Pranks, Punk and Industrial Culture from V. Vale

Our world is already way more bizarre than our ancestors could have ever imagined. But it may not be bizarre enough. "Bizarre enough for what?" – you might ask. Bizarre enough to subvert the heterosexist matrix that is underlying our world and that we should hack and overcome for some quite pressing reasons within the next century.
Don't you think, replicants?

Featuring essays and projects by Eleanor Saitta, R.U. Sirius, Jack Sargeant, Annalee Newitz, Katrien Jacobs, Christian Heller, Bonni Rambatan, Kyle Machulis, Saul Albert, Tatiana Bazzichelli, Johannes Grenzfurthner, Violet Blue, Carol Queen, Douglas Spink, Rose White, Rainer Prohaska, Thomas Ballhausen, Uncle Abdul, Elle Mehrmand (Echolalia Azalee), Micha Cárdenas (Azdel Slade), Ani Niow, Monika Kribusz, Noah Weinstein, Randy Sarafan, Allen Stein, Kim De Vries, Pepper Mint, Robert Glashuettner, Jonathon Keats.

Henry Rollins, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jello Biafra and Billy Childish discuss in depth the state of western culture today, including firsthand accounts of their own experiences as leading figures in social movements. Subjects discussed include: the Internet and social change; the necessity for everybody to paint (!); mind control, marketing, branding and consumerism; Beat history and the importance of inexpensive publishing--City Lights was the FIRST paperback-only bookstore in America; corporate chain stores and Amazon's impact on independent freedom of expression; Punk Rock history and the rise of Do-It-Yourself (D-I-Y) culture production; fame and its downside; sex, relationships and their travails; "originality" as fetish; travel advice . . . and much more discussion of issues relevant to every creative artist and thinker. Excerpts of interviews of: Henry Rollins Lawrence Ferlinghetti Billy Childish Jello Biafra Who is Henry Rollins? Lawrence Ferlinghetti? Billy Childish? Jello Biafra?

Review:

"How do Rollins, Biafra, Ferlinghetti and Childish remain independent in a corporate world?" That's the question posed on the back cover or RE/Search's Real Conversations #1. This question of "independence" from corporate entanglement within the world of media and the arts interests me, and it should interest you too.

A couple of weeks ago on the Bad Subjects editors' list we had had a similar discussion related to profit-minded self-promotion vs. a more politically-minded ideological promotion (I am certainly reducing each of the arguments). Anyway, the point being -- in a world dominated by commodities and their accompanying desires, does one get out a message critical of the largely corporate communications infrastructure necessary to get out a message? I don't know if Real Conversations' interviews provide either an answer to my and V. Vale's question.

In order to find out what it means to strike the right balance, Vale interviews a logical cast of countercultural entrepreneurs and artists: singer/actor/publisher Henry Rollins; former Dead Kennedys frontman, political pundit and Alternative Tentacles Records proprietor, Jello Biafra; City Lights Books publisher and Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti; and the perennially youthful garage punk intellectual Billy Childish. The topic of self-promotion and ideological work is one of the more compelling segments of the Rollins interview. For instance, Rollins admits that his company and web site (2.13.61.com) promotes only his material; Rollins is pretty straightforward that it's a matter of what the market will bear. Is this shameless self-promotion? Or just getting out the message?

Vale illustrates how Rollins uses both. Rollins recognizes that American culture, especially entertainment, is all about being pleasured. The consumer expects it and the artist, if s/he hopes to have a lasting career, must provide it. Rollins does voice-overs for Merrill Lynch, GMC Truck and so on. He uses corporate gigs for self-promotion and has his own "Think Different" Apple Computers ad. Depending on one's attitudes toward corporate America you could even call him shameless. Rollins does take the money, too; it's not just self-promotion.

However, the former Black Flag singer clearly understands his place in the "system" and the necessity of articulating an alternate vision free of the imperial reach of corporate globalization. Rollins is clear in his distastes for the banal mediocrity of "American" corporate culture; I'll let you read the issue for his insights into MTV and such. Rollins, simply, is not naive about political economy. But he's not adverse to taking advantage of the system either. Indeed, it was almost impossible to avoid Rollins on MTV during the mid-1990s; nor is it unreasonable to expect to see the former Henry Garfield giving spoken word performances in 'politically incorrect' countries such as Israel.

What I found most interesting and least developed was an aside by Ferlinghetti that Vale opted to include. The two had just completed an exchange about the recent corporate troubles at the Bay Area's "progressive" radio station KPFA; Vale sums up the argument: "Well, it's also taking away the autonomy and independence of the local station, whose character is formed by its neighborhood. KPFA sprang out of Berkeley, and Berkeley is a radical hotbed"; Ferlinghetti replies, "It WAS." Then Vale springs a question about Ferlinghetti's travel habits. At that moment, the silence that followed Ferlinghetti's disavowal of Berkeley's radicalness was profound.

I regretted not being able to read Ferlinghetti's analysis of the demise of Berkeley, and presumably, the Bay Area left. I have lived up here for five years and am often amazed at how quickly people admire the liberal nature of this area. So, I may have my own personal investment in this issue. But, with the brave exception of Representative Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) the elected face of the liberal left of Northern California have all rallied, and pretty uncritically, around the domestic and international war against all that is not white and corporate, oops, I mean the War on Terror -- catch it tonight on CNN. Ferlinghetti's pre-September 11th insights on the weakened state of the left would have been useful. Regardless of all that, the interview is pretty good. As is the entire volume... [RE/Search is] an "independently" produced book series that remains interesting after nearly a generation's worth of remarkably influential editions. -- Robert Soza (Bad Subjects)

This book has an excellent introduction about dragon designs and mythology and includes an extensive bibliography for further reading on the subject.

