So in the interest of full disclosure... and just to let ya know...
This weekend is the debut of a fashion event I helped brainstorm called Underground Runway...
if yer in the Bay Area this Saturday night I encourage ya to check it out...
At our debut this Saturday, multiple local designers are to be featured in the premiere live event hosted by the fly Malika (of MTV's Making The Band ) to be held at 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco on Saturday March 3rd 2007, with doors and VIP cocktail reception starting at 8:30 pm.
Guests will be treated to hot and flashy runway presentations from each designer's latest sexy collections, and a lavish after party with music from top Bay Area DJ talents like DJ Undakut, Sake 1, and possibly even myself in da mix...
The goings on will be documented by numerous still photographers, as well as a camera crew run by award winning filmmaker Kevin Epps (Straight Outta Hunters Point, Rap Dreams) who will be showing the edited results via Adam Curry's global reaching Podshow Network. Listen for Kevin around 12 on The Bay Area's Pirate Cat Radio at 89.7 FM on the day of the show being interviewed by Ms. Lilycat. Event logistics, lighting, projections and whatnots will be provided by a crew including myself and Eddie Cantrell of EventMagic, who runs one of the Bay Area's top event coordination crews.
We're pulling this thing together in a quick & dirty high energy fashion on a shoe string, but will deliver ya a quality evening with many creative & talented folks working behind the scenes and of course, striving to put some serious beauty on display...
bring yer cameras... is it a coincidence that this foto friendly event will be sharing space as the Flickr anniversary party goes down?
There's a full bar and a full slate of stuff going down...
Maybe I'll see some of ya there...
&
Here's some VIP & fashionista worthy mp3 tuneage & whatnot for all you style stragglers below...
Just blogging a bit for ya on a rainy Monday night , enjoying some delicious sweet potato tamales from local heroine Virginia the Tamale Lady. Maybe I'll creep out into the hail and get a beer...but maybe i'll spiel at ya 1st...
I guess since the weather here's a lil funky...I'll toss ya some links to funky tuneage down below as well...
Over the weekend I made a lil trip down to LA, I had intended to maybe catch some nightlife at the Smell where I saw that Mars Volta frontman Omar's new project Zechs Marquise was making the scene...
I don't know how it happenend but on Friday night I didn't make it much past my hotel...
After dinner and brews stumbling around the Japantown area ( mainly enjoying finger foods at Weiland's, and Chop Suey)... I got the idea to meet my lil' bro for drinks after he got out of The Laker game where he was putting away a half dozen or so free hospitality suite brews.
Where better to rendezvous than my hotel's 35th floor revolving cocktail lounge... I loved watching this cyndrical glass coated hotel as kid when it was used as a "futuristic" backdrop for the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century sci-fi series...
Now it's sorta old school...a 70's version of what was supposed to be the future...including futuristic lighted martini glasses.
But the cocktails are definitely old school...just with new school inflationary pricing... Needless to say a couple rounds of specialty cocktails and $155 later... ( add in a cheese plate & the view I guess)...
We had the spins...literally and figuratively.
It was time to descend into the bowels of the hotel and find my room...
only problem was I had no idea what tower, or even floor I was in by that point...my unlabeled Westin key card was no help...
I kept slipping the card into various doors on various floors hoping for a green light...
All I could recall was that I was in the teens somewhere, maybe 14th floor or was it 17th... sorta near the elevator I think... but which elevator...
So after about half an hour of quality reality tv for closed circuit security camera enjoyment I decided I'd retire back to the bar in the lobby until last call. At least it was spot where if I was gonna get arrested it would be for annoying tourist couples from the midwest just by ordering beers they'd never heard of...
Like I must assume Anchor Steam is some sort of secret to the masses, despite having been brewed continuously from 1896 until prohibition and then onward since the 1960's by rebel Maytag washer heir Fritz Maytag on the side of San Francisco's Potrero Hill...
L.A, though despite being more than 10x the size and population of San Francisco is not so lucky in the beer department, so mostly peoples drink yellowish swill...
I was lucky to find some Sam Adams while bar hopping downtown, but compared to the tasty barleywines Magnolia and Toronado in my neighborhood were throwing around during Strong Beer Month... it was a sad situation.
But one thing LA has though is a few bitchin' micro funk labels, like Stonesthrow and it's also home of the Kajmere label...
Stonesthrow's been around since the late 90's and gets a lot more attention, what with it's links to J Dilla, Peanut Butter Wolf etc...Stonesthrow also has subsidiary imprints Now-Again and Soul Cal that specialize in rare funk and soul re-issues.
Like this Cut Chemist remix that chops, mashes and slides through a buncha old school grooves heard on the label's seriously mandatory compilation Funky 16 Corners...
or perhaps this bit of relatively obscure bit o' nappy Indianapolis funk delivered circa 75 by Amnesty... via the latest Stonesthrow / Now Again reissue..."Free Your Mind"
but any fan of the stuff put out via Stonesthrow might wanna check into Kajmere as well...
This Kajmere label was co-founded circa 2003 by "Loslito" Guaico, an LA scenester & member of Breakestra, and is another deep repository of gritty grooves...
So the next couple tracks I'm gonna lay on ya from them are worth a listen if ya have ears and possibly feet that can appreciate this sorta thang...
One of their most emphasized artists has been the Seattle based female soul singer Choklate... On this track from Sound Volume 1 she is joined by Jurassic 5's voice of authority and hip hop royalty Chali 2na
Choklate is on tour this spring in the dirty south & east coast & even Tejas so y'all check her out
Saturday, March 10th, 2007
Apache Cafe
Hustle Hard Show #1 - 9p
ATL GA USA
Price: Cover
Hustle Hard '07 Launch in ATL
Tuesday, March 13th, 2007
Reign
Choklate - 9p
Norfolk VA USA
Price: Cover
Choklate returns to VA feat the Fuzz Band
Thursday, March 15th, 2007
Bohemian Caverns
Choklate - 9p
DC WA/DC USA
Price: Cover
DC Performance Debut
Friday, March 16th, 2007
Berklee Performance Center
Choklate w/ Raheem Devaughn - 9p
Boston Mass USA
Price: Cover
Wednesday, March 21st, 2007
SOB's
NY Performance Debut - 9p
New York NY USA
Price: Cover
Soul Village Hosted by Eric Roberson
Sunday, March 25th, 2007
The Triple Door
Welcome Home Choklate feat. Peter Hadar and Eric Roberson - 8 & 10pm
Seattle WA USA
Price: Cover
Hustle Hard '07 Tour Finale Feat. Peter Hadar and Eric Roberson
Friday, April 27th, 2007
Soul Music Conference
Soul Music Conference
Dallas TX
Saturday, April 28th, 2007
Soul Music Conference
Dallas TX
Afrodisiac Soundsystem
One of the other interesting Kajmere projects has been a series of white label-esque afro mash ups by the Afrodisiac Sound System crew who create cross cultural mash ups like this one incorporating Michael Jackson's Billie Jean groove and inspirational samples from Fela Anikupalo Kuti...
Visit KajmereSound.com for more info on this dynamic and diverse label...
Well finish up with some sounds from Maestro Omar Sosa...
This Berkely based jazz/latin/soul musician was born in the inland Cuban city of Camagüey and after rigorous musical studies and stints in Ecuador & Spain, he made it to the US in 1995. He began working with John Santos and has been well respected around SF's latin jazz scene for years...but last year was really in some ways the man's commerical breakthrough...
He was nominated for a Grammy in 2006 for the 2nd time, and he was made the subject of a trippy remix CD effort produced by Paris-based drummer, Steve Argüelles as well...
Here are two cuts... one from Mulatos and the other a remix of a track from the Mulatos Remix project...
I've got a nutty pal whose also trying to get me to go see The Who in Fresno on Sunday. All I know is that would be way to much time spent driving around out there... in the, gulp, Central Valley.
The valley itself is a long stretch of not much of nothing, at least culturally significant..which has made it the proud prime meth origination spot in the nation...
California authorities busted over 2,200 labs in the year 2000...
Little nowhere towns off the beaten path like Turlock, Manteca ( Spanish for Lard) Los Banos ( Spanish for shithole) have long been popular outposts for hopelessly deviant drugged out California speed tweakers.
I knew some Central California tweakers once who were involved in finding some ornate stored antique European brass bridge railings in crates that they had melted down for a pittance in scrap metal money...
Originally Meth was used on trooops and war workers during WWII to keep them going , Japan supposedly had a full scale meth addiction epidemic in the 1940s. By the 50s, speed was popular with Beatniks, and housewives..bikers and truck drivers. By the 1960's, Amphetamines were fairly mainstream, with President Kennedy even getting Vitamin & Energy Shots weekly.
Lou Reed was always known as a chemical cowboy, and you just know he had to be on something when he was making music like this... the 8-track Hall of Fame release Lou Reed - Metal Machine Music
Eventually , with help of biker gangs and nowadays since the late 80's a highly organized latino drug mafia, Meth is everywhere...not just our lowly lil central valley.
Alaska had 66 speed labs seized in 2004... more than quadruple the number of just 4 years earlier...
Arkansas authorities seized more than 800 labs in 2004, double the amount in Texas a state w/ 10x the population.
Here's a 60 second PSA about the drug produced by Patrick Mandingo for Spokane Washington...
God knows, I love a good time as much as anyone...but why the cranky powder appeals to people is beyond me. I understand the physiological flava of the whole shebang...but if ya ever spent anytime around someone "enjoying" their speed binge, that experience seems like it should be enough to scare ya straight...
All I know is I'll be shopping at one of those truckstops in a few hours alongside folks like the chick above...and i just can't wait to see that concert crowd in Fresno...
If Ya Ever end Up on Ol' Hwy 5 , Here's Some Old Fashioned Central Valley Style Hillbilly Truckin Music For Yer Journey...
As I dutifully reported last month, former Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker is coming stateside, and has added a second show in NYC to meet demand. His biggest US showcase will be at Coachella, in front of tens of thousands...
Not sure how all this will translate commercially over here, at least for a semi-obscure Brit singer whose current CD's hidden emphasis bonus track features the corporate radio friendly refrain "Cunts Are Still Running The World"
While the British media are openly speculating on how many hours we have until Bush launches an attack on Iran, USA TODAY's founder Al Neuharth finally put GW Bush on the list of all time worst presidents. More on that in a minute, but first y'all get yourselves in the mood with some thematic Presidentially relevant tuneage...
