3:AM Magazine

» Exit Theory: An Interview with Paul Buck

So what you are suggesting is that I align myself to a degree with the escapees… or that is what intrigues me about the subject of this book. You are probably heading me in the right direction. Perhaps though, unlike many an escapee, I’ve been on the lam for too many years now, & that despite what the system has done to trap or force me into submitting to their whims & caprices. I’ve managed to be strong enough in myself to maintain my ‘freedom’ or at least a sense of purpose or direction that appeals to me. If I was asked to chose between Alfie Hinds & his great escapes, or Wally Probyn’s, then I would chose Wally’s exploits…

By Steve Finbow.

» A Pulpy Eyeless Balaclava: Will Self Interviewed

“Well the avant garde in Britain is just dead to the extent that it ever existed. But if you look at the Colony Club (the Soho drinking club which appears as the Plantation in Liver) at the time it was founded in the 1940’s you had a kind of time capsule of the future: it facilitated all day drinking, there was open display and acceptance of homosexuality, there was no taboo at all about swearing. None of this is transgressive anymore. It’s just modern life in Britain. And while things like homosexual liberation were needed and very much worth having, the same can’t really be said for saying ‘fuck’ in public or drinking all day.”

Jamie Kenny interviews Will Self for 3:AM.

» Embracing the Bull: An Interview With Lydia Lunch

You have to figure out a way because there will be so many things always against you, against the individual, against someone who wants to radically create. It’s going to be the few who make a career out of complaining about everything that pisses them off, and there is only room for maybe one or two of us. I’d encourage everyone to do it, but to make a career out of it? Good fucking luck! So, in other words, do as I have done: create without a budget and find a way to get it out. You’ve just got to be stubborn. I don’t care what your age is, you’ve got to be a fucking bull. Embrace the bull. Take the bull by the horns, cut its balls off, sew them on to the fucking base of your spine and get going. It’s that easy.

Simon Friel talks to Lydia Lunch.

» Walking the Wild Side

I finished Down and Out on Murder Mile rather quickly, and thought, damn…this is even better than Digging the Vein, and that’s saying something. Even to dissociate the context, dying junkies, slip sliding away. There’s an honesty, a simple truth to narco-realism. Disengaged from all thoughts of the past, or the future, you are left absolutely clearly in the moment. Knowing that whatever you’re doing right now, is the only thing that has meaning. The zen-calm realization that everything else is façade. The nine to five, the hustle, your life’s work. Doesn’t mean anything, doesn’t get you there. Is nothing more than your own personal Jesus.

Mikael Covey reviews Tony O’Neill’s new novel.

» Mike Philbin’s Double Vision

But, hold on, if we’re ever so lucky, there is a form of salvation in this porno version of 1984 and it appears in the form of a kitten – not a pussy – a kitten that leads us to our Samaritan – Marianne Buckman – a non-corporeal, time/space shifting Beatrice and Mata Hari rolled into one. Bad jokes litter the text, as do sex and death, eros and thanatos, and the ghostly forms of William S. Burroughs, George Orwell, and Lewis Carroll. And all this fused with a cum-tsunami of corporate terrorism, reflections on the soul…

By Steve Finbow.

» fast food nation

Bradley’s writing is minimalist whilst providing enough narrative nutrition to sink your teeth into. With Lemur Bradley offers up quite a menu of characters, a veritable stew of displaced oddities.[His] prose is terse, his pace quick and chock-full of socio-political observations, cutting satirical switchblade swipes at how sex, marketing and murder are often, uncomfortably intrinsically linked. Only Tom Bradley would create a world where a malnourished, metal-faced meth-whore wearing little more a Cow and Chicken t-shirt is crushed beneath a “tidal wave of cellulite” while attempting to rob a diner.

Alan K. tucks into Lemur.

» Sohoitis IX: The 3:AM PP — Sometimes You Just Have To Go

“I believe this place is full of bum-pushing faggots?” Did Sebastian really say that? Sebastian Horsley opened his set, thank god I could stop him after nine and half more minutes I thought, watching the gay contingent of the Green Carnation shift uneasily in their seats. Sebastian was Non Fiction for the night: who the fuck was going to be able to follow that diatribe AGAINST saving the planet? I could see people thinking, “He’s worse than Sarah Palin!”. There was only one man for the job, rough and tuff: Tim Wells on poetry, romanticising Betty Grable’s arse into looking like a bag of groceries…

Sophie Parkin reviews the first 3:AM/Pen Pusher event at London’s Green Carnation.