Over 200 illustrations lined and shaded.

A satisfied reader, via Amazon.com: "Dragon Tattoo Designs is a great source book for anyone interested in dragon tattoos, even if you just want to draw them. The designs are such that they will withstand the test of time and aging well. Interesting and informative also. As always the best from Hardy."

This edition was published in 2005 by Hardy Marks Publications. 8 ½ x 11. Hard cover, 96 pages.

Punk Rock's most radical & imaginative interviews, articles and graphics were pioneered in Search & Destroy, edited by V. Vale between 1977 and 1979. Award-winning layout and photography.

9 original issues plus 2 reprints (total: 11 issues) direct from the source, V. Vale! (Support him & order direct!) Search & Destroy, San Francisco, 1977-79. 9 First editions, 2 reprints. Folio. Tabloid format. Folded once as issued. Vale's seminal punk zine. Founded with two $100 grants from Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Vale's former employer at City Lights), Search & Destroy remains the most influential American Punk zine of the late 1970's and an important link between the Beat and the Punk movements. (UPON REQUEST, V. Vale will autograph only (1) issue, but you must request in writing!)

Includes many rare original flash sheets, photographs of full-body work and other material never before seen in publication.

A satisfied reader, via Amazon.com: "Sailor Jerry is a legend--the likes of which is almost impossible to find today. He was both an artistic and technical genius and certainly deserving of the title Tattoo Master. He was also a bit of an old coot.

Sailor Jerry is a lot like a dad. Though you don't necessarily agree with all of his views, he's still an inspiration. I'm apprenticing as a tattoo artist and he sets the standard that I strive for every day. Not just as a good tattoo artist. Not even a great one. But the best. I'm proud to have Sailor Jerry's beautiful illustrations tattooed on my skin. A tribute, so to speak, to the master.

This is a great read regardless of your being tattooed or not. It explains a lot about tattoo history, particularly the development of the shading needle, and the importance of military symbolism in Hawaii. And Sailor Jerry's illustrations are just beyond description. Perfect in every detail.

A very endearing book. Makes you want to talk to your dad about the war and get "Twin Screws" tattooed on your butt cheeks. (Or is that just me?)"

Sailor Jerry Collins started tattooing on State Street in Chicago, Illinois but made his name in Honolulu. This book includes his personal correspondence to D. E. Hardy as well as black and white and color images of tattoo memorabilia from Sailor Jerry's career. This edition was published in 2005 by Hardy Marks Publications. 11 x 8 ½. Soft cover, 166 pages.

Order DIRECT - you personally help RE/Search keep going! HARDBACKS: RE/Search #4/5 Burroughs/Gysin/Throbbing Gristle, #6/7 Industrial Culture Handbook, #11 Pranks, #12 Modern Primitives Hardback.

Artists' work represented in this catalog include Don Ed Hardy, Chris Trevino, Horiyoshi III, and Horitomo.

Published in 2005 by Hardy Marks Publications. 11x 8-1/2. Soft cover Booklet, 35 pages

2009 marks the 20th Anniversary Celebration of MODERN PRIMITIVES – a book which launched “a Revolution”…and introduced the world to Body Piercing. With brand new 2009 interview with Raelyn Gallina, (the "grandmother" of the body modification movement), plus tattoo/piercing community sponsorship pages in the back. Limited Edition Deluxe Hardback on Glossy Art Paper for sharper photography. Replace your old copy and upgrade as well! HB $50, or get the economical paperback for $25

The book includes an introduction by D. E. Hardy, 141 full color illustrations and an in-depth conversation with Michael Malone documenting his history as an artist. Republished in 2007 by Hardy Marks Publications. 8 1/2 x 11. Hard cover, 108 pages.

Incredibly Strange Music surveys the territory of neglected "garage sale" records (mostly from the '50s-'70s), spotlighting genres, artists and one-of-a-kind gems that will delight and surprise. Genres examined include: "easy listening," "exotica," and "celebrity" (massive categories in themselves) as well as more recordings by (singing) cops and (polka playing) priests, undertakers, religious ventriloquists, astronauts, opera-singing parrots, beatnik and hippie records, and gospel by blind teenage girls with bouffant hairdos. Virtually every musical/lyrical boundary in the history of recorded sound has been breached; every sacred cow upturned.

Interviews with:

Reviews:

"Fans of ambient music, acid jazz, ethno-techno, even industrial rock, will find the leap back to these genres and easy one to make."
Rolling Stone

"This book will change your life."
Mirabella

"Alfred Hitchcock's 'Music to Be Murdered By' is just the tip of the iceberg . . . a catalog of the wackiest discs ever made, goes where few audiophiles have ever gone."
Entertainment Weekly

"A must read for those interested in freeing themselves from contemporary artistic self-consciousness."
High Performance

Features work by Derrick Snodgrass, Brian Bruno, and Clifton Carter, plus work from Don Ed himself.

Published in 2005 by Hardy Marks Publications. 8.5 x 11", Saddle-stitched (magazine-style), 64 pages. (Out of print)

ISBN 978-1-889307-23-7, 8x10", 262pp, photos, illustrations, contributors' bios. Ltd edition.

