this is really tedious

Although I blame the lack of pressure to write as a youth on my feable writing skills, it probably also has to do with just me. Unfortunately the more pressure I put on myself the worse and more labored my writing gets. Writing quick emails or reports or even blogposts come relatively easy where any writing that will be more thoroughly judged and read I freeze up. And freezing up only leads to forced BAD WRITING.

It is true that writing was never a focus of my HS or pre-HS learning. Sure I wrote reports here and essays there, but there was never a focus on "this is good writing" and "this is bad writing." Never a lets write an essay and then edit it and then re-write it and then make it better kind of stuff. And not being any authority on elementary education who knows if there was space for it. Well there probably was as I also think I could have been pushed into more and harder math, more and harder science. It's tough competing from a out-west urban public high school where you're lucky to learn Spanish and get a couple of years of science against northeastern schools where the kids get shit like Latin and are pushed into doing real science research, etc. Though who knows if the results would be any different. I could hang with the best of them at Columbia but maybe I would of kicked there ass with better prep. And maybe I would have been a bigger asshole than I already am.

Ah Proust!

Ah Proust! In an effort to be more lettered, more well-read, I decided to read Swann's Way the first volume of Proust's In Search of Lost Time. And although I enjoyed I don't know if I enjoyed it immensely and further I don't know if I appreciated it's genious. In form and style it is different from most novels I have read in the past year, which has been limited to hard-boiled detective novels and non-fiction about music. The short punchy prose of Chandler and the long digressive flowery prose of Proust might as well be of different forms they are so far apart. Though they both rely on metaphor and colorful description, one just taking it's time a little more.

Is there any inherent value in being well-read or as in my case of having read Swann's Way in lieu of whatever. I don't have a strong opinion on it. With some irony it can be noted that In Search of Lost Time is itself about growth and learning through rememberance. It is fair to say that I found more to relate to every day life than I have in most other novels. And what is the role of the novel? And what to expect of one? In reading a classic should I have expected the sky to open and God to come down and tap me on the brow? Of course not. In enjoying the novel I have gotten all that one can expect.

But what to read next? I've already picked up another book I've unsuccessfully tried to finish in the past, Foucault's Birth of the Clinic, and it promises to be more difficult and the nuggets to be deeper buried than any of Proust's. Then after that is it more Proust? or on to other things? Steinbeck and Sterne? Oh well we'll see and so I will continue.

rough and tough times are a'coming

Maybe its just something in the air or my growing cynicism and pessimism but it seems that more crazy things are happeing every day. Random and undirected violence. People getting shot for no reason. Hit and run rampage in downtown San Francisco. 9-11 conspiracy theories. Growing white nationalist movements. Anger. Rage. Impotence. The kids are out of control.

Is it a function of the continued presence of the U.S. in Iraq and GWB's continued and increasing delusional functioning as the President of the United States? Is it the ever more evident lack of progress for the working poor? The lack of substitantive art being made? No clear national resistance to the status-quo? Unfortunately I have no answers but only a proposal.

The politico-kids love to quote true-isms like "the personal is the political" and though this is definitely true I don't think that means shopping at Whole Foods is kosher. It means dealing with and making your community better. It is up to us to create the new paradigm of self-sufficiency and doing things right on a real level. Why worry about the national good when we need to deal with the local problems? I refuse to feel guilty and I also refuse to feel impotent. Change can happen and we can all help it along. Individuals dealing with individuals to make our individual situations better.

the tide of opinion raises all boats

Much like voting and such things, writing about music on yr blog or playing a groups songs on yr radio show doesn't do much of nothing. That is it really doesn't mean a whole hill of beans. Or at least it's only one bean in a whole hill of beans; and that give or take that one bean it doesn't mean much to the total number beans. It takes a lot of bean all getting together in the same spot to make a pile and only a pile means much of anything and only a big pile at that.

The consequence being that if one of those beans want to seem to have power, to seem to affect the whole pile or the perspective of the pile, they need to be in line with the rest of the pile. If you back the winner, you become a winner. Your actual minority opinion might be disnonant with the pile core opinion or the other pole of pile opinion but to assure your own position as a "taste-maker" and "early adopter" you toe the line. A whole LCD equation of opinion. Leaving two options for the streetlevel college radio dj or indie rock blogger. Toe the line or strike out alone. Striking out alone is lonely, doesn't reap recoginition, requires more work and rends you more vulnerable to attacks. But in the end is more rewarding, right? RIGHT?

a brief downtown disco discursion

Though it hasn't caught on with the hipsters looking into the '80s nyc scene with an open mind towards disco has reapped big benifits. How can one appreciate New Order w/o listening to Moroder and Italo-Disco or NYC electro produced by Arthur Baker who worked with them? Oh well. New York in the '80s was so furtile and pop culture is still reaping the benifits.

