Key to long-term survival is constant renewal. At Reed Magazine, California’s oldest literary journal, mutability has kept the publication running for 150 years, with a rotating editorial staff of diverse backgrounds, educational experiences, literary tastes—even sentiment for the magazine.

“I don’t spend any time thinking of Reed’s legacy,” admits Anne Cheilek, the magazine’s Poetry Editor, seconds before Managing Editor Ryan H. Smith says: “I can’t help but look at the history––I get really invested in it.”

Having both perspectives keeps the journal’s content fresh while staying true to its roots. It has also vaulted the journal to new levels of recognition.

This June, Reed won its first Pushcart Prize, a national award for small presses considered “the most honored literary project in America.” The selected poem was “Father’s Belt,” an intense and emotionally complex work by former Onion and McSweeny’s writer Kurt Luchs.

“Father’s Belt” appeared in Reed Issue 153. Released toward the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown, with all content chosen in 2019, the issue serves as something of a “time capsule,” Smith says. Throughout 2019, Reed had made a renewed outreach to literary presences throughout the Bay Area, holding events with San Francisco’s Litquake and SJSU’s own Legacy of Poetry Festival. 

“This Pushcart feels like all the work finally paying off,” Smith says. 

Celebrating South Bay artists has also been a particular focus at the magazine. While the city’s reputation as suburban-wasteland slash cultural-little-sibling can be frustrating, Reed chooses to see it as freeing. The magazine’s team doesn’t feel tied to any set aesthetic, like the clean narrative style favored in East Coast publications, or the commitment to the avant-garde like in San Francisco and Oakland.

“People think of San Francisco and they know what San Francisco has,” Smith says. “San Jose you have to dig for it a little more. We’ve taken the proper steps to leave those breadcrumbs for people that San Jose really has this rich, thriving cultural arts scene and history.”

Staffed by a mix of undergrads and graduate students, Reed encourages a “big tent, eclectic approach,” Cheilek says. She describes issue 153’s poetry editors as a team “with extremely disparate tastes.”

“I had two members that agreed on almost nothing and I would often pair them up,” she says. 

The awarded poem itself was unusual “in that everyone agreed it was really exciting, but expressed reluctance to publish it because it seemed like it was pushing too many boundaries—that it could trigger people and maybe be upsetting.”

“Father’s Belt” does carry some risk, playing out as a monologue from the point of view of the titular belt, spoken to children the reader can assume are the author and his siblings, detailing its personal relationship with their father as a tool for punishment. 

Abuse is far from an uncommon theme in poetry, but the piece treats the subject in some complicated ways. Luchs avoids tragic or heartwrenching language—it is not a “correct” abuse narrative in the way culture expects a survivor to tell their own stories. Instead, the poem uneasily invokes humor, love, even sensuality.

“Then all at once I’m whistling / through the air, my flesh meets yours / in a mad rush, and there is joy in heaven, my ecstacy cannot be contained.”

The pandemic has carried secondary, more insidious plagues with it: a wave of relapses and overdoses, partners and family members trapped in harmful situations by mechanics of safety and resources. Although “Father’s Belt” is personal, it alludes to the isolation that turns human beings toward darker loves, ending with: “Do you realize, aside from him / you’re the only ones I ever get to touch?”

Our culture is undergoing a major shift in how we treat and discuss pain, and with that comes shifts in art and language. In the work they choose to highlight and pair together, journals and awards carry the power to provide a snapshot of our place and era—even its uncomfortable parts. In their upcoming issues, Reed says they aim to capture this era with honesty, wit, and tenderness.

“Reed is not afraid to publish strong, powerful, and controversial work,” Cheilek says. “I think 154 will draw several underlines under that point.”

Reed Magazine Issue 153
Out Now

The San Jose Peace and Justice Center presents a new exhibit focused on the art of social unrest. The event will feature a collection of almost 30 silk-screened posters, some of which date back to the 1960s—including works of art created for the civil rights and anti-war movements. Through these prints, a larger narrative emerges, painting a picture of more than 50 years of protest. The show also features new additions to the Peace and Justice Center’s collection, including a print focused on the surge of protests in the Trump era. (YK)

The Art of Protest
Wed, 8am, Free
Dr. Martin Luther King Library, San Jose

Atlanta rapper Killer Mike sat down earlier this month to speak with with Olympic gold medalist and San Jose State alumnus, Tommie Smith. As an emcee, Killer Mike (née Michael Render) has made a name for himself with his aggressive, socially and politically minded style.

