Birdsong Micropress

PRETTY BEAUTIFUL

admin — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 15:50:22 +0000

B0DYH1GH’s first mythtape PRETTY BEAUTIFUL is out today! Featuring B0DYH1GH demos and songs we love/were born from. Cover photo by Christian Coulson.

1. B0DYH1GH – The Blue Dream
2. Sonic Youth- Bee Bee’s Song
3. B0DYH1GH – Cherie Stems
4. Young Marble Giants – Brand-New-Life
5. B0DYH1GH – Coma White
6. The Halo Benders – Don’t Touch My Bikini
7. B0DYH1GH – Cur Keys
8. Inflatable Boy Clams – I’m Sorry
9. B0DYH1GH – Get In The Pool
10. Sinéad O’Connor & Karen Finley – Jump In The River
11. B0DYH1GH – H0LY D1G1T
12. Butter 08 – How Do I Get High?
13. B0DYH1GH – I.C.U.P. (Yellow Belt)
14. Poison Girls – Ideologically Unsound
15. B0DYH1GH – Jenna Gross
16. Slant 6 – Ladybug Superfly
17. B0DYH1GH – May the 4th Be With You (And Also Be With You)
18. The Amps – Mom’s Drunk
19. B0DYH1GH – Sister Cumshot
20. Alexander – Transparent (Studio Mix)
21. B0DYH1GH – Thor’s Day
22. The Frumpies – Whatshisname Hearts The Frumpies

DOWNLOAD PRETTY BEAUTIFUL

For those of you in NYC, B0DYH1GH will be celebrating PRETTY BEAUTIFUL’s release with a very special set opening the show atAMERICAN PUSSY FAGGOT REALNESS tomorrow, Saturday 1/7/12 at Public Assembly. RSVP for reduced price ticketsHERE.

birdsong #16

admin — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 16:19:58 +0000

Hey Squirrel Friends,

the new birdsong is out! It’s definitely the best one yet and I’m not charging anything for it for the rest of 2011, so if you want one just shoot us an email with yr address. It features work by Rita Sangre, Max Steele, Joey Parlett, Cat Glennon, Kelly Bourdet, Danny Portland, Lauren Savitz and myself (Tommy Pico). Oh my god you’ll totally dig it.

things a-changin

admin — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 16:30:10 +0000

I’m sure you can see that we’ve slowed things down a bit. What began four years ago as a bi-monthly photocopied showcase of a group of green, ass-scratching, metaphor-mixing newbs, has turned into a studied, fine-cigar smoking, wincing brandy of a bi-annual.

Unfortunately, times they are a-slipping. Lots of good news and lots of change and lots of moving away has happened to the Birdsong Collective in the past year, and in particular the past few months. New jobs, new moves, new bands and fellowships. People going to law school, people taking positions at universities, teaching English in Korea and Mongolia, studying in Berlin and Stanford, touring plays and writing books and writing residencies. There isn’t as much time to devote soliciting, formatting, editing, screen-printing and hand-sewing a totally awesome zine all the time.

That isn’t to say we’re giving up, in fact the next issue (#16) is coming out next month, but lack of funds and lack of hands means we’re going back to basics. Free, spare, black and white, Kinkos word of mouth-ness. Bare with us, there’s a coming back. A bare essentials. A new coming. A stand back stand back.

Tommy Pico,

editor-in-chief

birdsong zine

BULLIES reading at PPOW 11/9/11

admin — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 19:33:21 +0000

BULLIES: A Literary Reading at P.P.O.W.

Address: 535 West 22nd Street, 3rd Floor, Manhattan

Date: Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 8:00 p.m.

Brontez Purnell is a musician (Younger Lovers), writer (Fag School Zine, Maximum Rock and Roll), and a professional whiskey taster. He resides in sunny Oakland CA, where he is currently penning his first novella, entitled:Johnny, Would You Love Me If My Dick Were Bigger? (Diary of An American Waiter—Bored At Work).