The genre of the "fantastic" is especially well suited to the investigation of the touchy area of sexuality and pornography: actual and assumed developments are frequently depicted positively and approvingly, but just as often with dystopian admonishment. Here the classic, and continuingly valid, themes of modernism represent a clear link between the two aspects: questions of science, research and technologization are of interest, as is the complex surrounding urbanism, artificiality and control (or the loss of control). Depictions of the future, irregardless of the form they take, always address the present as well. Imaginations of the fantastic and the nightmarish give rise to a thematic overlapping of the exotic, the alienating and, of course, the pornographic/sexual as well.

Edited by Johannes Grenzfurthner, Günther Friesinger, Daniel Fabry, Thomas Ballhausen.

Featuring essays and stories by Rudy Rucker, Richard Kadrey, James Tiptree, Jr., Allen Stein, Sharing is Sexy, Jason Brown, Cory Doctorow, Annalee Newitz, Tina Lorenz, Reesa Brown, Karin Harrasser, Isaac Leung, Rose White, Mela Mikes, Viviane, Susan Mernit, Chris Noessel, Kit O'Connell, Jens Ohlig, Bonni Rambatan, Thomas Roche, Bonnie Ruberg, Mae Saslaw, Violet Blue, Nathan Shedroff, 23N!, Benjamin Cowden, Johannes Grenzfurthner, Daniel Fabry.

**First published 20 years ago, "Modern Primitives" is still called "the Bible of the tattooing-piercing underground." Here is a celebratory reprinting, complete with a new introduction by original editor/publisher V. Vale. Also added is a new community section, where current practitioners have been invited to have their cards displayed. "Modern Primitives" was the first book to investigate not only the "how" but also the "why" of body modification practices. It reaches far back into history to multiform cultural traditions to illuminate one of today's most wide-spread youth culture visual signifiers. Heavily illustrated with detailed, contemporary photographs, as well as archival anthropological images and drawings of ancient tattoo traditions, "Modern Primitives" was ground-zero for today''s body-modification trends. "A whole new generation needs to be exposed to this foundational handbook and manifesto for the body modification generation."

which begins,

"I probably never would have become America's leading fire-eater if Flamo the Great hadn't happened to explode that night..." So begins this true story of life with a traveling carnival, peopled by amazing characters (the Human Ostrich, the Human Salamander, Jolly Daisy) who commit outrageous feats of wizardry. This is one of the only authentic narratives revealing the "tricks" (or more often the lack thereof) and skills involved in a sideshow, and is invaluable to those aspiring to this profession. Having cultivated the desire to create real magic since early childhood, Mannix rose to become a top act within a season; here is his inspiring tale. NEW: RARE PHOTOS! This is the first edition to include photos of the actual characters in the book, most of them taken by Mannix himself in the '30s.

As a favor to RE/Search's V. Vale, Daniel P. Mannix autographed 20 copies of this paperback just before his death in 1997, and they may be had for just thirty dollars.

Excerpts:

* Joining the sideshow *


* Flamo up in flames *
* Setting up; Jolly Daisy; the clem
* Fire-eating; buying swords from Rafael
* Krinko the Fakir; the Human Ostrich * Lock-picking & Escapism; Aunt Matty
* Billie& Bud; Cal & Daisy

Table of Contents

Reviews:

"A grotesque gallery of portraits of amazing human beings and a fascinating behind-the-scenes revelation of carnival life."
New York Times

"A sympathetic and funny account of life with a carnival by a young man who impulsively joined up with one, mastered the elements of fire-eating and sword-swallowing in record time, and then rose, Horatio Alger-like, into the rarefied company of neon-bulb swallowers . . . it's engrossing."
The New Yorker

"The beautiful world of outcasts and freaks banding together to form an alternate society is accurately and compassionately portrayed by an insider."
Circus Arts

"Having trouped with a carnival for a year, I can vouch for the authentic background and color. I thought it was absolutely fascinating; I couldn't put it down until I finished it."
Gypsy Rose Lee

Done spontaneously with no preparatory drawing, it marked the Millennium, a Dragon year in the Asian zodiac. This is a stunning art book capturing the magnificence of the original painting. A must-have for the Ed Hardy section of your bookshelf!

Published in 2008 by Hardy Marks Publications. 11 ¼ by 15. 110 pages printed on heavy cardstock in full color.

PUNK '77 covers the San Francisco Punk Rock scene from its beginnings in January 1977, to the Sex Pistols concert at Winterland a year later... Limited Edition from an independent publisher. Learn how a scene was created! What happened in the San Francisco Punk Scene occurred simultaneously in cities all over the U.S. and in Europe. The creation of culture by youth is an important phenomenon, and one which never loses relevance. PUNK '77 began as a Xeroxed booklet of photographs taken in and around the Mabuhay and elsewhere on the Punk Rock scene. Then James began adding text in the form of interviews with the people who were there and made it happen. James's photos were published in New York Rocker, Search & Destroy and Slash, among others. His posters for the band Crime have become classics and highly prized collectors' items.

Excerpts:

If you were in a band in 1975 or 1976, you had to be in what the 'local scene' was at that time or there was nowhere to play. That's why we started the Mabuhay. There was nowhere for anybody to go. We had to create our own place to hang out, so that's what we did. Before Mabuhay I never hung out in clubs because there wasn't a club scene. With the Mabuhay, you just went there. You didn't care who was playing because you went to hang out.--Jeff Rafael, Nuns

There was no music scene going on in San Francisco when me and my friend, Steve, moved out here from St. Louis. We moved into this little apartment by Cala Foods on Hyde Street. We couldn't play in the apartment because of complaints, so we would go down to Polk St. and play for tips. That's where I met [Michael] Kowalsky [U.X.A.] and one of the guys from Crime, and other people who later became part of the Mabuhay scene.-- Jimmy Wilsey, Avengers

In the late Seventies before Punk, it was easier for record companies to put out Donna Summer-type canned music, disco, "Love to Love You, Baby" kind of stuff. Club owners felt that as long as they could get people to pay a door charge to dance, then why should they have to deal with the expense of presenting live entertainment?