» The New Yorker, Collusion and All That

How can you have a cadre of poets and writers, more then less, appointed for life and not have their works blend, carryover and homogenize into the cookie cutter variety of Norman Rockwell paintings. Look once more at the monstrosity of architecture that is The New Yorker. Surely if you dally to long, you will be escorted by New Yorker drones, “thought police,” to a modern Bastille prison for subversion to the sense of esthetics so proudly bandied forward by the magazine, ad nauseam. With that said, I will show that words=equal=money and the questionable pursuit of it in The New Yorker’s fairly recent past.

By Chris Roberts.

» Sohoitis VIII: Alternative Miss World

I was the youngest at 17 and meant to be studying for my A levels but I wisely thought being in Andrew Logan’s groundbreaking competition was a better education and a higher qualification for life than any ordinary exam could give me. I was right in all senses, and Rebecca was too drunk for the steps and fell down half of them. I cannot tell you how glamorous the whole occasion was, backstage in the dressing rooms where fabulous creatures (I would hesitate at describing them all as humans) donned extravagant creations, where men became women and women became animals and Francis Bacon art dealer, James Birch, became a hamburger with fries.

3:AM’s very own alternative miss world Sophie Parkin previews An Evening Of Alternative Miss World at the Portobello Film Festival.

» Stuck Inn V: What is Wrong With Sir Nicholas Serota? Part II

I don’t know why Serota considers himself hard done by at the hands of the press: “You can’t have it both ways; on the one hand we’re criticised for not having bought Rachel Whiteread’s house or Damien Hirst’s shark, and then when we do go out and buy a Chris Ofili or a Peter Doig, we’re also criticised.” It seems to have escaped his earnestly pained attention that Ofili and Doig were trustees, and Whiteread and Hirst weren’t. This is a difference that other people, including the Charity Commission, see as being of considerable significance.

The second part of Charles Thomson’s 3:AM column.

» Stuck Inn V: What Is Wrong with Sir Nicholas Serota?

Serota’s rationale is in his 2000 Dimbleby Lecture: “For the late twentieth-century museum director there is no more certain prospect for audience acclaim and sponsor success than those Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists who were so reviled a century earlier.” His identification with artists who were battling in the face of disapproval from the art establishment is a completely false analogy: the art that Serota promotes is the art establishment – a multi-million pound industry of museums, arts bodies, galleries, curators, auction houses, collectors and critics. It’s just that the art establishment is now at odds with the general public instead of synonymous with it.

Charles Thomson on Sir Nicholas Serota and the BritArt establishment.

» Liberty, Equality, & Fries with Gravy

It seems there’s a smugness to Montreal hip. Even the twenty year olds profess to appreciate black-American jazz and Quebec-government-funded documentaries about white-American racism. Yet, do these fashionistas realize that the Southern slave system wasn’t so much abolished as expanded to include them, that the textile plantation big house now extends from the Rio Grande to the Arctic Sea, that beyond our privileged borders—shackled by barriers to free competition—the global masses sweat and toil to keep our teenagers sweet and spoiled with the style of the moment?

By Lyn Fox.

» Overwhelmingly Bearded

Autechre live are technically inscrutable but sonically fluid, cutting and snipping events together almost seamlessly, quite unlike the new album’s discrete pieces. The performers are lit, but barely; the main focus of the crowd’s rapture appears to be two Apple laptops, not the heads bobbing around behind them.

Andrew Fleming on Autechre live.

» We Need to Talk About Kevin

I am standing at the back of The Roundhouse, but during “When You Wake You’re Still In A Dream” I am starting to shake from the floor. And by the time they hit the twenty-three minute version of “You Made Me Realise”, this is the equivalent of standing under a jet plane taking off. The sound is so loud that I want to vomit, but somehow I start to wonder if Kevin Shields planned this all along? Purification via noise terrorism. I can feel every vein in my body. From the spleen outwards my head pounds, and fingers shake.

Adelle Stripe reviews My Bloody Valentine live in London.

» Are You Ready For U.S. Ghost Punk Psych Jams?