In recent years, Killer Mike has gained a higher profile as half of the hip-hop duo Run The Jewels. He has also begun engaging in social and political criticism outside of music. He has been invited to speak on issues of race on national cable news networks and has even interviewed the currently surging Democratic presidential hopeful, Bernie Sanders.

That interview was part of a series of interviews Render has conducted with a variety of newsmakers. All of the interviews have been broadcast from the official Killer Mike YouTube channel.

Smith made headlines in 1968 after taking the gold medal in the 200 meter footrace in the Summer Olympics—held that year in Mexico City, Mexico. Both Smith and bronze medalist John Carlos (another SJSU alumnus), used their moment on the podium to make a political statement against the continued inequality suffered by African Americans in the United States, as well as the brutality that many people of color were still facing all over the world—specifically black South Africans who were legally second class citizens under that country’s system of apartheid.

The two men stood on the podium without shoes—a symbol of the many millions living in poverty around the world—and each raised one fist in the air—a symbol of the Black Power movement, which was then gaining momentum in the U.S. The statement and the images of it reverberated around the world and became a symbol of unity against discrimination and racism.

Today, a statue on the San Jose State University campus pays tribute to Smith and Carlos. Watch the video of Killer Mike and Tommie Smith below.

Watch Killer Mike’s politically charged video for the song “Reagan,” which makes reference to the Iran Contra scandal—a story that was broken by San Jose Mercury reporter, Gary Webb.

Every February for for the past three years, longtime local music promoter Eric Fanali has devoted all his energy to wrangling nerds—herding a large and disparate group of indie rockers, chiptune artists and video game fanatics into the same place for a weekend-long video game and music festival known as Rockage. His job description does not entail micromanaging what they do once they get there, however. Half the fun of Rockage comes from the chaotic and unexpected interactions that inevitably take place.

And besides, in many cases, Fanali says he just doesn’t want to know.

“I don’t want to be liable,” Fanali jokes, as he considers what the weirdo, anti-band duo Gnarboots might have in store for their Rockage 4.0 set. Last year it involved an Elvis impersonator and reams of toilet paper. This year, rumors abound, though no one really knows what’s going to happen—least of all the band, which consists of an iPod and two longtime musicians who intentionally don’t practice.

“We’re shaking you out of your band expectations,” says Aaron Carnes, one half of Gnarboots and Metro contributor. “It’s unusual and jarring in a fun way.”

It would seem that the Gnarboots philosophy lines up pretty neatly with Fanali’s. A spirit of spontaneity informs the planned (and unplanned) collaborations that result from cramming 42 bands full of talented and obsessive (often one and the same) folks into one room full of old-school arcade games and letting it rip.

Fanali recalls a scene from a previous year: local video-game-jazz-jammers Super Soul Bros. were backing rappers Boboso and Mega Ran when they suddenly broke into an impromptu cover of a song from the 1997 Playstation rhythm game, PaRappa the Rapper.

Not all of the groups have direct ties to video game music. Festival headliners, The Thermals, for one, are a Portland-based indie punk band with roots in the South Bay. The band is, however, super into retro arcade games. “Galaga is my favorite, I’ll never stop playing Galaga,” says singer and guitarist Hutch Harris, noting that bassist Kathy Foster likes Centipede and drummer Westin Glass has professed his love for Burger Time—an obscure 1982 arcade game based around assembling massive hamburgers.

And actually, The Thermals’ latest album, Desperate Ground, may have a deeper connection to retro arcade. “Not a plot, but this theme, this story running through Desperate Ground,” Harris says. “The story was this loner, lost in the woods, being hunted. Wes and I were playing so much Galaga when we were working on Desperate Ground, Galaga kind of fit into that theme. Like, someone who had gone rogue from the army was killing all alone. In Galaga, you don’t know who the hell you are.”

The Thermals have roots in the South Bay and love ‘Galaga.’

The other headliners, Bit Brigade and Minibosses, are direct video game music bands. Bit Brigade will be debuting their soundtrack for the original NES Metroid at Rockage.