Joseph Whitt is a Brooklyn-based artist, writer and independent curator. His work has been featured in exhibitions and events at various venues (CRG Gallery, Deitch Projects, PPOW, Envoy Enterprises, Starr Space); and his writing has appeared in numerous publications (Art Papers, ArtUS, K48, Useless Magazine). He is currently working on a book titled T.M.I.

Kat Case is a high school English teacher and fiction writer who lives in Manhattan. She wrote a monthly column for the punk magazine Maximum Rock and Roll for five years and published the zine Snapshots for maybe seven. She holds an MFA in Fiction from New College of CA and an MA in Education from CUNY. She is currently working on a novel about a Beat woman artist who kept her dirty underwear in her unplugged freezer and a bunch of short stories that are, frankly, pretty shameless.

Max Steele is a performer and writer. He has presented work at the New Museum, Deitch Projects, Dixon Place, Envoy Enterprises, PPOW Gallery, and the Queens Museum of Art. In addition to writing the psychedelic porno poetry zineScorcher, his writing has been featured in Dossier Journal, Spank, Philadelphia’s Institute of Contemporary Art, East Village Boys and Birdsong.

Flyer photo by Max Luger.

Facebook link HERE.

FREE!

Five on It with Author Ofelia Hunt

admin — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 10:00:29 +0000

Magic Helicopter Press describes Ofelia Hunt‘s novel this way: Set among haunted parking lots and AM-PMs and home invasions, Today & Tomorrow melts identity, memory, and consciousness into a hypnotic and hilarious adventure of body and mind, the haunting absurdity of what it means to be a person that can make up everything but itself. The author’s answers to our questions concur.

1. What’s the last song you listened to?

Right now, as I type this, I’m listening to Shit Luck by Modest Mouse. Good ol’ northwesty music.

2. What did you want to be when you were ten?

I wanted to be a journalist, which consisted (in my mind) of breaking into tall office buildings, stealing files, and then slapping criminals with the files.

3. What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?

Don’t piss it down your leg. A guy I used to babysit for said that. He was talking about PowerPoint presentations.

4. What’s the last thing you were obsessed with?

Trail running. I read books, blogs about trail running. Magazines. I set up Google alerts. I logged every minute of my own running. Elevation gain, distance, time, conditions.

5. What are you afraid of?

Republicans.

Foie Gras and Gaylord Phoenix by Edie Fake

admin — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 09:00:47 +0000

Foie Gras Issue 1 and Issue 3 and Gaylord Phoenix Issue 5

Edie Fake

Chicago

http://ediefake.com/

Birdsong Five on It interviewee, Edie Fake, recently posted us a smattering of recent publications — two issues of Foie Gras and one issue of Gaylord Phoenix. The former, accredited to Edie Fake and the Joy of Cooking, employs the diagrammatic illustration of recipe as a metaphor for libido. Fake’s pithy captioning — Fuck me like this, for example — reorients culinary procedures like cutting and binding away from animal constraint, instead revealing generative fissures that produce and release things unforseen and new, organic symmetries emerging from induced orifices and bleeding onto bright, warm pages. Gaylord Phoenix is of the same vein, but instead of being channeled through the quotidian atmosphere of the kitchen, we follow a superhero who traverses mythological terrains — from cloud to cave — all the while exploring and confounding skin-like states of exteriority and interiority.

Five on It with Musician *spandrel

admin — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 10:00:44 +0000

A spandrel is the space between two arches or between an arch and a rectangular enclosure; *spandrel is the new poetically inflected sound project of Nude Vargas.

1. What’s the last song you listened to?

Back to the Old House by The Smiths.

2. What did you want to be when you were ten?

A marine biologist. I went as far as working at Sea World one summer as a teenager. Ironically, I got assigned to work park operations for the Baywatch-themed waterskiing show — the only non-marine-life-themed show in the park.