The places that had live bands were booking hippie bands, more or less. When the Mabuhay opened its doors to people like the Ramones, Damned, Blondie and Wayne County, people who started out in New York, it was exciting for everybody. There had to be more than just a handful of people who didn't want to go to discos. They had no other place to go, so this was an opportunity. It help prove to the city that not everything had to be canned music. Bands like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols came through with a kind of rebellious sound. It was something new. It wasn't the same old Savoy Brown, Sixties kind of bar band. It was a relief not having to hear, 'Love to Love You Baby'.--Ginger Coyote

Reviews:

When the part of the past you feel you know turns out to be of general interest and, better yet, you've held on to a mass of striking photographs, you sit down and, make a book. James Stark was a photographer, poster-maker, and scene-person the year a certain club on San Francisco's tiny strip of night life began offering Punk shows one night a week.

The photos themselves, a generous 155 of them, are richly satisfying. They're the kind of photos one wants to see, straight forwardly showing dramatic personages doing what they do, whether it's singing, playing, displaying their costumes, manifesting the effects of various substances, or just trying to talk their way in the door. Stark understood their theatrical beauty. And he knew when to press the shutter.

But the artistic ferment of the late '70s shows us that things of beauty, power, and inspiration can arise from within the walls of a couple of crummy clubs. Punk '77 is a testament to a grand moment occurring in an eyeblink of history.--Kit Drumm, Puncture; Issue 25, October 1992

There are good insights into the origins of SF Punk, the gathering together of misfits who were dissatisfied with the degenerating of 60/70's music culture, who gravitated together under a yet-as-unnamed umbrella to be self-supporting and stimulated.

I would recommend this book not only for old-timers looking for nostalgia, but especially to young Punks who have no idea how this all got off the ground, who take today's Punk for granted, to see how precarious it was at birth, what a fluke it was, and to perhaps be able to get a fresh perspective on today's scene needs, especially vis-a-vis major label intervention. The value in such a history lies not in bemoaning bygone days but in learning from that to improve things now.--(TY), MAXIMUMROCKNROLL; Issue 114, November 1992

Although I didn't experience anything in this book firsthand, it brought back a lot of memories, since Frisco's earliest punk scene was a lot like New York's. It might surprise a lot of today's hardcore youth to learn that the original Punkers weren't teenagers but bohemian artists and musicians in their mid-20's and early 30's.

Anyway, Punk 77 is not another coffee-table mainstream media ripoff but an engrossing chronicle of what went down, from somebody who was really there. Sure it's history, but if you're into Punk Rock, it's part of YOUR history, And that alone is a good reason to check it out.--Jim T., Jersey Beat; Issue 47, Fall 1992

I really like this book; you know, the nostalgic look back... Ah, the memories, and that is what makes me laugh. Anyway, the lunacy and retardedness of those days are brought back to life in a series of short stories and photos of the people that made it happen. Well done.--Al, Flipside; Issue 81, November 1992

X-large Book. The second volume of classic Sailor Jerry flash. Norman "Sailor Jerry" Collins was born in California in 1911 and died in Hawaii in 1973. Working his entire career in seafaring communities, Sailor Jerry was heir to a finely developed sailor's craft and the flash he painted was his key to success. The majority of his career was spent in Honolulu's Chinatown, the primary honkytonk of seafaring men, where he occupied a variety of tiny storefront shops. The flash in this book is entirely from the collection of Michael Malone, who continued Sailor Jerry's tradition in the same shop locale from 1973 until 2001.

Published in 2004 by Hardy Marks Publications. 15 x 11. Paperback, 60 pages.

Originally published in 1990 by Hardy Marks Publications. 8 1/2 x 11. Hard cover, 80 pages. This book was reprinted by Hardy Marks Publications in 2007.

X-large Book. The first volume of classic Sailor Jerry flash. Between 1940 and 1973, Norman 'Sailor Jerry' Collins became known as one of the greatest practitioners of classic American tattooing. Sailor Jerry tattooed for many years, mostly in his small shop in Honolulu, Hawaii until his death in 1973. His masterful designs, featuring ships and beautiful girls, eagles, hearts, roses, and other now-familiar motifs, were widely imitated but rarely matched for boldness, elegance, and clarity. This generously-sized book is indispensable for any tattoo shop, tattoo fan, or person interested in a great American art tradition. Out of print for many years, this is the ultimate resource of Sailor Jerry flash.

A satisfied reader, via Amazon.com: "This book is unbelievable! I love it! It is great for the aspiring tattoo artist or anyone else interested in tattoo art. Each page contains full page pictures of Sailor Jerry's flash art. I highly recommend this book. It is definitely worth the money."

From the Mike Malone collection of Sailor Jerry flash, this book contains 60 pages of color flash printed full size. This edition was published in 2007 by Hardy Marks Publications. 15 x11. Paperback, 60 pages.