In an editorial published on President's Day, now retired Gannett publisher/editor Al Neuharth, outed Bush as beyond lame in his online column aka "blog":
Our great country has had 43 presidents. Many very good. A few pretty bad. On Presidents Day next Monday, it's appropriate to commemorate them all.
I remember every president since Herbert Hoover, when I was a grade school kid. He was one of the worst. I've personally met every president since Dwight Eisenhower. He was one of the best.
A year ago I criticized Hillary Clinton for saying "this (Bush) administration will go down in history as one of the worst."
"She's wrong," I wrote. Then I rated these five presidents, in this order, as the worst: Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan, Ulysses Grant, Hoover and Richard Nixon. "It's very unlikely Bush can crack that list," I added.
I was wrong. This is my mea culpa. Not only has Bush cracked that list, but he is planted firmly at the top.
Meanwhile, I just read today that in a press conference on Feb 14th Bush tellingly told reporterswith candor in his best "Aw, shucks, I'm schoolin' ya hear fellas" voice :
"Money trumps peace sometimes. In other words commercial interests are very powerful interests..."
WOW...no sh*t sherlock, oh and say hello for me to all your Halliburton homies I see waiting for those upcoming Iran contracts ...
Any taxpayer worth their weight in non voluntary donations made to the government can complain about the institutionalized bureaucratic inefficiencies, laziness and general bad service received when we actually have to deal with the government agencies in charge of the minutiae of our lives.
Rare is it when we see a remedy or even a challenge succeed against the gov't and it's labyrinth of unaccountability that ordinary citizens face in such cases. Well , Tuesday provided one of those rare small glimmers of light in the uphill battle against bureaucratic b.s.
L.A bureaucrats at the county's Registrar-Recorder's office have been put on notice by a California state judge for failing to get their work done on time. Apparently what got the case started was county official Conny B. McCormack's refusal to get staff to file the standard , but legally necessary paperwork for property titles & deeds within the two business day limit set by law. Citizens were previously unable to check on the stautus of their cases for days, financial lives and property transactions hung in the balance, and gov't preferred profiteers with unequal access to the "unfiled" data were making a profit. A current class action lawsuit could see the county end up paying out up to some $200 million in penalties requested by plaintiffs p.o'd about some 400,000 reconveyances allegedly not filed on time and another $16.6 million per month for continuing violations until the county complies with Sec. 2941(c). The judge gave LA county until March 7th to get their act in order.
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Southern California, where I will be spending most of my weekend, has lots of other news as usual, not surprising since it is where most of the state's population lives.
Amongst stories on the radar there, is Barack Obama wooing Hollywood Democrat donors and picking up more than a million at a $2,300 a plate Beverly Hills fundraiser. His itinerary also included an even more exclusive late night private dinner for 40 really, really big ticket donors at David Geffen's estate.
The earlier larger scale event at the Beverly Hilton was hosted by Geffen and his Dreamworks partner's Steven Spielberg & Jeffrey Katzenberg. The star power sightings included Jennifer Aniston, Norman Lear, Ron Howard, Morgan Freeman, Tom Hanks, Eddie Murphy, Ben Stiller and producer Brad Grey, current head of Paramount Studios.
Interestingly, Obama kept his media time to a minimum, answering questions only to the Los Angeles Sentinel, an African American weekly newspaper, which aides said would be his only California press interview.
California has attempted to increase it's political clout this year by moving it's 08 presidential primary to February 5th. Now less than a year away, Obama , just 11 days into his "campaign" is the 1st high profile democratic hopeful to rake the state's wealthy for checks...
Obama, moves on to the far less star studded environs of Des Moines today... bypassing a Labor Forum in Nevada where most other top democratic hopefuls were appearing.
Hillary Clinton though is expected later this week to the LA area, but unlike Obama who showed up in Crenshaw at a lively outdoor rally for 7,000, Hillary has no public events scheduled. Her LA itinerary appears to be heavy on meetings with high powered financiers in Pacific Palisades and deep pocketed execs, like those at Creative Artists Agency in Century City. There's a fundraising event at the office of Ninja Turtles mogul Haim Saban, as well as an event sponsored by Iranian immigrants. According to the LA Times, Clinton has also scheduled two other California trips next month to raise more money, in some cases from donors also giving to Obama.
In another strange dispatch out of Southern California, a prominent rabbi, and longtime mideast peace movement member has issued a formal apology to a right-wing conservative activist who claimed she was attacked by the man at a UCLA event.
"I am deeply sorry that I hit, kicked, and scratched you and called you a liar. By taking these unprovoked actions, I have contradicted the pluralism, peace and tolerance about which I so often preach. I have also violated the humanitarian teachings of Judaism regarding kindness and respect for others that I am bound to uphold."
so wrote Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, who for 30 years has been the director of Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life at UCLA. He is currently on "sabbatical".
The "attack" on writer Rachel Neuwirth, reportedly occured following an Oct 2003 speech by lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who was promoting his book “The Case for Israel.” Ms. Neuwirth, a 50 something real estate agent and staunch pro-Israel activist & writer, was participating in a post event protest by a nationalist Israeli group and confronted Seidler-Feller angerly about his inviting a Palestinian to speak on campus.
After the brief scuffle which started when Seidler-Feller reportedly deflected Neuwirth's pointing fingers & grabbed her wrists, she called him a "capo", an insult meant to infer he would have capitulated to the Nazi's. Despite Neuwirth's claims that she was roughed up at the time, Seidler-Feller was never charged with assault by police.
Neuwirth, and her supporters have said their interest in pursuing the matter was based solely on the issue of male violence against women, but have capitalized on the media attention to promote their virulent anti-Palestinian/ pro-Israeli views. In her lawsuit filed against Hillel she asked for
"damages for battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress and negligent retention."
At the time of the incident, Yigel Arens of the Southern California based Information Sciences Institute (which is affiliated with USC), wrote "Neuwirth is an otherwise normal person who has a compulsive obsession with those whose position on Israel and Israeli policies she disputes. She has made it her life’s mission to hound such people and groups and has by now become a constant disruptive presence at all meetings, demonstrations, etc., that support Palestinian rights in Los Angeles. She is not to be reasoned with."
In a move telling of the ongoing Google-fication of the online world...
As predicted in a January report in The Wall Street Journal, Google has purchased video game advertising agency Adscape Media for $23 million. Execs at Adscape, will eventually begin nesting at the multi-building Google-plex in Mountain View CA and figure ways to slip Google's "AdSense" clients into the online gaming realm.
rare .mp3 track of the minute: The Nazz ( featuring Todd Rundgren) - It's Not That Easy
Aside from Britney Spears shaving her head ala Sinead O' Connor, further evidence has surfaced of the decline of American empire. The New York Stock Exchange, has dropped to third in the global market volume for initial public offerings.
Another sign that America is losing it's way... well, pundits in conservative run US media are aghast that a So Cal legislator named Lloyd Levine has proposed eventually eliminating incandescent bulbs from the state's marketplaces. Editorials have sprung up around the country, speculating how stupid it is that nutty Californian's and their sick liberal values are seeking to control our consumer desires, make us live in darkness by banning our lightbulbs and starve us without access to satisfying saturated trans fatty acid rich diets...
California legislators are going forward despite being lampooned in the conservative media for a bill that would limit incandescent bulbs from being sold in the state. Despite Fox News attempting to ridicule the measure and rile the sleeping masses of overweight viewers by telling cosumers their freedom of choice is threatened, it just makes sense. Even electrical manufacturing giant Philips has announced plans to stop making incandescent bulbs by 2016.
With ready availibility of compact fluorescents and even light emitting diode technologies long available, the need for the old fashioned energy inefficient light bulb has declined.
In fact California may even be behind the curve...for the lead, we can look down under...
Australia is promising it will be the 1st country to get rid of the bulbs altogether. Australian Enviornmental Minister Malcolm Turnbull pledges to do away with the outmoded technology by 2010. Turnbull has told media reps
"Electric lighting is a vital part of our lives; globally it generates emissions equal to 70 percent of those from all the world's passenger vehicles."
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That's All For Now Folks.. hit the archives for more whatever yer looking fer
Maybe call me slow, but I just found out that Neil Youngstarted a section on his website awhile back called Songs Of The Times, and there are over a 1000 free tunes you can listen to from various songwriters known and unknown. All deal with the timely subjects of war, patriotism, our foolish leaders and the state of the world we are living in.
With all due respect, I haven't been in your shoes
And I know it must be hard with all the things you goin' through, Got the world on your shoulders, everybody's watchin' you, Keep us all safe and out the same mouth we hate you, I voted for you, til this day I don't regret it When the funk popped off, you was there in a second, Showed what it is, taught them cowards a lesson, If they wanna go to war, GW ah get at em' You did what we needed, in our darkest hour, While our peoples was dying, in those burnin' twin towers, Never before, had we seen it like this The enemies we lookin' for, was livin' in our mist, So we brought it to em' and we hit em' where it hurt, Stuck they heads in the sand and knock they dicks in the dirt, They know what it is Sir, job well done, Now pick up the phone and tell our boys come on home,
Bring Em Home bring our brothers home Too much dying, they been gone to long, The people cryin', that this war is wrong, Right or wrong, it's time to come home
In a world that's so cold and nobody knows what this life has in store we can let it go....let it go
And now they got the House and now they got the Senate, but it ain't what you got, it's what you do with it, everybody's watchin' you, to see what it do politics,is politics, you better make some moves Living in a glass house you don't throw stones, All eyes on ya'll now you sittin' on the throne, We listen close, don't sing the same songs, Cause in two more years it's more votin' goin' on, It's not about you, you can hit the door, it's about them youngsters out fightin' the war, Clean up the game, we done made a mess, We done our best, and we pass the test, We hit'em in the desert, Blast'em in the caves, Tanks through their cities, And Sadaam gone hang, They know what it is, Sir job well done, Now pick up the phone and tell our boy's come on home,
Bring Em Home bring our brothers home Too much dying, they been gone to long, The people cryin', that this war is wrong, Right or wrong, it's time to come home
In a world that's so cold and nobody knows what this life has in store we can let it go....let it go
I support you Sir and we got no beef, I'm just a rapper, you Commander and Chief, From out of my mouth, my heart do speak So everything I'm saying Sir, is what I believe, I do believe that the children are our future, So why leave' em open where them rats can shoot'em? If we leave 'em there, them suicides gone do'em drive past the front line and run right into them, They don't value life, so it ain't no talking to them, They say when they die, a bunch of virgins gone screw them, Now you tell me, what kind of ish is that? We took'em to war, now it's time to fall back I support you and the war on terror, and I prayed for you, when you made that error, This is not the enemy, this is from a friend, Bring our boy's home and in the end we all win, Bring Em Home
Bring Em Home , bring our brothers home Too much dying, they been gone to long, The people cryin', that this war is wrong, Right or wrong, it's time to come home
In a world that's so cold and nobody knows what this life has in store we can let it go....let it go
The world is changing, Life is changing, But we can make it, Yes we can, Yes we can
------------ Search Inside The Music ---------------
Researchers at Sun Microsystems are working on technology that goes beyond mere meta data to recommend music and hope to revolutionize the "shuffle" play. They are attempting to create machines that can listen, and use processing algorithms to identify and recognize similarities in music. Aside from training machines to analyze tunes, Sun's crew are digging into digital music users listening habits and discovered interesting things about music discovery, and what is driving listening habits.
