library is a partnership of the community and the library, with special help from Native Seeds/SEARCH, the Community Food Bank, and UA Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners. Patrons can request and take home heirloom and open pollinated seeds to grow in their own gardens, as well as obtain information and take classes about gardening and food preservation.

You can get up to ten seed packets per month. Unbelievable. Come on you flower punks! I’ve got some sunflowers going right now out back…

Good for morale during the cold winter months. Also, they could come in handy given the current geopolitical situation, ay yi yikes:

Sunflowers are used to assist in clean up after a nuclear disaster. They are hyperaccumulators, capable of absorbing toxic heavy metals from the ground and have been planted at both Chernobyl and Fukushima in the attempt to aid in soil restoration.4

3. SHIMMERING GIRL

One-man trance band Tuluum Shimmering has released a 26-minute instrumental interpretation of Cinnamon Girl as part of dude’s ongoing cover series.5 Like everything this guy releases — all of it at name-your-price! — it is most excellent for as a contemplation aid. Priceless, precious stuff.

4. WILLIE NELSON’S TRIBUTE TO HIS SISTER BOBBIE

Pianist Bobbie Nelson died on March 10 at age 91 in Austin, Texas6. Her little brother Willie Nelson posted a tribute on his website last Friday night. I started tearing up when I saw the photograph of the two of them; I was weeping openly by the third paragraph. I know I’m not alone in being so moved. Read this fond, detailed remembrance of shared times that doubles as a wise meditation on the bonds of childhood, poverty, labor, craft, food, religion, family and love here: https://willienelson.com/blogs/news/dear-sister

5. LANDLINE DOESN’T WRITE ITSELF (YET)

This email newsletter is free to read but it is sustained by paid subscriptions ($5/month cheap, $40/year cheaper). If receiving Landline regularly is of value to you, and you can afford it, please consider subscribing. (Paying subscribers get extra stuff too.) Here are buttons to click on to do the thing:

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In bloom,

Jay Babcock

Tucson, Arizona

1

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/world/europe/ukraine-russia-nuclear-war.html

https://nukemap.org/nukemap/

2
LANDLINE by Jay Babcock
[Landline] In the Fade
The stars and the moon Aren't where they're supposed to be — “One Way Street” Mark Lanegan has died at his home in Ireland. He was 57. I’m in shock. I knew he’d got very bad Covid in 2020. But it seemed as if he had made it through, even writing (and publishing…
Read more
4 months ago · 38 likes · 5 comments · Jay Babcock
LANDLINE by Jay Babcock
[Landline] In love with the love that loves
When a musician who’s been important to me dies, I almost immediately bury myself in their music. Like most fans, I’m sure. Revisiting favorite songs, albums, music videos, live performances, TV interviews, and so on, to excess. It always brings me to weeping, and for whatever reason, that cathartic tear-letting usually helps me to at least start to acc…
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3 months ago · 4 likes · 3 comments · Jay Babcock
LANDLINE by Jay Babcock
[Landline] The Diggers' Diggers
In 2010, I drove to northern California from my home in Joshua Tree to interview as many living members of famed 1960s street radicals San Francisco Diggers as would talk to me. Each conversation over those few days felt like a breakthrough—a motherlode of historica…
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3 months ago · 11 likes · 1 comment · Jay Babcock
3
LANDLINE by Jay Babcock
[Landline] All you need is your library card
“LANDLINE” — AN EMAIL BULLETIN BY JAY BABCOCK No. 0027 FRIDAY, FEB. 11, 2022 Hello there! 1. A SUDDEN MOVE A culture enthusiast friend had to completely vacate their premises in a single weekday recently. When you’re spending hours hurriedly boxing what’s basically an institution-level archive of recorded music accumulated over the last 30-plus years—a collection that’s in jeopardy of being seized and trashed—you get a chance to contemplate how special it is to be in the presence of a lovingly curated batch of good stuff, and how easily, and quickly, it can all be lost. Archives—libraries—of physical stuff are precious, even in our hybrid digital-analog age. They have a scent. They fill gaps; they complete stories; they enrich. So we must bless the enthusiast—the keeper of the cultural flame—and assist them in their hours of need. Especially the ones who’ve made a practice of sharing what they’ve found—who aren’t mere hoarders or collectors…
Read more
4 months ago · 4 likes · 3 comments · Jay Babcock

4

https://news.virginia.edu/content/uva-undergraduate-researcher-studies-sunflowers-power-clean-soil

5

Other entries in the cover series so far include Aftaglid (Steve Hillage), Brown Rice (Don Cherry), Black Satin (Miles Davis), Marquee Moon (Television), Translucent Carriages (Pearls Before Swine), a 50-minute jam of Sister Ray (Velvet Underground) and China Cat Sunflower (Grateful Dead), and more. All are recommended.

6

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/12/arts/music/bobbie-nelson-dead.html

1
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author
Jay Babcock
Mar 17Author

UPDATE re NUKEMAP:

"Because of the war in Ukraine and Putin’s mention of nuclear weapons, NUKEMAP has been for the last week experiencing abnormally high loads of traffic. This has meant that a lot of people are having trouble accessing the website. I’ve been doing what I can to help on the back end of it, but there are limits to my resources and knowledge about such things. In the meantime, I have created a temporary, authorized mirror of the website that you can try to use":

https://nukemap.org/nukemap/

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