"Here resistance is shown to be ultimately dispiriting unless we can also HAVE FUN. The last remaining quasi-legal territory of imaginative, humorous, creative, dissenting expression is signposted by pranks—any humorous deeds, propaganda, sound bites, visual bites, performances and creative projects which pierce the veil of illusion and tell 'the truth.'" "Imagine we are fish swimming in the sea, and no matter where we look we see advertising, branding, marketing, and corporate/governmental coercive messages everywhere.What we once thought of as news, knowledge, politics, culture, art, music, and wisdom has all become one with this ocean of marketing and mind-control. What to do? How to keep one?s sanity, sense of freedom, and unique identity? What can we do to resist? 'The society that has abolished adventure makes its own abolishing the only adventure.' [Situationist slogan] The last remaining quasi-legal territory of imaginative, humorous, creative, dissenting expression is signposted by pranks.

What are pranks? For us, pranks are any humorous deeds, propaganda, sound bites, visual bites, performances and creative projects which pierce the veil of illusion and tell 'the truth.' Pranks unseriously challenge accepted reality and rigid behavioral codes and speech. Pranks deftly undermine phony facades and hypocrisy. Pranks lampoon sanctimoniousness, self-glorification, self-mythologizing and self-aggrandizement. Pranks force the laziest muscle in the body, the imagination, to be exercised, stretched, and thus transcend its former self. The imagination is what creates the future; that which will be.

Why prank our world? When we look around and can see nothing but corporate propaganda as far as the eye can see, our only 'communication freedom' lies in creatively talking back, any way we can.Who gave corporations the monolithic ownership of our total environment to force their one-way coercive messages upon us? So if we replace their messages and symbols with our own, we must wear big hats and sunglasses and mufflers to hide our chins, so their ubiquitous surveillance cameras can be pranked. (Or, preserve our Internet anonymity behind layers of evasive tactics.) Imagine if everybody became artists and pranksters and poets and freely changed any noxious corporate message in sight? (It is too much to hope for our so-called legislators to come up with a bill outlawing all corporate advertising in public space, even though the majority of voters might endorse this.)

If we are not slaves and robots, it also behooves us to systematically start thinking about reclaiming all the freedoms that have, inch by inch, been taken from us over the years to serve the interests of corporations and wealthy landholders. Freedom is never willingly given; it must be taken. And Americans have definitely become less free since 1776, hundreds of thousands of laws later. In fact, how have so many humans worldwide been bamboozled into being content with their paltry, miserable lot in life?

Pranks may be our last remaining freedom of expression in post-Constitutional, post-Bill of Rights, post G.W. Bush America. This book is a mere introduction to the enormous body of unheralded, uncelebrated, undocumented pranking that has occurred just within the past hundred years. -- end of Introduction excerpt

Interviews with:

* Jihad Jerry
* Al Jourgensen & Jello Biafra
* The Yes Men
* Suicide Club
* Reverend Al
* Julia Solis
* Billboard Liberation Front
* Marc Powell
* Frank Discussion
* Paul Krassner
* Margaret Cho
* John Waters
* Ron English
* Joey Skaggs
* Survival Research Laboratories
* monochrom
* Lydia Lunch
* Cacophony Society (S.F.)
Table of Contents

Reviews:

Almost 20 years ago, the small, quirky Bay Area post-punk publishing house Re/Search released what would improbably become one of the most influential art texts of the past quarter-century. Pranks! was 240 pages of melon-twisting interviews with iconoclastic trickster-artists like Survival Research Laboratory's robot-destruction guru Mark Pauline, archetypal media prankster Joey "Cathouse for Dogs" Skaggs, obsessive Outsider artist and explosive provocateur Joe Coleman, and Canoga Park's own Jeffrey Vallance with a too-short precis of his early, pre--"Blinky the Friendly Hen" oeuvre.

Pranks! included anecdotes from (eek!) Earth First! ecoterrorists, proto-Borat comic interviewer Mal Sharpe and the Church of the SubGenius' Paul Mavrides, plus bite-size essays on everything from pranks in literature to guerrilla tactics of the Viet Cong. The book was a bit of a shambles. Some interviews were barely relevant while a lot of obvious subjects -- Andy Kaufman, for example; or Chris Burden -- were skipped over; but that, as opposed to some dry academic treatment, just added to its feeling of cultural immediacy. Those with their hearts and minds set on tenure might cite Slavoj Zizek's The Sublime Object of Ideology or Dave Hickey's The Invisible Dragon, but over the past two decades the single most common volume in the libraries of young practicing artists interested in actually exploring the boundaries of creativity has been Pranks!

Many of those artists show up in the long-awaited just-released sequel, Pranks 2 (Re/Search, 196 pages, $15) -- The Yes Men, with their inspired absurd-extremist versions of global business agendas, for example, and monochrom, who jiggered the 2002 Sao Paulo Biennial with a completely fictional avant-garde Austrian artist named Georg Paul Thomann. Editor V. Vale checks in with several of Volume 1's luminaries -- Realist editor Paul Krassner, the always incisive Jello Biafra and, of course, Joey Skaggs (though to learn about his latest "legitimate" enterprise, the Universal Bullshit Detector Watch (TM), you'll have to visit www.bswatch.com) -- and rounds up a decent array of new faces from the Billboard Liberation Front to hacker chef Marc Powell to urban explorer Julia Solis.

Solis, the author of New York Underground: The Anatomy of a City, is the culminating interview in the series that forms the core of Pranks 2-- charting the adventures of the '70s-'80s Bay Area secret society the Suicide Club, its much more public spinoff the Cacophony Society and subsequent activities of the principals thereof. Under the surface of the familiar (and eventually tiresome) 100-drunken-Santas-in-a-mall spectacles lies a compelling saga of deep and subtly disruptive investigations on the borders of reality, from the infiltration of cults to the exploration of abandoned mental hospitals and crumbling industrial infrastructures.