Lead investigator Paul Lamere has developed 3D visualizations that allow users to "fly" through their clustered collections. He's utilized a specially developed internal search engine as well as social tagging data from Last.FM ( which has determined 422 shades of metal) and what he calls folksonomies.
Amongst some of the Sun music findings :
80% of user listening time is concentrated on about 20% of their music. 63 % of the songs on hard drives & I-Pods had not been listened to even once.
in another finding by Lamere did not discussed in the podcast but made clear on his Sun blog:
All that immersion into music research revealed that Emusic is a solid choice for music lovers... I myself have said this on several occasions in the past 6 months, including yesterday, and i am glad to see a distinguished researcher has backed up my own findings. Lamere who is based in Burlington Vermont, could not find the new Deerhoof album at local stores...so he made the plunge into Emusic's free trial when he saw the album offered instantly on their servers.
I gave it a shot, and I'm glad I did. For the price of a CD at the local bookstore, I can get 50 downloads per month from eMusic. The downloads are non-DRM'd high-bit rate mp3s (VBR of at least 192K). The lack of DRM means that I can put the tracks on my iPod (unlike Rhapsody and Napster). eMusic keeps track of what music I've downloaded so I can redownload any purchased track so I don't have to worry about losing my music when my disk dies. The catalog is surprisingly deep. You won't find U2 or the Beatles, but it is a gold mine for indie music. It's no surprise that with its deep, long tail selection of DRM free, high quality music that eMusic is the second largest digital music store - and I think that eMusic, and offerings like it will be the future of music.
I keep my homepage set to the url http://news.google.com, which not only offers a glance at alll the latest news coming down the wire, but customization by region, topics , keywords, phrases and names of interest. Well, it appears my news junkie fix is an expensive habit, and may be threatened somewhat by an EU court decision.
A Belgian court, in typically snooty European fashion, has ruled that Google must refrain from publishing "copyrighted content" on it's popular Google News aggregator site in Europe without prior permission. The court ruled Google had also violated "Belgian data-storage law" by archiving stories the papers usually charge for.
The decision came on the heels of a prior ruling that laid out penalties of more than US$1 million per day for violations. The good news for Google is that the new ruling went somewhat in Google's favor by reducing the penalty Google must pay for using unauthorized article extracts & photos to be $32,390 per day. A U.K newspaper has estimated that the fines could total in the $5 million range.
Google indicated Tuesday that it would appeal the Belgian court's latest ruling based on their contention that exemptions in copyright law allowed for publishing brief snippets and abstracts of copyrighted works.
The case, may open a large & expensive can of worms online if European online news providers & content owners can now charge any websites that dare quote & link to their websites without pre-approval. The case does not apply in the US as Google's publishing of synopsis links is considered "Fair Use" under the DMCA.
Global warming Caused By Cosmic Rays Not Humans?
A Danish scientist is causing controversy with his contention that global warming is caused by "cosmic rays" and not earthly emissions. "It was long thought that clouds were caused by climate change, but now we see that climate change is driven by clouds," Henrik Svensmark told London's The Sunday Telegraph.
Svensmark's study which bolsters critics of environmental controls over industry & emissions, was released just a week after the U.N. Panel on Climate Change released an authoritative multi scientist endorsed report that definitively said human carbon dioxide releases were responsible for the rapid increase in global warming. For more info on whether Washington will ever get any meaningful legislation passewd on the issue of climate controls , visit AlterNet for the latest.
Hence the title of this blog involving the term "Random Revelations"...
That's what we have today for ya...
seems like so much of what I experience in this modern life seems predetermined. overly affected and set in plastic molds...
But I loves me some "random"...
Tonight I just randomly discovered a record label called Random Chance Inc and their catalog of sonic treats.
They sorta appeared outta nowhere in my radar...I saw my local PBS affiliate was showing the great "Satchmo" documentary so there I was looking up some Louis Armstrong tunes to download. I stumbled upon an interesting looking tribute disc put out by this Random Chance label. Aside from the "Mental Strain at Dawn" disc that has some of the last recordings of Armstrong associate Doc Cheatham on it and tunes by Jack Pervis, Fats Waller etc, the label's done lotsa other stuff as well...
David Murray & Doc Cheatham etc - La Cucaracha (sample) Really seems like they release an eclectic blend of stuff, a veritable microcosm and melting pot of all that's right and adventuresome that's possible in music these days...
The music they issue ranges from straight down-the-line harmonica infused Chicago blues, to jazz, hip hop, latin, world music acts and unique variational combinations thereof. I doubt there's much money being raked out of the market, but it's a well oiled labor of love no less.
A perfect example of the label's diversity might be Pyeng Threadgill who has two albums on the label. Long a fixture in New York at venues like The Kitchen, Joe's Pub etc she moved to Berkeley on the west coast a few years ago.
Her most recent CD "Of The Air" features tasteful lightly produced jazzy vocal numbers that flit & flutter with a simple & subdued sense of passion and poetry, often about nocturnal matters.
While the newer album lacks in a strong sense of production trickery, it is an amiable enough effort.
In her first Random Chance effort she takes some dirt encrusted Robert Johnson tunes and polishes them with a laid back moderne jazzy feel that makes 'em shine and glimmer brighter than the platinum platters of Norah Jones.
She'll be doing gigs in Athens, Rome & Paris this spring so all you int'l denizens & globe trotters , check out her schedule at Pyeng.com.
If you liked that check out Angela Ortiz another young female vocalist ( & asparagus enthusiast) raised upstate NY but now out of Brooklyn whose got a CD called "All About You" coming out in March on Random Chance... tracklist: 01. Everyone Changes (4:16) 02. Dustpan (5:22) 03. Days of Lemonade (3:54) 04. Finish What You Started (4:15) 05. Mr. Thomas (4:32) 06. Steven (2:51) 07. Last of Who You Are (4:45) 08. We Must Be All Right (4:32) 09. Cheshire Cat (3:30) 10. All About You (5:11) 11. Song For Lost Friends (3:30) On her new CD she uses Ryan Scott on guitar who is also in Pyeng's band. For lyrical inspiration she told the website Musical Discoveries that she uses:
"Old books, and some new ones. Economics magazines and advertising literature. Very plain pictures of very normal-looking people. Court TV."
Most Random Chance label music seems to be available at Emusic.com, a monthly subscription download service which I highly recommend, and helps make many musical discoveries possible...
This next Random Chance release I'm highlighting features one of the longest running Latin jazz groups in the world paying tribute to the music of Art "Buhaina" Blakey, and The Jazz Messengers...
Incidentally JERRY GONZALEZ AND THE FORT APACHE BAND will appear in my homebase of San Francisco on March 9, 2007 @ The Palace of Fine Arts
On this Random Chance album recorded recorded at Famous Dave's BBQ in Chicago in 1999 you hear a former 1950's roommate of Little Walter and Jimmy Reed, that being Little Arthur Duncan who has a Chicago blues pedigree and a classic juke joint harmonica style.
hope ya enjoy all the DRM free mp3 love ya get here...here's a note one of the formats early cheerleaders recently sent to Steve Jobs after his recent blogburst defending I-Tunes and criticizing the RIAA & major label execs...
MP3.com Founder Michael Robertson's Response To Steve Jobs' Call For MP3
Dear Steve,
First let me say that your iTunes/iPod success is unprecedented and awe inspiring to me. Your impact on digital music is astounding. I read your open letter to the music industry and wanted to respond. It's great seeing the #1 DRM vendor in the world acknowledging that DRM is an issue. I've been talking about this since I founded MP3.com so it's nice to finally have someone with your prominence raising awareness on this topic (read You Own Nothing - the highest rated blog post I've ever written).
I want to challenge you to take actions to bolster your words to insure you are genuine and your letter wasn't simply a deflection shield to escape government scrutiny. In your letter you stated that currently "customers are being well served with a continuing stream of innovative products and a wide variety of choices." The incompatible chaos of digital music today is not serving customers or the music industry particularly well. I think you know this too which is why you posted your letter calling for change. I agree with your suggestion that the industry is already selling non-DRM files on CDs so it's not a big leap to selling them online (of course, as you know, non-DRM files are available online from many unlicensed sources so now it's just a question of whether the industry is going to put a price tag and make some money on this behavior). You mentioned that licensing your FairPlay DRM technology is problematic. Microsoft widely licenses its similar DRM technology and it doesn't seem to be any more or less secure than yours, so I'm not sure I agree with you. But instead of focusing on political posturing I want to focus on real solutions that can change the industry.
My vision is that customers should be able to mix and match the type of computer, music software, retail option and music devices they want to use. No single company is the best in every product category so consumer choice ensures the best music experience. Here are some immediate actions Apple could take to help push the industry in that direction.
1) Start selling some content in MP3 format in the iTunes store.
It's my understanding that Apple has a license from certain content providers that allow tracks to be sold in the MP3 format, like the CDBaby catalog. While the major labels might be insisting on DRM files, that isn't the case with many indie labels and other music providers. Making those songs available for purchase in the consumer friendly MP3 format would mean that some songs from the iTunes store would be compatible on every MP3 player. The big criticism of the iTunes store, which has spurned possible government action, is the fact that purchases only play on iPods. By selling MP3s in the iTunes store, files become interoperable with any player. It will be a minority of files, but according to your letter, major labels control only 70% of music distributed. Therefore, if a significant percentage of the remainder are made available in MP3 format, this would have an impact.
2) Publish the database format for iPods so other music software can be used.
Files stored on iPods are done so in a proprietary database structure that Apple does not reveal. The only software that can reliably move files to/from the iPod is iTunes. Thus, iPod owners are forced to use iTunes software exclusively. There are many good media managers available that I'm sure people would like to have work with their iPods. By publishing the database structure for iPods these music managers to interact with iPods. This would not mean licensing the DRM that wraps each music file, so it should not affect security in any way.