Example: south bronx teenage Jellybean Benitez djs in manhattan, does the Roxy, meets Madonna because shes in a band playing drums (drums!) that he's gonna remix. They do it, she becomes famous, he helps remix tons of tracks on her first album. whatever. She also asks the Beastie Boys to open for her on her first tour. Appropriate enough because they're both taking '80s nyc innovations to the pop masses. She - disco electro pop w/ sligh sexuality/awareness, They - Hip-Hop w/ jokester comic sexuality. Both with a wink-non-wink. The Beasties first album is produced by Rick Rubin who also co-produced Jazzy Jay's track It's Yours that was released on Arthur Baker's Streetwise (or some subsidiary thereof). Baker also co-produced Bambattaa's Planet Rock which Jellybean remixed. Baker also release the Dominatrix's Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight which was recorded by a fellow who was also in Ike Yard, with releases on Factory America, and the Death Comet Crew, ground zero enlightened hiphop with Ramalezee on vocals. Ramalzee, B-boy and graffitti writer, also records seminal hiphop hit Beat Bop with k-rob that is co-produced by Jean-Michel Basquiat who was also in a band with Vincent Gallo called Gray. Gray also played the no-wave/post-no-wave downtown scene with Arto bands, Jim Jarmusch bands, SY, etc. Don't forget Madonna's band Breakfast Club later goes on to record for ZE records one of the few nyc labels releasing no-wave and other downtown detrus: Contortions, Suicide, Arto, Rosa Yemen, Lizzie Mercier Descloux (bff of Patti Smith), Kid Creole, etc. A lot of that produced by Bob Blank at his Blank Tape Studio where he also helped produced Disco along the lines of Arthur Russell's Dinosaur L stuff. Arthur Russell also releasing disco and not-disco and electro on his Sleeping Bag records, stuff like Mantronix's first couple of albums. Mantronix, like Jellybean, another Harlem/South Bronx teen riding the wave, making the wave to musical greatness. I'm sure he knew Madonna too. Time to ride the wave, eh?

Cedric Im Brooks v. the Monolith

For most, and for most that people are aware of Jamaican music equals Reggae. And most would allow for the fact that the current reggae doesn't sound much like classic '70s reggae, it at least follows a logical growth from historical reggae to the current JA sound and therefore can still be classifiable as "reggae." Not surprisingly this simplistic statement "JA music: Reggae :: Reggae: JA music" is far from true. The most well-known JA export yes, but all the music created? Far from it. There's jamaican jazz, rock, funk, soul, etc and I'm even sure there is JA rap and punk, the middle class youths have to seperate themselves somehow right? That's not even to mention the other inidigenous JA/carribean sounds: Mento, calypso, etc. Which esp. in the '70s was probably more prominent in actual clubs and performance than reggae, also true of disco in the '70s. There's a crucial scene in Rockers where the Rasta horsemouth and friend (another reggae luminary, I don't remember who) invade and take over a disco where their playing western disco to a a receptive jamaican middle class audience. Not surprising for a music made in the ghetto by the underclass and dominated by a cult-ish un-recognized, by larger world church standards, to be unrecognized for the importance and dominance and creative power that it was by the middle and upper classes. It was probably fuel for the creative fire and now that roots reggae and rasta are more recognized by the gov't, its not surprising that its more tepid now and that the sufferer youth have moved on to other musics that are not yet synthesized into the approved sanctioned state identity.

The key musicians on the classic reggae sides of the '70s also were not limited to reggae and most (being pro musicians) were well aware of musics being made outside the island. One of them being Cedric Im Brooks who as the story goes traveled to the US/Philly and was exposed to some of the out there jazz of Sun Ra and the other musics coming from around the world. And even though Reggae was the bread and butter he decided to start cutting out there musics at Studio One and decidely non-reggae music. On the two records I've heard, Flash Forward and United Africa there is a fair amount of reggae. All of Flash is Studio One reggae rhythms with Brooks sax doing the vocal work. United Africa has one long reggae track, an instrumental of the rasta anthem (also recorded, possibly written by the Abbysinians) Satta Massa Ganna but than it ventures all over. Afro-beat, other carribian rhythms, Jazz, etc. THIS IS NO REGGAE RECORD. and it's good, but it's not as out there as the notes would indicated. This is not cosmic free jazz. This is just cosmic re-thinking of what it is to be a dispora musician. Cosmic United African World Music. not so cosmic, but all godly rasta united.