Such is my obsession with music, a trip to NYC simply would not have been even half complete or as much fun without seeking out some live underground sounds, and this I found at local promoter Todd P’s Death by Audio night in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In contrast to the kind-of-in-a-similar-vein Hoxton scene in London, there are less skinny jeans but more checked shirts and beards, the outfit that is almost tradition for the learned and serious underground music fan. This is totally DIY and a far cry from the usual mainstream venues.

Kate Picard pays a visit to Williamsburg’s Death By Audio.

» 9 Girls Called Joan

Like most people I meet, I have an auntie called Joan. My auntie Joan looks like Elton John, but how Elton John looks when he looks like Mark Twain. The three of them look like the crew of a small boat that probably doesn’t even need a crew at all, this boat is probably so advanced in technology that it drives itself, cleans itself, and thinks for the three Elton John/Mark Twain/Auntie Joan lookalikes. The boat begins to feel confused, it malfunctions in a puff of smoke that used to be modern technology, and those people first on the scene are finding it hard to piece together where Elton ends and Joan begins, and they don’t even believe that Mark Twain exists.

Emily Josephine McPhillips’s story has been selected by Niven Govinden as part of NOISE Festival 2008.

» Writer’s Block: A Story

“You read my book didn’t you? The Quiet American? About the domino effect.”
“Yes, yes. I’ve read you’re damn book.”
“Did you buy it new?”
“It was a gift.”
“From the publisher or a friend.”
“Who the hell cares?”
“I want to know whether I earned a royalty off you.”
Ernest fumbled for his wallet.
“Here’s fifty pesos.”
“Devalued to nothing by tomorrow.”

By Jonathan Woods.

» The Big Pineapple

Nong was wearing a see-through negligee and two cigar-butt nipples swung free and easy. She also had a nice ass, but overall was slightly out of proportion, short legs, thick ankles, long nose etc. And beneath the layers of make-up I discerned a bad case of acne. She took me by the hand and squeezed tight. I caught a whiff of semen and condoms, ‘You go Queensland baby, go Big Pineapple, all people say really fun time!’

Now I knew what had to be done. The oracle of the bordello had spoken.

By Joseph Ridgwell.

» I Meant to Surprise Her, Atlanta Apartment Hunting, and Broken Leg

Chafe won the toss and I had broken a leg. I kept falling every few feet when I walked. Chafe tossed me again, this time into a pickup’s bed, which took me to the hospital. Inside I cried for morphine because I craved the high; I was too drunk to feel any pain. The doctor said, “You’re so wasted, I’m not giving you anything.”

By Jamie Iredell.

» The Revolution

I walked in and set my bottle on the table, half-expecting to see walls covered with field charts of butterflies pinned to cork, migratory instinct stilled. Hello, I said, into the dim hallway off the main room. My muscles twitched. I walked into the kitchen, opened his refrigerator, peered inside. A freestanding carton of juice, cluster of tomatoes on the vine. You came, he said suddenly, walking into the room. I turned, embarrassed. He looked only at my face, as if the length of my skirt or the style of my hair were of no consequence. I was relieved, because they weren’t.

By Virginia Konchan.

» True Love When You See It

Every monster you kill, it’s a home run. Your butt against her butt gives you both three-sixty coverage. Gotta be touching, though; that’s trust. And don’t step off the road. On the grass, you’re theirs. Don’t let them drag you into the corn, corn high enough to hide the scarecrows, yellow eyes amid the fireflies. Maybe if you each live through this, you were meant for each other.

By Fred Zackel.

» Three Poems

“Change your life”: Rilke tells me;
incapable of this, I put on
a new pair of socks instead.
My face the poster
for a failed revolution.
We end up being ruled
by overly reasonable
Swedes who give me a start
your own funeral parlour grant.
One by one, the whole neighbourhood go off
in my award-winning plywood coffins.

By Kevin Higgins.

» Two Poems

we shall all have minds of winter
we shall take into consideration the oyster shell ground
the various scars of snow across our fuselage

We who are unremarkable salute you
as we go drowning
we who offer mauve shades of late
snow cone stained watercolor snow
the marks of man and dog
late afternoon late
bleeds into the face of
our mutual moon.

By Margarita Shalina.

» Cowboy

It was the west that won,
the rest are just people scurrying around
under the light bulb filament sun,
one hundred four degrees in the shade
almost boiling the lemonade of the kid
who ran in to tell his mom
the libertines had come to town

By David E. Oprava.