3) Open the doors for iTunes software to work seamlessly with other stores.
Today the iTunes software is tied solely to your iTunes store. These two platforms converse over the net with a secret language. It's not complicated, but it's also not public. So iTunes customers are tied only to your store and iPods only work seamlessly with that store. There is a growing list of great online music stores which sell MP3 tracks such as eClassical, Magnatune, Broadjam and Wippit. By revealing the language or API that your store uses, other stores could use that same technology. Meaning, they could sell songs that load directly into iTunes software and from there sync to iPods.
4) Make iTunes software for Linux.
I talked to you a few years ago about making iTunes work on Linux. Apple made the leap to Microsoft Windows by releasing iTunes for that platform. Porting iTunes to Linux would be a relatively easy job and give people more flexibility in their choice of operating system. A Linux company I founded called Linspire would even do the engineering for free if engineering resources were an issue.
I hope you'll consider taking these actions - none of which require approval of the music industry, nor require you to license your Fairplay DRM technology that you see as problematic. All of these actions will demonstrate that you want a world where consumers have options as to where they buy and play their music; not to mention, you'll be putting Apple's leadership where your pen is.
The Grammy awards attempted to do some sort of weak R & B tribute that is getting almost universally panned by the armchair critics association...
I'll throw myself in with that bunch as well...
Who cares if Chris Brown has a sea of orange sweatshirted goons that stomp on command...
Maybe some TV producer thinks that's the "Rhythm"...but someone tell those assholes at NARAS/CBS that the B stands for "Blues" not Bad, Boring or Banal...
You know it's band when even the funk authorities at the So Cal's conservative Orange County Register have got complaints about too many weak Eagles tribute tunes and
"... that ridiculous medley that ran from Smokey "Robot" Robinson to Lionel "Hello!" Richie to Chris "Has Jacko Joined Slipknot?" Brown, who hardly merited such a pyrotechnics-laden entrance."
I guess seeing the musical tribute to James "I'm Black & I'm Proud" Brown being done with nary a mention of his name by anyone except a few pix & clips and Christina Aguilera singing "It's A Man's Man's Man's World" was beyond sorta short shrifted...
But what would anyone expect...
They had the cracked out looking Black Eyed Peas posse give Booker T & The M.G's some sorta lifetime achievement honor. I wouldn't actually call it an honor, as the producers of these shows seem almost embarrassed by the presence of older musicians and tend to graze past them so fast with the cameras that if you blink you'd miss their "appearance". So went blindingly fast went similar "tributes" to The Doors and Grateful Dead etc as if the network was afraid a Justin Timberlake fan might ask his parents who the grey haired people awkwardly waving from their seats were.They are treated worse than guests at any church social or union hall, except these are supposedly men & woman who've made some sort of huge contribution to their art but aren't even allowed to speak.
I was bored watching the endless parade of pablum that is the Grammy Awards on Sunday night when I finally saw the face of Cosimo Matassa appear. He was lumped in a split screen photo with Stax co-founder Estelle Axton and songsmith Stephen Sondheim who were all receiving some sort of Trustees Award.
Matassa for those not in the know was a seminal figure in the history of rock n roll, particularly that of New Orleans origin. He retired from the rock n roll scene to help manage his family's other Nawlins legacy, that being Matassa's Market @ the corner of St. Philip and Dauphine St in the French Quarter.
A recent edition of New Orleans music journal Offbeat magazine reports that
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt
"have bought the building that once was the site of Cosimo Matassa’s Recording Studio—the building where Fats Domino, Ernie K-Doe, Lee Dorsey, Allen Toussaint, Chris Kenner and Irma Thomas worked their magic. Several significant hits were recorded in this building including, “Walkin’ To New Orleans,” “I Like It Like That,” It’s Raining,” “Ooh Poo Pah Doo” and “Mother-In-Law,” to name a few.
“That’s where my last French Quarter studio was located,” says Matassa, who will receive NARAS’ Trustees Award this month. “I owned the two buildings next door and then moved into that building around 1959. It was an old avocado warehouse when I bought it. I think I paid something ridiculous for it like $30,000. It was really just one big empty room with no heat or air conditioning. "
The home Matassa once recorded in at 521 Governor Nicholls Street has 4 bedrooms, 6 baths and according to previously published listing info features include a library with custom shelves, five fireplaces, a built-in wide and flat screen TV, and a second-floor landing with two Oriental silk lamps and a bank of French doors. Other features include ornate wood columns in the formal dining and living rooms, gauzy silk drapes framing floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room, a three-story guest house, and a gourmet kitchen with a Viking stove and hood, two ovens, a moisture-controlled warming tray, a Viking wine cellar, a SubZero refrigerator, a cappuccino machine, and a large butcher’s block island with an undermount porcelain basin...
Somehow I doubt ol' Cosimo Matassa kept the place quite in that style when he was making 45's outta there over 40-50 years ago. Another legend about the place is that it is haunted, and not just by the spirit of Professor Longhair. One New Orleans ghost guide goes as far as to say that back in the 1800's, that during efforts to save the building, volunteer firefighters found some gruesome crime scene evidence in the attic.
" According to several accounts, dead slaves were chained to the walls, but some were still alive and housed in cages, starved or maimed by medical experiments. One man had been surgically transformed into a woman, and a woman's arm and leg bones had been broken and reset at odd angles. Another woman's skin had been peeled off, while the lips of a third were sewn shut. A few had been dissected, with their organs still exposed. Scattered around the room were pails full of body parts, organs, and severed heads."
Or maybe that was another big house on the same block they were describing, y'know all look sorta spooky & similar in that part of the Vieux Carre...
Speaking of death, I was sorta shocked out of my stupor by a picture of Ruth Brown flashed during the closing farewell montage to all the musical figures who'd passed since the last Grammy telecast. I guess I missed that news flash around Thanksgiving last year... Although she certainly was no spring chicken, I had no idea she'd left us, apparently passing last November at a hospital near her home outside las Vegas.
It seemed ironic that so many clapped on the telecast as empresario Ahmet Ertegun's picture was shown, yet so few responded to hers.
How many label monkeys & artists in attendance knew that his record label Atlantic's early success was so due to her, it was for awhile in the 50's referred to as "The House That Ruth Built". Brown was the most commercially successful act at Atlantic between 1949 and 1962. Yet, afterwards she spent many despairing years in a lawsuit with Ertegun's company lawyers to get the proper money she & other acts were owed.
Sadly, one of the things she's to be remembered for, will not only be her onstage wildness, joy & passionate R&B singing, but her hard battle for royalty reform. She testified not only onstage to enthralled audiences as a bluesy chanteuse, but before Congress, where Brown brought attention to the despicable practices of record companies that had left so many early rhythm and blues pioneers basically out of the loop & impoverished. Ruth herself was tough and ended up scrapping between gigs and supporting herself over the years as a teacher's assistant, domestic, and school bus driver when show biz related offers would not come calling. Up until this fall she was regularly playing gigs weekly in a Las Vegas lounge alongside her 78 year old husband. In a recent interview she told the writer she was aware one of her old tunes was in a new commercial.
"They used "This Little Girls's Gone Rockin" for the new Hummer commercial, ...I am waiting for the check. (laughs raucously)"
Despite her levity, she paid the heavy price of paving a path as a woman in a male dominated industry, and was given less pay and less respect along her way to the top...and the slide back down to the bottom. Her efforts eventually resulted in renumeration for herself and other artists, and to the formation of the Rhythm and Blues Foundation.
Aside from her legal battles, her contributions to American music were many, including her success being essential in helping break a guy named Ray Charles, who once played in her band and would open shows for her.
Ruth Brown, known as "Miss Rhythm" was a top concert draw during her heyday, with tunes that spent 149 weeks on the R&B charts from 1949 to 1955. Ruth had sixteen Top Ten R&B chart records that included five Number 1's. Yet, she was eventually chased out of the biz and dropped by the early 60's when she became pregnant by Clyde McPhatter and could not tour to support the release schedule determined by the Atlantic label.
In the 70's work was hard to get, although Redd Foxx helped with her financially and got her parts on his TV show, and some nightclub & theatrical work. After a role in the ill fated sitcom Hello, Larry dried up her career renaissance finally began in earnest on Broadway. She finally won a Grammy and a Tony from her soundtrack work related to her starring role in "Black & Blue" a stage musical.
By the early 1980's when she obtained an attorney, she mentioned that record stores were full of her reissues, yet no royalty checks had been sent to her since the mid 60's. She started her campaign to get what the industry owed saying of her battle
"We never wanted charity. We only wanted what we had earned.”
She toured sporadically throughout the late 80's & early 90's while contracted to Fantasy Records, and wrote an autobiography of her troubled career in 1996 called "Miss Rhythm". She was inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 and became a popular host on two NPR shows ("Harlem Hit Parade" and "Blues Stage").
Here's a clip of her in her early 50's hey day...
A whole new generation knows her from Broadway productions and later as DJ "Motormouth Mable" from John Waters' cult film "Hairspray" with whom she appeared alongside Ricki Lake, Debbie Harry and Johnny Depp.
Above image courtesy the Cinematica website whose poster Jette Kernion also had time to mention upon the passing of the late Ruth's B-day that:
If you want to see Ruth Brown onscreen and singing, rent Lightning in a Bottle, where she sings to a playful Bill Cosby.
One movie not listed in Brown's filmography, sadly, is the upcoming John Sayles film Honeydripper, which wrapped last month. Brown had originally been cast in the film as an aging singer named Bertha, but became too ill to travel to the Alabama production. She died on Nov. 17 from complications due to a heart attack and stroke. However, according to an interview from last August, she did record some songs for the Honeydripper soundtrack, so even if we won't see her onscreen, I hope we'll hear her voice.
Ruth is also featured in a few documentaries including "Better Late Than Never" and an older look at R&B that was on PBS in the late 80s called "That Rhythm, Those Blues"...
Ruth Brown - So Long (her 1st Atlantic hit recorded while she was supposedly on crutches after a car accident in May 1949 backed by guitarist Eddie Condon's band featuring Amos Milburn on piano)
Tonight is the mainstream music industry backslap known as The Grammies...
Old warhorses The Police will take the stage and play some stuff recorded and last played sometime in the last 20 - 30 years ...
None of the newer acts will be as eagerly anticipated or received...