3. What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?

Don’t experiment (sexually) on your sister, from my dad.

4. What’s the last thing you were obsessed with?

Honestly, it was finishing Flood Season. It feels like I’ve been living inside those songs for the past six months. I had never produced or recorded any music before so it was a major accomplishment for me on a personal level.

5. What are you afraid of?

My teeth — falling out, shattering, or otherwise rotting away inside my mouth.

Five on It with Author Patrick deWitt

admin — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 10:00:35 +0000

Patrick deWitt is the author of two novels, Ablutions and The Sisters Brothers, and now a birdsong Five on It interviewee!

1. What’s the last song you listened to?

Robbie Basho’s Orphan’s Lament.

2. What did you want to be when you were ten?

A carpenter.

3. What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?

I literally can’t think of a single bit of advice, good or bad, that I’ve ever been given. Hopefully this says more about my memory than the company I keep.

4. What’s the last thing you were obsessed with?

I’m probably being too literal, but as I get older I find I’m unable to truly obsess about anything. Even when I’m awed by something — an author or record or whatever — that feeling of awe leaves me when I leave the room. When I return to the room, the awe might return as well, but I don’t carry it around with me, the way I did when I was younger. Does this sound sad? I’m happy for it. It’s aerodynamic.

5. What are you afraid of?

Lots of things. But I can’t say what they are because to discuss them publicly is to invite them into my life.

Five on It with Poet Anthony Carelli

admin — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 10:00:37 +0000

Having recently had his first collection, Carnations, published as part of the Princeton University Press series of contemporary poets, Brooklyn-based poet Anthony Carelli answers our quick-and-dirty interview questions.

1. What’s the last song you listened to?

The soundtrack to a short, stop motion film. Google leads me to believe that the song is Stornelli Amorisi by Claudio Villa. Ooh, and I see that Stornelli Amorisi is also featured in the Big Night soundtrack. I like that film.

2. What did you want to be when you were ten?

I don’t remember ever being committed to a single and exclusive dream of being. When I was ten, as far as I can imagine my young dreams, I wanted to be all sorts of things all at once — a doctor, a jet pilot, a high school basketball player . . .

3. What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?

Wait.

4. What’s the last thing you were obsessed with?

This morning, anxious and unable to concentrate on anything whatsoever, I obsessively cleaned and re-cleaned my already quite clean home espresso machine.

5. What are you afraid of?

Spiritual clumsiness.

Five on It with Writer Stacey Levine

admin — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 13:50:01 +0000

Stacey Levine is author of four books, most recently the short story collection The Girl with the Brown Fur. Winner of a PEN/West Fiction Award and the Stranger Genius Prize for Literature in 2009, her writing has been characterised as exhibiting a refreshing lack of respect for reality.

1. What’s the last song you listened to?

2 Inch Dick Mobile by The Negro Problem. Over and over. This was the LA band headed by Stew, who now performs solo. A beautifully made pop/music-hall sound, and it even has a French horn intro. The lyrics repeat: I know that I’ve lost my way. It has the cutest little coda with screeching car wheels.

2. What did you want to be when you were ten?

A writer, but also a meteorologist. At the time, I thought that meant being out in fields alone a lot, measuring wind and humidity and things. So that seemed very romantic.

3. What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?

I think the poet David Wagoner said in class: If given the choice between teaching and working at a cafe, work at a cafe.

4. What was the last thing you were obsessed with?

Trying to force the word sentence to have simultaneous double meaning in a sentence, i.e. meaning both a sentence to be endured and a complete written or spoken thought. Except I didn’t manage to do it. If anyone can, please send an email.

Also: popular US childrens’ names from the late 1950s. Wilma, Ida, Penny, Patsy, Wayne, Eugene, Eddie. Awful names.

5. What are you afraid of?

1. Facebook. It makes me so nervous.

2. Enormous water storage tanks, often seen in the suburbs of the Midwest or the eastern states. The kinds that hold about four million gallons.