-White Man

Pimp My Ride

While spending time in P****** at my parent's house and in S** D***** at my grandmothers house it was a complete gorge fest. I gorged myself on Ice Cream and Soda and lazing about and TV. Cable TV. While my parents of super-cable with 20 movie channels and one porn channel (what? why do they have that?) and millions of crappy things to watch my grandmother only has basic cable. And in the four days I was there I decided to focus on watching MTV. As has been the case for a while they no longer play many music videos on MTV and late at night they usually string together series of cheaply made shows. In the past this would be the cribs and jackass slot, this past week it was the slot for their def comedy show (don't remember the title) and the godly PIMP MY RIDE.

I'm sure I've heard of this show before but this was my first exposure to Xibizits gift to his fellow man of pimped out rides. The premise is they take beaters, serious serious beat-up cars, often nice-ish cars (muscle cars, range rovers, limos) that have seen far better days. They're not pimping out beat-up mid-90's Escorts (I can only dream) but they are pimping out cars for people who obv. care about having a cool car but no where near the means/time/real inclination to make it happen.

The real draw though is not the good-hearted feel good aspect, nor really the how-to-ish aspect as they pimp out the ride nor even some revelling in pimped out cars. Thats because, though the real appeal is the end product, they don't pimp'em out to normal people standards but do bizarro things that have no place in cars. Multiple 30 inch monitors, computers of all kinds, 30 ft projection screens popping out of trunks, trunks turned into rumble seats, absurd gaudy paint jobs, pnuematic message tube systems, water beds, water purifiers. This isn't a ghetto fantasy approaching anything near reality but a fantasy world where people aren't just defined by their cars but disappear in the presence of their cars. They no longer are imprinted by their cars nor have any real imprint on the car. The equation of pimped out car plus driver equals pimped out car; the driver is so miniscule in presence next to the ridiculousness of the car that all is left is the car. AND THIS IS NOT A CRITIQUE. THIS SHOW IS GREAT. WE SHOULD ALL BE SUBSUMMED BY OUR CARS.

Rap, Electro, Disco

It all started with a vague interest in disco stemming from hints dropped by New Order, ACR and the '80s downtown nyc art music scene as well as the records repressed by the guy who runs gimme gimme records. If cool people thought disco was cool, maybe there was something to it. And then Soul Jazz pressed that Arthur Russell collection and new york hipsters were throwing disco parties at Tonic. I was convinced that disco was going to be the next big hipster craze. And it was sort of, but really wasn't. Kids were not scouring record bins for obscure disco records but obviously the dance thing was already big with the kids. Chk Chk Chk and Rapture records were effectively punk disco records and those came out before my interest in the genre and that's about as far as it was going to go. There might be Disco Not Disco comps but not much else. But that doesn't mean my interest wasn't piqued and I just continued down the path that no hipster would follow. Pursuing disco records.

So far it's been hit/miss and day-to-day as far as my love of this music goes. Moroder's records are all good but can be a bit much on somedays. Some of the shit is crap and most of the used 12"s in the stores are crap too. Luckily it has also lead easily into early new york hip-hop which came out primarly on new york independent disco labels that played it as the fad it was in the downtown discos. Sugarhill, P&P, Streetwise, Tommy Boy were all more or less disco labels that happened to have bigger success with early hip-hop releases and subsequently became hip-hop labels. Furthermore, since most of the early hip-hop records were just rap over recycled disco breaks it was more-or-less disco from the recorded music perspective. Party music with a dance beat. I think my deepest interest is in the early electro sounds from new york. Soul Sonic Force's first couple 12"ers, Marley Marl's first productions and such. Kraftwerk meets Boogie Down Bronx.

Dan played a group in Munich called Warp 9 on Prism records. Prism being another nyc start -up jumping from the disco beat to the electro hip-hop hits. Electro jams produced by Jellybean Benitz. And it's good so I think I'll continue to pursue it. Good stuff.