C. Hannibal cultural history

Whole world is watching

 

 

I think revolution is a good thing. This reminded me that the Young Lords opened their storefront community center in the Bronx this month. There are some things I’d like to report on that, but Jenny 8. Lee did that, you can find it,  here.

The good thing about revolutions is that if they’re run by smart folks, there are always papers to be got.

Check out the electronic collection of Young Lords periodicals at DePaul University….

http://eres.lib.depaul.edu/eres/coursepage.aspx?cid=4075&page=docs

C. Hannibal digital media, music, visually speaking

It’s SLR, not XLR…

Above, the trailer for Rubber. The news of this film, directed by a French DJ, is like summer 2010 old, but I saw this trailer the other day and haven’t heard of  the movie showing in the states in any theaters, yet.  It’s a movie that really bends the mind when it comes to the concept of character. Can a tire be a character? At the J-School, they’d say no (well, depends…).

Experimental French electro (this time by Mr. Oizo, who directed the movie, and one half of Justice, Gaspard Augé) isn’t my passion, but definitely the music I most like to work to. Thinking about it, from the looks of my work, maybe I need to change soundtracks?

Rubber has some music attached to it that’s definitely worth a listen. It touches on the zeitgeist of electro/industrial/computer noise music that’s been getting mainstream love as of late. Flying Lotus even remixed the lead song on the soundtrack, adding his Lotus-ness to the noise. You can listen to choice cuts from the soundtrack by following this link and scrolling to the bottom of the post. My favorite cut is Tricylce Express, if only because it sounds like a Justice song with that sinister build-up and Daft Punk-like refrain at the top. [Link via http://www.bad-fotography.co.uk ].

Mr. Oizo, who you can read about here, has had his share of mainstream love too. Flat Beat, (I know you remember that sock puppet) put him on the map for us non-electro heads. That song was always on The Box and MTV.

Right now, he’s helped to pioneer the digital filmmaking age by doing his latest feature all using a Canon 5D. I’d be fronting if I said I was a camera expert. I started taking the photo life seriously just last year and have years to go. Studying digital media I came to find out that the Canon and other video SLR cameras like it are necessary tools in the future of journalism. With video a main part of the news cycle the digital SLR cameras not only take the high-quality photos you publish, but also the video narratives you publish on a news site.

In this blog post Mr. Oizo, at a performance last month in New York, geeks out on the benefit of shooting a movie with a Canon 5D Mark II (I have no idea what it means after “Canon”).

There was a time when wanting to make a movie required at the minimum a video camera that could cost you a couple thousand dollars. Now, well…Canons and lenses can still be expensive as hell, but you can buy a lower-end SLR and still do something magical.

The site Newsvideographer.com looks at a few cameras and the results of their video capabilities in telling stories. Roger Ebert was stanning hard on this short video about a snowstorm that was filmed on an SLR. The man compared it with a Russian classic.

C. Hannibal music

Pointer Culture Funk

I’m just finding out that the Pointer Sisters sang this song in the early 70s.

I was listening to Saturday NPR and the closing music on one of the segments used this song to play out on. Some synapses in my brain started buzzing and all that conditioning the Children’s Television Workshop and pre-school embedded in me started to show itself. I started singing “1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12.”

This discovery probably gets made every hour around the globe. Some 80s baby stumbles on some childhood theme song and then they do a post on it. Here’s mine.

  • Someone remixed it already.
  • Sesame Workshop knows how catchy it still is.
  • Grant money created those songs. According to the wiki article : “Sesame Street was conceived in 1966 during discussions between television producer Joan Ganz Cooney and Carnegie Foundation vice president Lloyd Morrisett. Their goal was to create a children’s television show that would “master the addictive qualities of television and do something good with them”,[2] such as helping young children prepare for school. After two years of research, the newly formed Children’s Television Workshop (CTW) received a combined grant of $8 million from Carnegie, the Ford Foundation, and the US federal government to create and produce a new children’s television show.”
  • It’s actually called “Pinball Number Count.”  Considering this a serious piece of music, the wiki article states: “Music for Pinball Number Count was composed by Walt Kraemer and arranged by Ed Bogas. The vocals were provided by the Pointer Sisters. The arrangements in the eleven films reflect musical idioms commonly found in 1970s urban culture, predominantly funk and jazz, though other styles including Caribbean steel drum music are also represented. The number-specific middle sections contain one of three different (presumably) improvised instrumental solos over a basic progression, respectively featuring soprano saxophone, electric guitar, and steel drum. Consistent with an abbreviated jazz structure, a prearranged head and turnaround / coda are played during the common starting and ending animation sequences. The vocals work in similar fashion with improvised shouts of the numbers 2–12 during the middle section and a return to the arranged counting at the end. The song is mostly in the time signature of 4/4, with every other couple of measures in 3/4, and one measure that goes into the one 4/4 bar before the open solo section [which is in 4/4] is in 5/4.”
  • The Pointer Sisters really were the business in the 80s.

….

  • Now, they play the Bronx