There are no express trains on the Mexico City subway system. If you have a stop on the other side of the city, you just have to wait for the ride. You can try transferring to a different line, but there’s no express stops like we have in NYC on the 2 and the 3.
My mind works like that sometimes. There’s no express and the work has to get done at it’s own pace. Music often helps, but one thing I noticed is that I get it done faster and better if I’m not listening to something that’s “jamming” as they say.
I remember reading an interview by one of the editors of F.E.D.S or Don Diva magazine, one of those true-hood crime rags, and he mentioned working out of his car. That wasn’t so interesting, but what did make me catch notice was him saying how listening to hip-hop music was a deterrent to his concentration. I agreed. It’s always been hard for me to study or get work done listening to Wu-Tang. I’ve always been way more focused cranking up the Mozart or on occasion Nancy (not Frank) Sinatra.
Somewhere, there is a woman in her mid-40s who still goes out showing off her midriff at Poison concerts and already saw this Broadway show (twice!), and who’s going to read this post and be like, “right on.”
This isn’t for you.
How much happier does music make us? The participants’ dopamine levels rose by up to 9 percent when they were listening to music they enjoyed, and “one person experienced a 21 percent increase,” says Salimpoor. “That demonstrates that, for some people, it can be really intensely pleasurable.” People who don’t get chills also experience the rise in dopamine, says study co-author Robert Zatorre, as did the eight subjects when they listened to other participants’ selections, but the rush wasn’t as strong.
—From a piece on how listening to good music is like doing dope, eating tasty food or doing it.
I grew up on the side of town where you didn’t hear much hair metal, Pink Floyd, the Beatles or anything like that. When people starting putting the booming systems in their cars all you heard was the bass. I feel like I lost out on an eclectic musical upbringing, but when I really think back, I had much of the same suburban appetite as most other kids who grew up in the 80s. There’s an episode of Chappelle’s Show where a black cop started singing “Every Rose Has Its Thorn.” In the skit, they look at him all WTF?! and he responds, “I grew up in the suburbs.”
Now, like I said, most people in my hood were into Public Enemy. My best friend in the world was trying to push Run-DMC on me since “Rock Box.” But it took me a while to come around. There are kids from Beverly Hills who caught on to rap at an earlier age than me. So it goes.
For me, this post is like my musical therapy. I’m opening up about my musical past, like how you do when you’re on the shrink’s couch telling her or him about your past and all that goodness. Some of us have to have “guilty pleasure” listening that we hide from our friends. I’m not saying I like this stuff now, but I can sing every word if you bust out Guitar Hero. Below, some of my guilty pleasures that I think a lot of 80s kids in Jersey taped off of Z-100 at some point, or watched on MTV back in the day. Shouts to Romeo-G, for indirectly inspiring this post.
–There are tons of Jersey bands to rep, but I know everyone was into this song at one point or another.
–Thanks Youtube, I never knew there was a longer version to this song. I got someone to buy me this cassette, to this day, I can’t find anyone else who did the same. Still a classic intro. Actually, wait, this was the song I liked.
–I know I’m going to get so played out for admitting this, but I got someone to buy me a cassette by these cats too. Messed up I would’ve been clowned by Mike Judge.
—Lastly, at the top of the post, a cassette I remember getting someone to kick out good money to Sam Goody for. Sorry, pops.
And that’s it. The rest of my music collection took off when my grandfather copped me a Boogie Down Productions tape and I never looked back.
St. Valentine’s Day approaches. As if you couldn’t already tell by all the red hearts and chocolate the stores have been pushing since like a day after Christmas.
Above, the namesake for the commercial holiday we use to remind ourselves to tell people we love them, while at the same time boosting the jewelery, candy and flower markets in these rough winter months. Saint Valentine was a priest who got caught marrying people, so the story goes. He was thrown into jail and tried to show the Roman emperor Claudius II the ways of the lord. In response he had his head chopped off on February 14th in 269. He’s considered a martyr, and according to Catholic.org
He is the Patron Saint of affianced couples, bee keepers, engaged couples, epilepsy, fainting, greetings, happy marriages, love, lovers, plague, travellers, young people. He is represented in pictures with birds and roses.
Plague?