Some new faces will of course be rewarded, and likely this will prove almost to be a curse...as most of those who win a Grammy early in their career never reclaim their spot in the public eye, many drifting aimlessly before disappearing off the charts forever...
I remember A Flock of Seagulls won a Grammy for their debut album, they soon lost their hair, and most original members, and were playing the same small town bars I was within 5 years...
The highlight a few years back was Bruce Springsteen, Little Steven, Dave Grohl and Elvis Costello all playing a Clash cover, even though the late Joe Strummer's work was never once mentioned when he was alive at the annual awards show.
The best bands don't need no stinking trophies anyway...
Music is not a competition...
The band I'm about to mention has lived on for 10 years now after their breakup not because they sold millions, but because their fans still feel the emotion of the tunes...Not because radio is still playing them every 25 minutes.
I was glad to hear that this act, still one of my fave bands, Jawbreaker (R.I.P) will be getting the official documentary treatment & overview. The producer's of the excellent Minutemen "We Jam Econo" flick released awhile back have started doing interviews with key figures in the band's history.
In fact I've lent a camera to the proceedings, which last I knew was being used to transfer old archival live footage into the digital realm via firewire.
They'll cover their scrappy formation in L.A, and tentative move to the Bay Area and acceptance into it's tight knit incestuous and fratricidal punk scene. Their quick rise followed by tour traumas including Blake's throat surgery, personal tensions and fan rejection leading to their inevitable implosion after their major label debut supposedly "bombed".
But the music somehow lives on & on, even as the creators have scattered & abandoned it...
When will the movie itself arrive?
Who knows.. these things take time... so in the meantime, here's some Jawbreaker cover tracks from a couple bands obviously influenced by 'em but that have made tons more dough than Jawbreaker ever managed themselves...
One of the most anticipated records out this week in the music industry was Fall Out Boy's "Infinity On High"... the lead off track Thriller even features a guest cameo from their label boss Jay Z, so you know it's official. The band takes an affirmative leap away from pop punk roots with production on tracks by pop R&B craftsman Babyface, and the afforementioned Jay Z.
In order to spead the hype, the band jet setted around & played live in three cities on the release day. MTV had the boys in NYC first for TRL, followed by a gig in their hometown of Chicago atop the House of Blues, and then one more to close out the day in LA.
Here's a cut off that new release with single potential showcasing the band's thick & slick pop production, that will definitely keep some lil girl's humming along.
You can't argue with success and apparently that's what the Klaxons have amounted to this week, although on a smaller scale than Fall Out Boy...
Even though they have but one album to their name , this raver scene influenced band out of London is making a dent on the international electronic dance scene. Their album "Myths Of The Near Future" was only released on January 29th, yet has rapidly spread like a deadly computer virus onto dancefloors and harddrives around this wicked whirled...
Here's a special remix from a recent single they released...
new stuff will be out from from Lucinda Williams, Keak Da Sneak, Anton Barbeau and those on the scrolling list below:
One of the oddball buzz bands out of the Bay Area of the last few years, and particularly last month, at least around these interwebs I peruse seems to have been Deerhoof...
They are a group that's comprised of nice enough peoples, but were never on my most likely to succeed in a big way list. Kudos to them for grabbing a chunk of attention in a world starving from over exposure.
Apparently a DVD is in the works of a ballet performance done in North Haven Maine to the music from their 2004 release Milk Man. This next track I am posting from them is the lead track from Milk Man.
They are touring up a storm, and packing some houses here and abroad...
Remaining Feb 2007 Dates
2-11 - Washington, DC - Black Cat (w/Harlem Shakes) 2-12 - Carrboro, NC - Cat‘s Cradle (w/Harlem Shakes) 2-13 - Asheville NC - Grey Eagle (w/Harlem Shakes) 2-14 - Charleston, SC - Cumberland‘s (w/Harlem Shakes) 2-15 - Columbia, SC - Headliners (w/Harlem Shakes) 2-16 - Jacksonville, FL - Jack Rabbits (w/Busdriver and Harlem Shakes) 2-17 - Miami, FL - Poplife (w/Busdriver and Harlem Shakes) 2-18 - Tampa, FL - Crowbar (w/Busdriver and Harlem Shakes) 2-19 - Orlando, FL - The Social (w/Busdriver and Harlem Shakes) 2-20 - Gainesville, FL - Common Grounds (w/Busdriver and Harlem Shakes) 2-21 - Athens, GA - 40 Watt Club (w/Busdriver and Harlem Shakes) 2-22 - Nashville, TN - Mercy Lounge (w/Busdriver and Harlem Shakes) 2-23 - Winston-Salem, NC - The Warehouse (w/Busdriver and Harlem Shakes) 2-24 - Charlottesville, VA - Sattellite Ballroom (w/Harlem Shakes and Flying) 2-25 - Baltimore, MD - Ottobar (w/Harlem Shakes and Flying)
MARCH
3-2 - San Diego, CA - The Epicentre (w/Macromantics and Experimental Dental School) 3-3 - Tucson, AZ - Club Congress (w/Macromantics and Experimental Dental School) 3-4 - Phoenix, AZ - Rhythm Room (w/Macromantics and Experimental Dental School) 3-7 - Oklahoma City, OK - Conservatory (w/Macromantics,Experimental Dental School and Star Death) 3-8 - Dallas, TX - Gypsy Tea Room (w/Macromantics and Experimental Dental School) 3-9 - Austin, TX - Emo‘s (w/Macromantics and Experimental Dental School) 3-10 - Houston, TX - Numbers (w/Macromantics and Experimental Dental School)
APRIL 2007
4-1 - Perth, Australia, The Rosemount, 4-3 - Sydney, Australia, The Annandale 4-4 - Brisbane, Australia, The Zoo 4-6 - Sydney, Australia, Great Escape Festival 4-7 - Melbourne, Australia, Corner Hotel
In honor of their emergence from semi-obscurity into indie icons du jour, here's something that they did awhile back as part of a tribute to another sincere but oddball indie band that had the odds stacked against them.
The Shaggs were a 70's gal group outta New England that has sorta captivated the same crowd that digs the Kids of Widney High scene, or maybe for a more modern mainstream reference, imagine if the sisters of William Hung & Daniel Johnston had a band.
Somehow it fits the Ono-esque art damage suall ala mode Deerhoof experience, uh, perfectly...
Perhaps you clicked here because you are bedridden with flu like so many during this nasty rainy /snowy / flash floody / winter season...
or maybe you are in another hemisphere...where it's summer...
either way you are here, and we appreciate that... so take a look around eachg week, and in the archives and see if there's something you'd like...
feel free to grab a tune or two...or three even I suppose.
But don't forget to support yer fave musicians by buying their official releases whenever possible...
we love to be part of the discovery process... but do not condone rampant dispersion of each and every new track or the back catalog.
If it wasn't for our many musician friends and those souls slaving away in the background at record labels, we'd have very little to talk about or entertain ourselves with...
Austin's annual clusterf*ck known as SXSW, will have a new way to break acts this year, that being an exclusive outlet via DIRECTV's Channel 101 (The 101). From March 15-17 Direct TV subscribers can catch live broadcasts from two specially created soundstage sets being built to resemble nightclubs. The faux alternative club venue, so to speak ,will be called The Bat Bar, while a more traditional Texas saloon vibe anticipated at Direct TV's Lone Star Saloon.
While the acts for this Direct TV production are as yet unannounced, this year's SXSW lineup has over 1300 acts including established heavy hitters like Pete Townshend, Iggy & The Stooges, David Byrne, and even American Idol's Taylor Hicks. Looking to generate buzz will be a plethora of publicists hyping acts like Against Me!, Amy Winehouse, Don Cabellero, Hot Hot Heat, Jandek and Vashti Bunyan.
wait... I spoke too soon, looks like Tommy Ramone ( actually Erdelyi) beat the bluegrass parasites to the mandolin... and he's not even milking the back catalog.
It's an authetic effort from a guy that had the smarts to quit the Ramones while he was still sane and move on and do something with his life. Like uh, apparently grow a beard...eeeeew.
Here's a pic of Tommy , a Rock n Roll Hall of famer seen looking a bit like David Grisman posing with pal Claudia Tienan for the promo foto of their duo Uncle Monk which has a CD coming out May 22 through Burnside Distribution.
I mean if ya think about it, it's not that much of a stretch...considering that The Ramones got their start at a now defunct club called CBGB's . That name was an acronym for Country, Bluegrass & Blues... only that none of the bands showing up in a dealer soaked stretch of the bowery really wanted to play that stuff... so another sorta legacy was born.
In Uncle Monk, the Hungarian born Erdelyi trades off on vocals and gives a sincere & wily sorta country tinged old timer's perspective...
While CNN.com this week profiled Gnarls Barkley collaborator Danger Mouse aka Brian Burton in their PEOPLE YOU SHOULD KNOW feature, the singer dude somehow retains a lower profile. A lotta folks don't know that the dude from Gnarls Barkley isn't actually named Gnarls Barkley, or that he has material out that's nearly as good from his previous stints in Goodie Mob and as a solo act.
His adopted stage name is Cee-lo Green but he was born Thomas Callaway in 1974, and developed his gospel inflected singing style as a youth in churches in his hometown of Atlanta. As Atlanta's rap scene flourished, he became a background singer for other artists including doing some background vocals on local labelmates TLC's early 90's hit "Waterfalls".
After a few late 90's albums with Atlanta hip hop group Goodie Mob, Cee-lo signed to Arista as a solo act. The albums which emerged in 2002 & 2004 were not considered very sucessful at the time, but now with the success of Gnarls Barkley, a 19-track "Greatest Hits" collection of Cee-Lo was issued late last year. "Closet Freak: The Best Of Cee-Lo Green the Soul Machine" is an album that reissues various material going back to 1995. The tracklisting includes 15 Cee-Lo solo tracks, three old Goodie Mob songs, and Cee-Lo's debut with OutKast, joining them in the song "Git Up, Git Out".
As a songwriter he's also had previous successes including the 2005 hit "Don't Cha", which was made most famous by The Pussycat Dolls but also had versions done by Busta Rhymes as well as the original he produced for Tori Alamaze.
Here's a taste of the man's previous scat-rap work in a jam with Ludacris, ( and yes, it's featured on his Greatest Hits collection...)
oh and here's the Gnarls Barkley video for Smiley Faces, featuring an intro from Dennis Hopper...