With the same sense of journalistic immediacy, Pranks 2 follows its predecessors' model in patchwork coverage -- there are no essays here about flash mobs, A(R)(TM)-Ark or the Museum of Jurassic Technology, and still no Andy Kaufman. There is, however, an expanded sense of urgency -- even desperation -- to the interviews: How do you disrupt the monolithic spectacle in a context where the visual and rhetorical vocabulary of anticonsumerist culture jamming has been completely subsumed by the advertising industry, where cranks are yanked, asses jacked and celebrities punk'd in the comfort of your home theater every day through the good graces of Viacom?

And as Biafra and several other commentators observe, the past two presidential elections and the war in Iraq are hard to top for mischievous sleight of hand. But the bottom line remains that a good prank doesn't just entertain, it interrupts mass slumber and invites individuals to think critically for themselves. While it could never be the revelation the first volume was, Pranks 2 could easily be an equal inspiration for the next generation of tricksters -- whose work will undoubtedly be featured in Volume 3.

LA Weekly

The original 1988 Pranks! was a foot-loose, freewheeling, and freethinking tribute - and a vital underground history of pranks, tricks, and acts of mischievous subversion. One of RE/Search's more popular (and groundbreaking) DIY encyclopedias of fringe culture, it laid out the case for pranks as an art form, compiling stories from the likes of '60s survivor Timothy Leary, punk pachyderm Henry Rollins, post-punk performer Karen Finley, and activist group Earth First! In the process, it planted the seeds of monkey-wrenching good times in yet another generation of impressionable boundary stompers and button pushers.

In this category are loose, entertaining histories of the San Francisco Suicide Club, which pied folks like Nixon hired gun Charles Colson and took over mortuaries for vampire games; Suicide spin-off the Cacophony Society and its outta-hand Santa invasions; and the Billboard Liberation Front's ad campaign rewrite jobs. These tall, brave, and goofy tales - along with an effort to reach out to hacker-pranksters like Marc Powell - give Pranks 2 the oomph and heft that... vaults it aloft (like a flying clown), above the morass of phoned-in sequels. (Kimberly Chun)

San Francisco Bay Guardian

If the world seems one big con, from WMD to transit fare increases, then a prank might be the most appropriate response. Considering the distance most people feel from control over their daily lives, it might be one's only recourse. That was the thesis RE/Search Books, the underground's Interview magazine, put forth when it published Pranks! in 1987. Drawing its subjects from the worlds of activism, music and art, Pranks mapped a stance of challenging social relations and reactions. From tales of Yippies levitating the Pentagon to artists creating fake businesses or turning Telly Savalas billboards into S/M tableaux, it showed that free-form play was a common and secret history not owned by any one discipline. And, yes, with motivations more complex than Punk'd.

With the publication of Pranks! 2 (RE/Search, 212 pages, $19.95) almost 20 years later, not only has the generation that memorized the first book come of age (my own dog-eared copy inspired more than a few acts of youthful, enigmatic vandalism -- belated apologies to the city of Windsor), but the stakes for misbehaviour have been raised. As you can now be arrested for photographing a building, gluing its doors shut suddenly carries a sexy risk.

Strangely absent from the first volume -- considering RE/Search's San Francisco address -- was a history of that city's Suicide Club in the 1970s. Amply documented here, the Suicide Club was a secret collective of urban explorers, sewer spelunkers and exhibitionists whose members would go on to spawn both the Billboard Liberation Front and the better known Cacophony Society. An inspiration for Fight Club (Chuck Palahniuk was an early member), the Cacophony Society continue to commit nonsensical attacks such as "Drunk Doctors" (members get wasted and wreak havoc while wearing scrubs at bars near hospitals), and Santa and clown mobs. Think what you want about clowns, but you probably haven't lived until you've heard a cop command, as one did to Cacophony member Jarico Reesce, "Put the balloon animals down!"

Art makes up the final section of Pranks! 2, with the funniest stunt courtesy of Georg Paul Thomann. A member of the Viennese Actionists and peripherally involved in early punk, Thomann is a complete fabrication. He was invented as a project for the Sao Paulo Biennale by the Austrian art collective Monochrom. As they say in their interview, "It's not the first time a fake artist was invented but it's the first time a fake artist represented a whole country at a giant art fair." Take that R. Mutt.

Monochrom spent the entire event dodging the press and curators who wanted to meet Thomann, deflecting by claiming, "He's just sitting in his hotel room. We're rather happy he doesn't show because he's quite an asshole." Soon after, curators were claiming to have known the reclusive artist for years. It was a successful prank because social form and pretense were illuminated with a giddy light and for one moment the playing field was levelled. Not with an explosive-laden van, but by inspiring a new perspective.

As hacker Marc Powell explains to editor V. Vale, "Hackers look at intellectual property like any social metaphor: as something to be hacked. Not destroyed, but unravelled." If Pranks! 2 has a singular mission, it's breaking through everyday reality's increasingly hard shell.

