the Urban Artist Group presents...

 This site is dedicated solely to the Urban Artist Group's Sounds from the City Earth Underground segment, which, over the past two years, has grown so much that I have had to make it independent of the main magazine. I have been flooded with submissions from remarkable bands and singer/songwriters all over the world---various states and cities throughout America, as well as places in Canada, Australia, and even Europe---and in order to work with these artists in the capacity they deserve, it only makes sense to have this site, where I can now post all of the articles that have been piling up on my desk and overloading my hard drive. Besides, the Urban Artist Group Magazine is released sporadically. I am usually lucky to get two Issues out in print per year. This way, however, I can post articles monthly, sometimes weekly, progress permitting, without always having the finished material building up in huge, unorganized stacks all over my writing room.

Now, what you will read on these pages is not so much journalism as it is "anti-journalism." You see, I only write feature articles on bands and singer/songwriters whose music I find important, meaningful, and worthwhile. The music I write about has to be something I can relate to, something I can personalize, something that is consistent with what I consider "true art," something that makes me think, something I can feel, and so on.  And when writing about these bands and singer/songwriters and their music, I simply cannot adhere to the journalistic rules and boundaries to which so many other writers so obediently adhere. In no way am I one of those writers who can submit a piece of work that is 500 words or less, unpoetic, impersonal, and stripped down to its bare bones, like a corpse in a desert wasteland, having been picked clean by scavenger birds on the side of some nameless, desolate highway. Instead, it has to be a full body of work, covering the subject matter at hand in the best way possible, the way Proust covered his life, though fictionalized, in his masterwork a la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past); or the way Allen Ginsberg summed up his mad generation, the Beat Generation, in his revolutionary poem Howl; or the way Charlie Parker, sweat beading his brow, eyes closed tight, blew his life-things and artistic expressions out through his saxophone in great, wild, and brilliant jazz creations; or, finally, the way William Blake, the poet of poets, whose work holds meaning within meaning and thoughts within thoughts (like Russian dolls...you know, the dolls that open when you pull them apart, and inside of the main doll is a slightly smaller doll, and inside of that slightly smaller doll is yet another slightly smaller doll, and so on until you have a small battalion of hollow, wooden dolls of varying shapes and colors, all staring back at you with their painted eyes from the tabletop upon which you've lined them up), radical thinker and man of vision, poured all of his heart, mind and soul into his intelligent, fantastical, dark, anarchistic, philosophical, and utterly daring Marriage of Heaven & Hell. Of course, I could probably go on for quite a long time with such comparisons, but I think I've made my point with what I've already put down. The point is, quite simply, that I care about what I do a great deal, and I dedicate myself wholly to the endeavors I take on, whether they're literary, poetic, or journalistic...well, or such as in this case, anti-journalistic, for this is decidedly an exercise in anti-journalism (as singer/songwriter Taylor Kirk of the Canadian roots and blues endeavor Timber Timbre pointed out after our interview a while back).    

In this project I am not only representing myself as a writer but also the bands and singer/songwriters the articles are about.

Just as an experiment of sorts, I first posted two separate articles on the web, one on Bellingham troubadour Robert Sarazin Blake and another on the punk rock and indie-folk endeavor imadethismistake, just to see if it was worthwhile to do so. I wanted to see if people would log-on and read the material I was posting, and in two days time I had over 100 hits on my pilot site. That was the fist site I created. This is the second. And I think this one is decidedly better than the first, as it is more user friendly and less time challenging for me to post the articles and whatnot. I do hope to have something better set up for our artists and readers in the future, though.

Since the Robert Sarazin Blake and imadethismistake articles, I have posted pieces on Timber Timbre, The Good Day Sir, Raise Up Roof Beams, Tin Tree Factory, Naomi Hates Humans, Tim Holehouse, David Dondero, Future Kings of Nowhere, Pete & The Tar Gang, The Goddamn Gallows, etc. And soon I will be posting a lot more. You can visit the Our Members section of the site to see the bands and singer/songwriters who have taken part in this Issue so far, whose articles have been posted or will eventually be posted also. And you can visit the Articles section of the site to read the articles I have posted. 

And remember...       

 "We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us."

- Charles Bukowski