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Japanese goth metallers Sigh have a new track to share with fans from their upcoming album "Hangman's Hymn -Musikalische Exequien-" to be released later this year on The End Records. Singer/Keyboardist Mirai Kawashima describes the new album as “thrash-metal-meets-German-symphonies! Fast, heavy, bombastic and majestic!’
Sigh's labelmate's on The End include many interesting and international acts, among them are the beyond entertaining Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and legendary Canadian act Voivod. Sigh's next big event is an appearance in April at the Norwegian Inferno festival in April.
While Voivod are on a hiatus, Sleeepytime Gorilla Museum, have been uber busy, and are shown here on the set of their new video for the song "The Helpless Corpses Enactment" based on James Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake". They are also touring up a terror trail this spring across North America and Europe in support of the upcoming disc, "In Glorious Times", recorded at Tiny Telephone and due for release soon.
Upcoming Sleepytime Gorilla Museum tour dates :
March 2007 (US w/ Secret Chiefs 3)
6 - Urban Lounge - Salt Lake City, UT 7 - BlueBird Theater - Denver, CO 9 - Grinnell College - Grinnell, IA 10 - The Double Door - Chicago, IL 11 - The Magic Bag - Ferndale, MI 12 - Tralf Music Hall - Buffalo, NY 13 - La Tulipe - Montreal, QC 14 - The Middle East - Boston, MA 15 - The Bowery Ballroom - New York, NY 16 - The Black Cat - Washington, DC 17 - North Star Bar - Philadelphia, PA 18 - The Grey Eagle - Asheville, NC 22 - Solar Culture - Tucson, AZ 23 - El Rey - Los Angeles, CA 24 - Slims - San Francisco, CA
here's an mp3 playlist of other bands on The End records
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Another hot record that came out recently is the return of hip hop specialists X - Clan. One of the tracks picking up steam is their collab with Damien "jr. Gong" Marley entitled Culture United. Here check it out...
Veteran songstress Rickie Lee Jones has managed this week to release yet another critically acclaimed record, her first in almost half a decade, entitled The Sermon On Exposition Blvd.
Out now on New West Records, her first for that label, the record explores lyrical territory inspired by Lee Cantelon's 1991 book The Words, which attempted to translate Christ's teachings into a more accessible contemporary format. Cantelon's friend , Guitarist Peter Atanasoff was instrumental in the creation of the eventual record, bringing in numerous collaboarotors after having played around LA for years, including a long running stint with Tito Larriva.
Originally conceived by Cantelon with Mike Watt in mind as narrator, eventually the idea to bring a woman's voice into the project made bringing in Rickie imperative. Cantelon who had previously shot the cover for Rickie Lee Jone's 1995 Naked Songs album got in touch with her. With droning musical beds laid out like aimless Velvet Underground laptop jams, no one expected how far they would actually veer from simple vocal narratives into songwriting improvisation and a (w)holy new musical work.
Using a wizened, sometimes weary rasp almost akin to ol' pal Tom Waits, Jones' 52 years young voice bobs & weaves amidst baleful & bluesy, and sometimes buoyant musical backdrops provided by a slew of musician pals. According to project organizer and writer Lee Cantelon , the album supposedly came together almost miraculously. Rickie originally came in to the texts & tunes sight unseen and improvised the first two tracks into a laptop mic in a cluttered makeshift studio off Exposistion Blvd in LA's semi-seedy MacArthur Park area downtown. Her initial contribution was unrehearsed & laid down within just a few lo-fi minutes...
Five minutes later there was only silence. The first two songs, Nobody Knows My Name and Where I Like it Best were finished. We never did go back and change one note of these tracks, all the way through to mastering. The melody and lyrics remained exactly as they were captured that afternoon and evening, beneath the dusty skylight of the cluttered studio on Exposition Boulevard. Instead of a literal reading from the book, Rickie was guided to say what she felt in her spirit, to answer without thinking, to seek without implying that she knew, or could know, the answers.
It is recorded that Jesus once told his followers not to be "like the religious" who repeated (memorized) prayers over and over, thinking that God would hear them because of their repetition. Rickie's decision to improvise, in that moment, forced us away from stereotype or dogma.
I was reminded, during the making of the record, of something W. H. Auden once said. He was talking about the spirit of creativity and likened it to the Holy Spirit. He said he knew when the Holy Spirit was speaking to him, because the idea was always new, something he had never thought before, and it always demanded something of him. I think we would all agree that this happened to us during the months that we engaged ourselves with The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard. Each of us heard and felt something new, and, in turn, we were challenged to act on what was expressed. There is truth in these songs, lightness, and lack of artifice. May they "catch you in its rays"
Eventually some seasoned industry players got involved like Lenny's son Joey Waronker, engineer Doug Boehm and producer Rob Schnapf, who moved the mixing and tracking over to the semi-ancient but cozy Sunset Sound where the Doors, Led Zeppelin and Beach Boys had done some of their most seminal works. Mastering was done at Ocean Way in their all analog room, where so many great albums congealed ranging from contemporary stuff like Beck's Mutations to classic records by everyone from Ry Cooder to Bonnie Raitt , Madonna to Journey to Count Basie have found a magic sound.
But what one hears on Rickie's new album is as an organic expression and an unadulterated groove as the collaborators could hope to achieve. Jones herself contributes more than her voice and perspective, layering in guitar, keyboards, dulcimer & other sonic bits & pieces.
Peter and Rickie working on a 6 and 12-string guitar track for Circle in the Sand.
What makes it all the more amazing, is that the record's religious subject matter seems so unlikely , especially from a girl known as the Duchess of Coolsville and whose been around the hard side of the wrong block a couple times. An admitted former abuser of heroin and coke in the early years of her career, Jones tempered those demons, and came to terms with herself, and her own uncetain spirituality.
"You know, I like the words of Christ, I like Christ OK, and I’m happy to stand up for him, but … it’s not in my skin to go there. I felt because I wasn’t a Christian I could be a fair observer, a fair interpreter.”
Which doesn’t mean she’s without belief. “I have always felt a communion with the invisible world, and that’s what I call it,” she says. “I don’t give it a name, because when you call it God – if you call it he, if you call it she – then you give it these human attributes. And it’s a mechanism, it’s a machine of life that we’re a part of. We speak to it, it speaks to us, it’s real, it’s obvious.”
An outsider’s perspective does reinforce the more counterculture leanings of The Words. The first chapter is called “The Problem of Religion,” and it warns against the various hypocrisies and failings of “false teachers” – which is pretty clearly the religious power structure of the day. This fits with Jones’s own feelings that the mainstream face of Christianity is a judgmental, fundamentalist mug that frowns upon all, as well as her interest in Cantelon’s mission to inspire people to be compassionate and do good. Because we could certainly use a more compassionate Christianity.
In 2003 upon the release of her last album, "The Evening Of My Best Day", she told the UK's Guardian newspaper that as recovering Catholic it wasn't a clear cut "born again" decision to go back to the church of her youth...
"My relationship with God was so threaded with guilt. Jesus suffered so much that it was impolite to ask for anything." She giggles. It's only recently, on her trip-hoppy 1997 album Ghostyhead, that she found the courage to use the word "prayer" again. She doesn't go to church services, but she likes to visit churches and pray in her own words. "There is no ritual. I just say, 'Hi, how ya doin'? Hope you're doin' well, I'm thinkin' of ya', thank you very much'. Ffffhgggmm."
She's devoted to her talents, beyond music, one of which is raising her teenage daughter, and lately over the past few years has even run her own political website & even made music critiquing the perplexing idiocy of the Bush administration.
Rickie Lee Jones - Ugly Man a song supposedly inspired by an ugly man with an ugly father who lies & leads a certain country to do terribly stupid things from her previous release "The Evening Of My Best Day", on V2 Rickie Lee Jones - Have You Had Enough (throw the rascals out) her anti wire tapping & torture campaign song w/ members of the Squirrel Nut Zippers
It appears she feels comfortable taking on the right's right to be the cross bearer's in modern society. If reaffirming religion for those that have been pushed aside by bullies in the pulpit somehow makes her relevant again... then so be it.
"Prayer in general is used as a kind of secret word for ‘Republican,’ ” she said. “Nobody is really saying, ‘Show me how I can serve and help me find my way’; they’re saying ‘Give me this.’
"People today can't even hear the name Jesus without tensing up because they don't want to be associated with the TV evangelists and that lot," Jones said. "I just wanted to level the playing field a bit."
a promo track from the new album Rickie Lee Jones - Elvis Cadillac
“Whatever it is Christ said doesn’t get a fair shake,” Rickie Lee Jones said. On a rainy December day, she was sniffling and coughing, fighting a bad cold and losing. “There’s not much written, it was done 150 years later, and it was used to create an empire. So can we get rid of all that and just see what the guy said?... You have these awful preachers, these creepy and terrible people, maligning and distorting the message, so who wants to be associated with that? I wanted to talk about how these people have absconded with these ideas...
"For the most part, people use God as Santa Claus.” - Rickie Lee Jones
Jones, who first appeared on the pop music scene with her 1979 hit "Chuck E's in Love," will kick off a tour with some of the same musicians this month. The jaunt, a musical pilgrimage if you will will be taking them through 17 cities on the initial run, plus a spot on NBC's Late Night w/ David Letterman coming up on Feb 12th, where she'll be playing this new track...
If ya like that, watch for a full length appearance on PBS Soundstage on Feb 22 ( check yer local listings)... Rickie Lee Jones tourdates are listed below...
Rickie Lee Jones tourdates ...
February 2007
10 - Easton, MD - Avalon Theatre 12 - NY, NY - Ed Sullivan Theater 13 - Washington, DC - 9:30 Club 14 - Glenside, PA - Keswick Theatre 16 - New York, NY - The Concert Hall 17 - Cambridge, MA - Sanders Theatre 18 - Northampton, MA - Calvin Theater 20 - Detroit, MI - Majestic Theatre 22 - St. Paul, MN - Fitzgerald Theatre 24 - Chicago, IL - Portage Theater 26 - Englewood, CO - Gothic Theater 27 - Salt Lake City, UT - The Depot
March 2007
1 - Los Angeles, CA - Henry Fonda Theatre 3 - San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore 5 - Portland, OR - Aladdin Theatre 6 - Seattle, WA - Showbox 8 - Vancouver, British Columbia - Commodore Ballroom
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In other news relating to matters of Rock n Roll with religious import:
The Electric Prunes will have their final two Warner Bros releases issued by Collector's Choice Music in March. CD Reissues of "Release of an Oath" (1968) and "Just Good Old Rock and Roll" (1969) are certainly strange side notes in a convoluted band history.