Eye Weekly -- Brian Joseph Davis

Not just for kids anymore, pranks are the focus of this weekend's Re/Search Books "Pranksfest L.A.," celebrating the publication of Pranks 2, the hotly anticipated sequel to 1988's Pranks. Re/Search publisher V. Vale promises rare video clips and audiovisual presentations of actual stunts, and will be moderating a panel with local maniacs Rev. Al Ridenour, Feederz founder Drank Discussion, and Jerry Casale of Devo (operating lately under the nom de guerre "Jihad Jerry"). Featured in Pranks 2 are monkey-wrenchers The Yes Men -- whose website, gwbush.com inspired the President to say, "There should be limits to freedom" -- and billboard liberator Ron English, who parodied Apple's "Think Different" advertising campaign. Reverend Al's latest project, "The Art of Bleeding," a cabaret act that comes on like Benny Hill's Grand Guignol, presents talking apes, robots, and legions of nurses prancing around in their scanties. Yes, protest, riot and vote to your heart's content, but these are perfunctory things. The prank represents an escape from the modern trinity of failure, servitude, and prostitution. Because giving a skinned sheep's head to Betty Ford, as ur-prankster Boyd Rice once did, doesn't make the wheels of authority turn so much as it shuts off the machine entirely, if only for a little while.

LAWEEKLY -- David Cotner

...San Francisco's RE/Search Publications is back with Pranks 2, a new volume of anti-corporate and anti-stupidity shenanigans meant to teach a little and laugh a lot between the lines of social protest. Two rockers find their way inside: Entertaining malcontent and spoken-word sage Jello Biafra hacks off about hacking scenarios, and Ministry's Al Jourgensen shares tales of subversive resistance within his major-record-label deal. Other political artists turning everything sideways include the Yes Men, John Waters, painter Ron English, comedian Margaret Cho, master satirist Paul Krassner, and those brilliant modifiers of the advertising landscape, the Billboard Liberation Front. Highly recommended, this is smart stuff for those witty enough to throw ideas instead of bomb

John M. James -- Positively Yeah Yeah Yeah

Some people think a good prank is pissing in a friend's Coke. But V. Vale takes them to a higher level: In his book Pranks 2, he describes them as 'humorous deeds, propaganda, sound bites, performances, and creative projects which pierce the veil of illusion' and 'unseriously challenge accepted reality and rigid behavioral codes and speech.' Vale follows that explanation with a rant against corporations, labeling pranks one of the last freedoms of expression. Unloading in a Coke shows a lack of spirit ? unless your friend is a congressman.

As the founder of RE/Search Publications, Vale has brought underground icons and hell of a lot of J.G. Ballard to the mainstream (but only through independent bookstores). He's serious about his subjects, as revealed in any one of his seminal books (and nearly all of his books are seminal) about writers, pagans, punks, angry women, strange music, bodily fluids, masochists, and Ballard. Pranks 2 comes a brisk 19 years after the first version (seminal), which paid tribute, in the form of profiles and interviews, to the anarchists and outsiders who made their cultural mark tweaking society in the '70s and '80s.

The new book follows the same tack. It also features some of the same figures. You should bitch about neither. We can all stand to learn a little more about the Yes Men, Survival Research Laboratories, Frank Discussion, Jello Biafra, and Joey Skaggs, and the book more than makes up for any navel-gazing with new profiles of S.F. groups the Suicide Club, the Cacophony Society, and the Billboard Liberation Front. There's even a bit about Bambi Lake.

Michael Leaverton -- S.F. Weekly

"Thanks especially for PRANKS 2, the best book in years. I'm happy to preach that book's greatness." -- Zack, The Gut (MySpace page)

Never has Ballard sounded so concerned, fatherly, or political. (In an earlier, 1984 RE/Search interview, Ballard impishly exclaims, "I want more nuclear weapons!") The interviews [in the new RE/Search book] make it abundantly clear that while Ballard has always proclaimed the death of reason and the visceral origins of technology, he now sees these developments as almost wholly negative. -- San Francisco Bay Guardian

Metro Silicon Valley

J.G. Ballard is the Dr Moreau of British fiction, creator of controlled environments and out-of-control dystopias...Ballard understands the transformation technology may effect on human desire.

The Observer

'Sex times Technology equals The Future,' proposed J.G. Ballard in 1972. For those who can't wait: be forewarned: the future never comes. With its promise of arousal and endlessly deferred climax, the formula, as quoted in a fabulous if messily designed [?] new volume of interviews called JG Ballard Conversations (RE/Search Publications, $19.99).

A recurring theme, wistfully expressed, through these conversations spanning two decades with RE/Search publisher Vale, Survival Research Laboratories' Mark Pauline, SPK founder turned film composer Graeme Revell, and more, is the decline in literacy and ever-shortening attention spans in the Internet age of instant gratification.

Ballard himself confesses to having little interest in music, yet for much of the 1970s and early 1980s, he was regularly featured in the UK music weekly NME, where the adjective 'Ballardian' was applied to the gear-crashing rhythm of David Bowie's "Station to Station," Martin Hannett's production of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures, the machine grind of DAF, and so on. But the most significant explorations of the terrains mapped in Ballard's fiction (and retrospectively in the dialogues of J.G. Ballard Conversations) happened in Industrial Culture. Daniel Miller aka The Normal's "Warm Leatherette," Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle's grisly pathologies of the British suburban hinterland, SPK's information overloads, and the short-circuitng noise of Non's "Rise" stand as powerful testaments to the legacy of Ballard's impact. Not forgetting, of course, the writer's longstanding relationship with his most sympathetic publisher, Vale, at RE/Search, whose roots are in the West Coast punk-and-after journal Search & Destroy (issue #10 featured a J.G. Ballard interview).

Ballard's influence persists through Matmos's queasy 2001 album "A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure (Matador) and J.G. Thirlwell's score for Jonathan Weiss's 2001 experimental film version of The Atrocity Exhibition (Reel23 DVD).

