ArthurFest Gets Reuters Write-Up

Jay Babcock is hyping Arthur Fest as "a big prom"... Yoko Ono was just added to the bill. Does anyone want to be my prom date?

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Musicians both noted and obscure, as well as a sidebar cavalcade of art, film and culture, will perform in the Los Angeles hipster suburb of Los Feliz on Sept. 4-5 with the debut of ArthurFest.

"It's a bit of a coming-out party," says Jay Babcock, editor of the free monthly magazine Arthur, which is co-producing the Labor Day weekend event at Barnsdall Art Park with Spaceland Prods. "It's a big prom."

For many, the debutante at Barnsdall will be Arthur itself. The festival will mark the third anniversary of Babcock's rag, which is published in a 50,000-copy run and distributed nationally through record stores and alternative culture retailers.

Babcock says that such forward-looking publications as Rolling Stone of the '60s, the New Musical Express of the '80s and underground music mags including Slash, Forced Exposure and Search & Destroy and even the highbrow '60s lit-mag the Evergreen Review served as models for Arthur. He adds that the publication "was founded on the idea that the music press, and the music culture press, is homogenized and snarky ... We want to be the highest common denominator."