Essentially they are turning points in a legacy of a psychedelic garage act, known mainly for it's hit "Too Much To Dream Last Night" and who had lent an average hippie pleasing track to Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider soundtrack.
Eventually through a management maneuver, they were turned into a high concept Monkees, with studio replacement musicians creating funky prog fusion rock with Jewish holy themes under tutleage of legendary jazz maestro David Axelrod. I'll turn now to one "Josh" at the Hippocampus Music blog whom wrote of this LP not long ago and it's liturgical exploration of the hebraic concept of Kol Nidre.
The LP presented Kol Nidre as a modern liberation song, a lament against “the conqueror’s yoke,” a chance for all man to “break the chains that bind him to any oath made under duress and in violation of his principles.” Dick Whetstone’s drumming does most of the album’s best protesting, as you can hear on “Holy Are You,”proof that even Kol Nidre themes can be sampled by Fat Joe and Quasimoto.
The David Axelrod referred to above is the producer of Lou Rawls & Cannonball Adderly, not to be confused with the David Axelrod, who is a media spin maestro out of Chicago currently guiding the career of Barack Obama.
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Meanwhile ...
It appears this week that The Beatles and Apple computer are finally coming to terms over the naming & trademark rights issues that have hampered each other for almost 30 years. Essentially The Beatles' Apple trademark is being handed over to Steve Jobs company after decades of back & forth litigation. The Beatles will take a settlement in return, and now get a "license" from the powerful global computer firm to continue using the trademark they first established in 1968 when they started their label & production company.
In related news, the owner of the 4th largest music store in the world issued a statement Tuesday, and if you guessed it was Apple Inc's Steve Jobs you'd be right...In a post dated Feb 6th , Jobs expounds on the I-Tunes store and pros & cons of open source DRM-free formats.
In the posting Jobs' relates that Apple's data shows that the average I-Pod owner only buys about $20 worth of DRM protected content from I-tunes. He further explains that this means well under 3% of the music on the average iPod is DRM protected content purchased from the iTunes store.
Essentially Jobs makes the case that Apple would prefer to not have to deal with DRM at all and that
"This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat"
Meanwhile on Wednesday RIAA chairman Mitch Bainwol passes the buck back at Apple claiming that making I-Tunes work with competitors music players is Jobs' responsibility.
"We have no doubt that a technology company as sophisticated and smart as Apple could work with the music community to make that happen," said Bainwol in a statement.
Jobs post complains of the absurdity that major labels insist Apple and other online stores only push DRM protected content, while the majors themselves release 20 times as much music on DRM free CDs each year!!
Then he opines that Apple's critics, particularly those overseas who have threatened legal action against his company, place blame higher on the content chain.
Much of the concern over DRM systems has arisen in European countries. Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free. For Europeans, two and a half of the big four music companies are located right in their backyard. The largest, Universal, is 100% owned by Vivendi, a French company. EMI is a British company, and Sony BMG is 50% owned by Bertelsmann, a German company. Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly.
Doug Mitchelson, a Deutsche Bank industry analyst inserted his big money investment community minded views on the bouncing DRM issue by stating for the record:
"As easily as Mr. Jobs lectured the music industry on their DRM policies, he could have lectured the software industry (which includes Apple) for its complete unwillingness to pursue an industrywide DRM standard or make any effort to help music companies in their fight against digital piracy by working to make their media players recognize and not play pirated songs,"
Diehard geeks into digital audio encoding schemas might want to pass over that mundane layperson directed Steve Jobs rant and visit the website for the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS. These are the guys that created the original encoding technology 20 years ago that lead to the mp3 format. The institute has set up some web video & podcasts that retell the heroic but unsung technical battles that now make yer mp3 strewn harddrive possible.
Fraunhaufer are celebrating 20 years of audio coding with the highlight being the "Day of Audio Coding" on May 25, 2007. Mark yer calenders internet audio enthusiasts! http://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/
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In sad news for internet audio enthusiasts...
In a bid to likely cut costs, and perhaps compete with You Tube...AOL has killed, ( at least for now) the original multimedia centric search site SingingFish.com and replaced it with a link to AOL Video...
A fave site of mine since 1999 for hunting hard to find audio and video files... it has vanished with nary a word from AOL. The Seattle startup founded in 1999 was first sold to to Thomson Multimediain 2000 and then to AOL inOctober 2003. Despite it's relatively low profile and non existent ad budget, according to Alexa, as recently as just last week it ranked in hits within the top 7,400 sites on the internet.
As of May 2006, Singingfish's index was still contractually known to be supplying content link updates to Microsoft and Real Networks and supposedly had about 16 million live audio and video files, not including dead links, which were automatically removed from the index.
Apparently you can still use AOL Audio Search , but it sucks. Unlike SingingFish, AOL search offers no choices in lengths and bitrates for files. AOL also links users first to more purchasable corporate content and your searches no longer feature the ability to search for specific file formats. SingingFish was truly great, with a proprietary spidering search process offering millions of direct links to numerous free files, whether authorized or not.
On Feb 7th 2006... the site's url began forwarding to AOL Video... R.I.P SingingFish...
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Macy Gray will have new material out on Black Eyed Peas founder Will.I.Am's new label distributed via Geffen Tues march 27. Tracks on "BIG" are produced by a number of heavy hitmkers including Ron Fair, Justin Timberlake, Will.I.Am his bad self as well as newcomers Jared and Whitey. Guests on the disc include labelmate Fergie, as swell as Natalie Cole, Nas and the afforementioned Justin Timberlake
The track listing for "BIG" is: "Finally Made Me Happy," "Shoo Be Doo," "What I Gotta Do," "One," "Glad You're Here," "Slowly," "Ghetto Love," "Okay," "Get Out," "Treat Me Like Your Money", "Everybody," and "Strange Behavior."
here's some older Macy in a FatBoy Slim Remix Mode
I had to roll with this live version of a Dave Edmunds classic as my lead off track for this post because it reminded me of some local gossip here in the Bay Area. I guess it might even qualify as national dirt because I saw it mentioned on the Fox News scroll, where only things of import are found. It was right in there along with Cartoon Network publicity stunts, and whatever blather Tony Snowjob might be uttering this week about how great Iraq is coming along.
links to download tracks & more info on many of the artists featured within this blog are posted down at the end of this post...
But yes it is true... Girl's Talk...especially in those AA type meetings...
Out here in Sin Francisco, you might have heard about a certain social faux pas made by our "handsome boy modeling" mayor. Unlike most weeks when he'd run over his own mother to do a satellite TV interview, it seemed this week he was attempting to hide from the unfortunate glare of media attention...
You don't have to be a genius to know that f*cking the wife of one of your most loyal and trusted aides might prove to be a bad idea.
My favorite comment so far has to be, not the graphic from The Mayor & The Hair.com, but one I found online at a blog called Drunken Housewife that put it this way...
It's a disheartening day, indeed, in San Francisco. Why are all the smart people cutting hair, driving cabs and housewifing, while the morons are running things?
The folks who run a blog literally known as Gavin Watch are in way over their heads. Normally they speculate, hope for gossip, and look for coded smoke signals, but all this over the top media frenzy stuff is wearing them out. By Friday they'd run out of stamina to even comment...
It's day three of this saga, and already we're sick of it. This whole business is sad and sordid and ugly and depressing, and we're pissed off at Gavin for putting us all through it. We've lost our appetite for scouring the Internet for links to all the angles on this mess.
The Gavin Newsom "sex" scandal is not about sex. It's about the credibility of the entire Newsom administration. They have created a bubble of hypersensitivity, denial, and even revenge.
The honorable way out of this shady corner is for Newsom to gracefully depart Eden.
In the post revelation atmosphere The Fog City Journal also reported that when they asked Mrs Tourk about her rumored dalliance with the debonair mayor back in December, Newsom's "campaign strategist" Eric Jaye threatened a libel suit if they published anything on the matter. Thomas also has heard rumors about Newsom to the effect that Mrs Tourk " wasn't the only married woman on his roster". Incidentally Thomas' The Fog City Journal , raised it's profile yet another notch by being the only media outlet able to provide photos of the lady in question ( see below). Even the local daily paper had to run those instead of their own...
It's unclear how much backlash our mayor will actually face, at least here in town. One certainly has to wonder about the DEEPER character issues this tawdry episode reveals, especially if believes his own & hype that he's destined to pursue higher offices...
Then again, the mayor's immaturity, aristocratic arrogance and path of privilege may have shielded him from the humility and common sense that would have prevented others from even trying such a stupid stunt.
His elected presiding preeniness is not usually shy, and positively proved that shortly after his election by posing in Harper's Bazaar cavorting on a rug in a modeling spread with his then wife. The actual photo is below... here's the hilarious take on it by a local cartoonist 1st
She was equally "photogenic", layered in collagen and silicone, and career minded. A former lingerie model/prosecutor, she's since left public service & mayoral marriage for another union in NY where she also has an even higher profile gig as a legal analyst for CNN & Court TV.
Seemingly much to his chagrin, Gavin stayed behind, and had to do the mundane work of managing a city, or at least being it's spokesmodel. One always got the feeling he would've rather just ran a few good parties with tight guest lists, instead of bickering with asinine B-list ankle biters on the local board of supervisors.
Gavin made his way into society as the son of a judge, and was the former roommate of billionaire playboy Billy Getty. He participated in a bunch of business ventures usually with deep pocketed Getty partners, most involving wine, fine dining, nightclubbing or some combination there of.
When he was appointed by former Mayor Willie Brown to the board of supervisors he was forced to divest his holdings in numerous business ventures due to obvious conflicts of interest that prevented him from speaking on many matters that appeared before the body.
He was the chosen pick of the chosen few, the high society old money crowd that runs San Francisco like a festive Falstaffian fiefdom, and also the new wave of dotcom debutantes & dudes that gather in the Marina and South of Market over cabernet & cocaine on the weekends.
No doubt in Gavin's world, there were so many opportunities, and some fell aside on the heady highway to power and prestige...
The regrets and regressions of normal men must seem small...chances to do so much were squandered. (Olympic Host Committee Parties, Cancelled Ski Trips, Three Martini Lunches...)
One wonders how in a world with so many willing women to nail, why instead you end up banging one of yer employees, whose also yer trusted lieutenent's wife?
Meanwhile back at Carlton B Goodlet place, Gavin had to sit through endless meetings, dinners & luncheons, pathetic photo-ops and more sad stricken mothers of the slain press conferences.