Wire

It's a finely produced book in a new handbag ? or manbag ? size, and certainly one that any Ballard obsessive, and you know who you are, will want to own. Ballard comes across as a warm, private man and a highly prescient writer: recent news images of 100-mile traffic jams outside Houston as people fled hurricane Rita, or passengers on a flaming jetliner witnessing their predicament unravelling live on televisions inside their own aircraft, appear to have come straight out of his fiction. This is, for me, where the Ballard Paradox comes into play: his futures share so much with our present, that they can now feel a little old-fashioned, making even his earlier writing seem increasingly less like science fiction as time marches on.

The interviews date from 1983 to 2004, during which time Ballard's opinions and obsessions ? power, celebrity, media domination, war, politics and the future (and what else is there?) ? have remained fairly constant in a changing world, perhaps because he was already into his 50s when the first interviews took place. Our man in Shepperton reveals a solid grasp of the broad sweep of both historical and contemporary geopolitical affairs, as well as the human, and inhuman condition. On a more personal note you'll find insights into the origins of Crash, The Atrocity Exhibition, Ballard's childhood experiences in a Japanese POW camp (the basis for Empire pf the Sun, his experience of success and Hollywood following Steven Spielberg's film of that "breakthrough" book. And he likes cats. A lot. It's also interesting to discover that while Ballard has always been something of a respected, almost canonical, late 20th century author in the UK, his earlier books were difficult to obtain for American readers, where he has developed a cult following akin to that of William S Burroughs, largley thanks to the work of Re/Search. While not a Ballardophile myself, reading these interviews has driven me to dig out some of his short story collections, so the programme works.

Strange Attractor

Conversations has a dozen new and unpublished interviews from various contributors. In a recent discussion with Vale, Ballard looks behind the enemy line and predicts 'a crisis will arise that will seed the neo-con mentality, and what at present seems a rather strange aberration on the part of America's ruling elite, will come to seem completely acceptable in a surprisingly short space of time.' But he finds some hope in the internet's uncensored world, and that 'if we're entering a New Dark Age, the internet could help keep the lights on!' In another conversation he discusses the ascendant 'New Religiosity' and the 'new blueprint for a kind of militaristic religion'...

Pataphysics

A master of technique, Woodruff combines the genres of landscape, portraiture, allegory, still life, and illustration with iconographic elements from posters, theatrical sets, advertising, tattoos, heraldry, carnival banners, and antiquarian books to create 32 unforgettable characters. Woodruff’s FREAK PARADE participants Miss Giggles, Anatomy Boy, and Poor Mr. P (among others), join the fantastic pantheon of characters created by artists such as Bosch, Bruegel, and Ensor. At once thought-provoking, marvelous, and terrifying, FREAK PARADE is a carnevalesque tour-de-force not to be missed.

Descriptions of Thomas Woodruff often mention the artist’s penchant for tattoos – he had worked as a tattooist in the 1980s – and that is cited to have influenced much of his work. Discussions of his work also focus upon Woodruff’s iconography and technique; he has been labeled “Neo- Victorian,” “Edwardian”, and a “Neo-Fabulist.” The New York Times art critic William Zimmer wrote, “Woodruff takes his primary cue from illustrators of the Edwardian era… animals wear clothes, and the action takes place in a lustrous atmosphere… the painting is both disturbing and sweet.”

Here pranksters such as Timothy Leary, Abbie Hoffman, Monte Cazazza, Jello Biafra, Earth First!, Joe Coleman, Karen Finley, John Waters and Henry Rollins (and more) challenge the sovereign authority of words, images and behavioral convention. This iconoclastic compendium will dazzle and delight all lovers of humor, satire and irony. 240 pages, many photographs. NEW: HARDBACK limited edition, on better glossy art paper. Paperback also on better paper. John Waters on PRANKS

Only 500 hardbacks & 1000 paperbacks printed for this edition, both on better glossy art paper for sharper photographic reproduction. Superior to your old copy!

A master of technique, Woodruff combines the genres of landscape, portraiture, allegory, still life, and illustration with iconographic elements from posters, theatrical sets, advertising, tattoos, heraldry, carnival banners, and antiquarian books to create 32 unforgettable characters. Woodruff’s FREAK PARADE participants Miss Giggles, Anatomy Boy, and Poor Mr. P (among others), join the fantastic pantheon of characters created by artists such as Bosch, Bruegel, and Ensor. At once thought-provoking, marvelous, and terrifying, FREAK PARADE is a carnevalesque tour-de-force not to be missed.

Descriptions of Thomas Woodruff often mention the artist’s penchant for tattoos – he had worked as a tattooist in the 1980s – and that is cited to have influenced much of his work. Discussions of his work also focus upon Woodruff’s iconography and technique; he has been labeled “Neo- Victorian,” “Edwardian”, and a “Neo-Fabulist.” The New York Times art critic William Zimmer wrote, “Woodruff takes his primary cue from illustrators of the Edwardian era… animals wear clothes, and the action takes place in a lustrous atmosphere… the painting is both disturbing and sweet.” OVERSIZE HARDBACK.

Like a cultural anthropologist, photographer and writer Michael McCabe’s explores the outrageous style—documenting the dynamic relationship between tradition and change. McCabe’s photographs document Japan’s Kustom Kulture, from car shows such as the “Mooneyes Tokyo Street Nationals,” to custom car shops, to pin-stripers’ studios, to completely stylized car or bike aficionados in their period garb, and his text provides both history and context. Foreword by Don Ed Hardy.

In English and Japanese. Published in 2008 by Hardy Marks Publications. 11 x 8 1/2, Hard Cover, 191 pages. Full color photographs.