The Minibosses were one of the first bands to seriously cover video game music, and have been building a cult following since they began playing NES covers in 1999. “They’re so good,” Fanali raves. “They don’t need to prove anything.” The band is planning a collaborative set with Gnarboots, entitled “Gnarbosses.”

Much of the rest of the line-up will be recognizable to local music fans: indie rockers Curious Quail, The Albert Square and Zen Zenith, chiptune acts Crashfaster, The Mineral Kingdom and Petriform, plus some out-of-towners like The Y Axes and Sacramento-based sister punk duo Dog Party.

Bands are pitching in to run parts of the event as well. Zen Zenith will be hosting the table top/board game area, in addition to running a live Dungeons and Dragons game. The Super Soul Bros. are managing one of the stages, on top of their four scheduled sets. “It’s a community where everyone joins in,” Fanali says.

Fanali, who’s been booking shows for the past 18 years in the Bay Area, has self-funded (and lost money on) Rockage each year. This year, a similar festival out of Maryland, MAGfest, is co-sponsoring the festival, hoping to gain a foothold for a West Coast version MAGWest. “I’d like to expand Rockage every year even with MagWEST around,” says Fanali. “But I don’t want it to be a giant 10,000-plus festival. I like to keep it more intimate where you have a chance to meet everybody. I like the opportunity to socially game with these people.”

Rockage 4.0 runs from Friday, Feb. 6 through Sunday, Feb. 8 at various venues around San Jose State University. More info.

Check out “Pillar of Salt” by The Thermals:

Deadheads, scholars, and Deadhead scholars convened at San Jose State University’s King Library over the weekend for So Many Roads: The World in The Grateful Dead, a symposium to wrap up a four-day conference on the seminal jam band.

Memorabilia, including posters, handbills, paintings, T-shirts and other items were displayed and on sale at the symposium, which commemorated the touring community, which formed around the band—a topic which was discussed at length during the conference.

Highlights from the day included a round-table discussion titled, If Mercy’s In Business: The Grateful Dead in the Business World with famed venture capitalist/musician Roger McNamee; the Doobie Decibel System performing at the reception; and an extensive exhibit of the art of the Dead and Deadheads on the 7th floor of the SJSU library.

The exhibit on the 7th floor included famed posters and handbills for shows such as the closing of the Winterland with the Grateful Dead, NRPS, and The Blues Brothers. The exhibit also included a display of fan and Dead made t-shirts from the ’80s and ’90s. The art of the Grateful Dead—including album covers, posters, handbills, backdrops and T-shirts—played major role in shaping the way concerts and pop music are promoted.

Notable attendees at the Nov. 7 event included Jerry Garcia’s ex-wife Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia, Jerry’s daughter Trixie Garcia, and artist Stanley Mouse. On other days of the So Many Roads conference, attendees and presenters included Bill Kreutzmann, drummer for the Grateful Dead, Grateful Dead photographers Bob Minkin, Jay Blakesberg, Ed Perlstein, Susana Millman, and Rosie McGee.

Check out these photographs of the event by Metro photographer Jamie Soja:

Stanley Mouse (left) and Roger McNamee (right).

Goodbye, “Gangnam Style.” Hello, “Harlem Shake.” The new dance based on the Baauer-produced track has gone viral with videos all over the Internet, including two shot at San Jose State University and UC Santa Cruz.

At SJSU, Sammy the Spartan leads Batman, Mario and Luigi and a crew of dancers with a cameo from the SJSU marching band.

Over the hill, the Banana Slugs at UC Santa Cruz produced their own version of the Harlem Shake in the rain.

In Mountain View, tech giant Google released its own edition of the Harlem Shake on the Google campus in the Android garden.

A few more of our favorites:

Puppy Shake:

Denny’s Shake:

UGA Men’s Swim & Dive Shake:

Firefighter Shake:

Army Shake:

Grandma Shake:

Share your favorite “Harlem Shake” videos in our comments section.

Bessnectar was greeted by a capacity crowd for his homecoming show at the Event Center at San Jose State University. The producer, who was raised in San Jose and attended UC-Santa Cruz before becoming an international figure in electronic music, brought what he calls “omnitempo maximalism” to the venue for one last bash before the campus scales down for the summer term.

Metro photographer Alex Stover caught the action. Bassnectar returns to the stage in Santa Cruz at The Catalyst for another sold out show after city officials there canceled a previously schedule performance at the last-minute due to potential noise issues.