Perhaps his vaunted vision may have just been a blurry hallucination,
He even seemed shaken when some of his Taxicab commission appointees started rebelling and even showing minds of their own.
His veneer started cracking... his smile strained , as if each flashbulb took another piece of whatever was never there, and replaced it quietly with something even less...
The most public blow to his show of true mayoral strength may have been the local football team simply announcing one day they were moving out of town, supposedly without Gavin getting the hints they weren't interested in continuing stadium negotiations.
With that ball drop, not only soured the city's longstanding love affair with it's football team... but it's hopes of hosting an Olympic games anytime within the next couple decades.
Then, perhaps smelling blood, media shark story's of his private life intensified, including his choices of dates, which included a 19 year old spotted drinking in his company. Other tales of his drinking started circulating, including an awkwardly inebriated appearance at a hospital following the death of a police officer in the line of duty.
Then he appeared annoyed in an on camera interview last month. First at the fact alcohol was involved in a NYE brawl between some Yale students and local high school thugs. Then he was perturbed that lawyers who were possible political rivals, including one who once worked with his ex-wife in the DA's office, were now getting involved. In fact the interview then ended badly as Gavin snapped at the reporter on camera when the question turned onto the subject of the mayor's own drinking ...
Gavin stormed off... telling the reporter that he'd never speak to him again...
It was a real sign things weren't going as smooth as his gelled hair looked, that Newsom was truly feeling persecuted, and circling the mental wagons.
He's not that used to things not going his way afterall...
but he is a master of glad handing and smiling...
Whenever city issues got too caustic or complex, Gavin seemed a master of the tidy press release, and well timed photo op.
His greatest coup, the one that got him his most devoted donors was the simple act of allowing a few days of Gay Marriages to occur under City Hall's dome before the courts shut him down. That maverick move shot him into the national limelight, for better or worse and cemented him as a star of some sort.
It also built psychological momentum that he was some sort of bold thinker, and could wave magic wands and centuries of oppression & poverty might just vanish with that winning smile...
Another unsolved housing project murder spree? He'd pose earnestly with some victim's family members and say reassuring things in front of cameras.
Another budget crisis got ya down? Gavin and his peeps would whip up a blue ribbon panel & a pleasant photo op faster than you could say "cheese"...
However, this year he's been trying to keep a bit of a lower profile.
Tough when frothing camera crews and news media are following every designer detail as your private life comes unraveled for all to see.
Even before the story of his dastardly dalliance made headlines... his grip had been seen slipping.
Wrinkles in the fabricated plasticene plateau started to appear even before his marriage dissolved...
He may have won a mayoral election, but despite a media manipulated manifestation of Camelot II paraded for the press...it was simply not that simple.
He won a bitterly divisive campaign for mayor, and despite millions more spent on Gavin's behalf, as well as pricey gurus & guns like Clinton & Gore brought in to rally unconvinced voters, he actually won by a very very small margin.
One must realize that while he won that tight mayoral race, he also has as many unimpressed non-believers, as he has supposed friends to whom he owes favors.
Hence, the "Gay Marriage" ploy, which worked one important miracle... (and it wasn't getting gays married, you'll recall that's still not happening legally here), it was all about getting Gavin out of debt.
He hit the fundraising trail hard after ordaining himself the marrying mayor and after telling Peter he could marry Paul ... after they made out publically, they could then make their checks out right over here.
Yet, despite getting thousands of new donors to his cause, most of those who donated were from out of town and even out of state, while here in SF certain political tides simply did not always go his way.
Despite a huge popularity poll margin, his magic did not seem to rub off on others he endorsed in local district elections and desperately needed to win. He has since gone against the will of local voters, who in November defeated all his slate's endorsed candidates & expressed decisively that he appear each month for one Q&A in City Hall with the supervisors.
It hardly seemed that big of a deal, to meet monthly with the board of supervisors, a board he once was a member of, but his handlers sensing blood in the water, refused calling it "political theater". They instead proposed that the mayor meet with citizens on some neutral ground he could better control, say at prearranged neighborhood meetings set far from City Hall's chamber.
With so few friends on the board of supervisors, it was almost comical as the Supes themselves attempted to restrain themselves from chiding him to much via the media this week. They almost unilaterally said it was indeed sad, perhaps condemned his lack of ethics, and maybe for good measure expressed pity for the man, and hoped he would do some personal soul searching.
It certainly couldn't hurt the guy to think a bit...
Gavin seems ultimately alone, surrounded by his loyalist goons, like my fave, the mayoral chief of communications, a jowly sports fan guy whose idea of communicating is anonymous sniping at Mayoral critics on blogs, and then lying about it.
The guy is such a phony & a bully that the President of the board of Supes just introduced a new policy called Public Information Officer Conduct Standards to address the egregious conduct of this guy. He's Newsom's own lil' Scott McClellan, or Tony Snow. Check out his preppy thug body language when he purposefully blocks the local ABC affiliate cameras, and waves his fat fingers in the reporters face.
Maybe Gavin really needs to get some new advisers... his yes men are making him think he's got it going on...
When his get up & go shoulda got up, looked in the mirror and puked a long time ago...
I was never a big fan, but used to at least give these guys the benefit of the doubt, but their asinine antics have really left them in clouds of their own b.s stink... and they seem to like the smell of their own farts...
Most observors see Gavin at least has uh, some trust issues at the heart of his image problem...
To become mayor , he had a lot of help the first time around, including that of Alex Tourk.
Aside from the devastating personal betrayal of his boss and his own wife, for Tourk the real pain is knowing that all sorts of insiders have known about this matter behind his back for years.
His wife, the chick that let the cat out of the bag, Ruby Rippey one has to wonder about what the hell she was thinking...
not only before & during her selfish & shameless lil' tryst, but why in the hell open a Pandora's Box like that?
Trying to cram 12 steps into the busy social schedule of an upwardly mobile child rearing mom and radio host like herself must be tough... but one has to wonder why step 9 had to be done ..say exactly at the jarring juncture it occurred.
I'm no expert on paths of recovery, regret and all that 12 step jazz, but I believe one is supposed to weigh the consequences of what revealing yer deep dark secrets might entail to your loved ones before one does...
Hope everything is going along as planned there in the Tourk household this month and that lil junior Tourk is perhaps emotionally unscathed... and not the laughing stock of his daycare...
Dozens of additional Muddy Waters, T-Bone Walker, Madness, Dave Edmunds, Helen Reddy, Thelonious Monk w/ John Coltrane, Jason & The Scorchers tracks etc are all available at eMusicfor a low monthly subscription of $ 9.99
Another character who's no stranger to musical collaboration surfaced on my radar this week...
He's done stints in the studio with Roxy Music, David Byrne, U2 and even Jarvis Cocker...
Apparently he's temporarily put his lecture circuit career on hold while he produces the latest effort from Coldplay...
That being the publicity loving & immortality seeking Brian Eno...
Here's some older collaborative audio efforts from Mr. Eno
let's start with a horrific blend o' top talents including the evil Toto & that overrated studio gnome Daniel Lanois from some thing they did for the Dune soundtrack...
It has been announced that Eno pal & former Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker will be playing some UK gigs this month & even Coachella this spring. With stateside release of his latest solo disc scheduled for April 3rd he's added a few dates for Norte Americano club goers who can't get to the isoloated desert duststorm Goldenvoice insists on building each year. The hipster hotspots Cocker plans to hit include New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver .
Whether you elect to let him waste your time is up to you, but here are the shows we know of:
UK Only Tour Dates:
Feb 16th - Sheffield - Plug Feb 17th - London - Astoria Feb 19th - Manchester - Academy Feb 20th - Glasgow - ABC
Spring US/CAN Dates :
Apr 23rd - New York - Webster Hall Apr 27th - Indio CA - Goldenvoice Coachella Festival Apr 28th - San Francisco - Fillmore Auditorium Apr 30th - Seattle - Showbox May 1st - Vancouver CAN - Commodore Ballroom
His publicist promises a "spellbinding live show!", and what more would you expect from the singer who extols the virtues of Black Magic on his last single...
I notice that lately many of the tracks I painstakingly post do not show up in search engines, notably the Hype Machine through which a substantial percentage of my traffic often arrives... up to 30%!
So in the interest of making sure y'all caught wind of some the last few posts & tracks I made ( and that did not show up in recent Hype Machine scans), I am reposting certain tracks and linking to the original posts for y'all:
originally posted at Flying Saucer Mash Up King exhumed from grave to take back his throne 1/31/2007 11:26:00 PM
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a few days before we had this song go unlisted & unlistened too on a post devoted to A Conservation Crisis In Africa, and a Tribute Album Trend Gone To Far?
MP3 files of rare tracks posted or linked by this website are provided temporarily for promotional reference & 'personal home use' only. By downloading audiofiles via this website, you are agreeing to those terms and will not commercially reuse them in any form. Please support musicians & their families by buying their official releases, especially at shows, and whenever possible at independently owned shops. We do not condone unauthorized posting of complete albums or wanton bootlegging that harms an artist's ability to reap due financial rewards from their creative works. RESPECT.
some o my recently played tracks
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At our debut this Saturday, multiple local designers are to be featured in the premiere live event hosted by the fly Malika (of MTV's Making The Band ) to be held at 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco on Saturday March 3rd 2007, with doors and VIP cocktail reception starting at 8:30 pm.
Download at eMusic
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some mo fashion tracks for y'all
Buy at iTunes Music Store
So after about half an hour of quality reality tv for closed circuit security camera enjoyment I decided I'd retire back to the bar in the lobby until last call. At least it was spot where if I was gonna get arrested it would be for annoying tourist couples from the midwest just by ordering beers they'd never heard of...
neighborhood were throwing around during 
If ya get to this post on Tuesday Feb 27th... The track called 
LA Times Photo Gallery
in a post event protest by a nationalist Israeli group and confronted Seidler-Feller angerly about his inviting a Palestinian to speak on campus.
As predicted in a January report in The Wall Street Journal, Google has purchased video game advertising agency Adscape Media for $23 million. Execs at Adscape, will eventually begin nesting at the multi-building Google-plex in Mountain View CA and figure ways to slip Google's "AdSense" clients into the online gaming realm.
A perfect example of the label's diversity might be 
While the newer album lacks in a strong sense of production trickery, it is an amiable enough effort.
One of the most anticipated records out this week in the music industry was Fall Out Boy's "Infinity On High"... the lead off track Thriller even features a guest cameo from their label boss 
Download at Insound
I mean if ya think about it, it's not that much of a stretch...considering that 