To get into the loving spirit, check out this now classic Valentines Day mix by the DJ legend, Neil Armstrong. And order a gift pack CD if they’re still in stock. Check, here.
If you’re a DJ or you write for a blog or other media outlet, then you’re familiar with promo CDs.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an earlier ruling on Tuesday that an eBay seller has the right to sell promotional CDs marked with the “Not for Sale” tag. Universal Music Group brought the suit against Troy Augosto, he won in 2008, so this recent ruling just locks it in: go ahead and sell those good promos, you know, the one’s with the hole-punch in the back, or the bar code scratched out. It’s legal.
For CD buyback spots check the back of your local indie weekly or this site. For typical prices paid CDs, check out Amoeba’s rates.
Today, Melrose Avenue stands as one of the longest and most famous stretches of independently owned and operated retailers in the world. Consequently, it does not weather the regular economic downturn of the business cycle in the same way commercial enterprises such as The Grove, The Beverly Center or Third Street Promenade do, nor does it adapt as quickly as smaller independent shopping areas like West Third Street, Los Feliz or Abbot Kinney.
From a piece that ran here in response to an L.A. Times business story from September 2010 that said Melrose couldn’t hack it in a rough economy. Not to mention, according to the piece, Melrose is falling off in other ways:
Although store owners blame the recession for their woes, others contend that Melrose’s problems go deeper than the economy. They say the shopping district has fallen from its glory days because of an increasingly run-down feel, restrictive parking measures and an excess of shops all selling the same poorly made apparel from downtown L.A.’s Fashion District.
The trailer for the documentary “Women Are Heroes,” by French street photog JR is making the rounds again, this time in a version for the English speakers. The exhibit itself is over a year old, and part of his 28 Millimètres project, this time focused on women in conflict zones (whether through war, poverty or simply the system).
January 12 he’s dropping what’s being billed as the movie of the adventure.
The artist, who you learn more about here, does interventions using blown up black and white portraits. For this project he went to Brazil, Cambodia and the squatter’s village called Kibera in Kenya.
This made me think of the tattoo that Tupac had on his chest that read “2.Die.4” under a small Queen Nefertiti image.
This project may not be giving political power to the millions of women who struggle in the world, but like one African woman says in one of the video trailers, people will at least wonder who they are, and that gives them voice. At the end of the day, John and Yoko knew what they were talking about with that song.
For more on this documentary and collected clips check out:
I’m not showing you this found photo so that you can see how funny looking Marc is. I was just wondering what happened to all those posters that used to decorated my room. All gone, except for the Ali poster over there in the left corner. I bought that huge Pac poster shortly after he died, when I was an undergrad in college. I didn’t mind Tupac was giving me the double middle finger. I’d like to know who took that, however. Was it in Vibe?
I think that if Tupac were alive today, he would be recording over techno and house beats, because that’s just what you’re supposed to do nowadays as a rapper. I really hope there’s no posthumous album with that gimmick in the works, unless it’s by David Guetta and maybe Will.I.Am, maybe.
Below, a recent mix by Brooklyn native and Detroit transplant Kevin Saunderson, considered one of the pioneers of Detroit Techno. Check a previous post about a historical documentary on that scene.
Pac would either work with him, or one of the new jacks on the scene such as L.A. techno duo Raíz. Or, Pac would go crazy on you at the suggestion he record over these beats. But I’d like to think of him as more worldly than that.
If you’re in Hollywood next week, you can check out the two DJ sets plus many more on Wednesday, Jan. 12. The ghost of Tupac may be hanging out further west on Sunset. RSVP for free entry. The venue is small, so it won’t turn into one of those events Dennis Romero likes to write about.
I don’t know if my cousin Pancho bought this on Broad St. in Newark or on Canal Street in N.Y., but somehow in the early 90s I ended up with it. I think maybe he left it at my house because he really didn’t love it that much. It was hanging in my hallway closet since I can remember. I never rocked it (until now), the fashion of pleather medallions wore off after a year or so and they just weren’t hiphop for too long. Now, Batman (I think) still remains hiphop.
The fortune I have at being able to run through my old shit at my parents’ house in Jersey makes me really happy. Especially when I found those North Face gloves, mint condition, no crust. Nice.
Above is a Batman medallion that some how came on the scene during that period in hiphop when De La Soul and X-Clan had everyone rocking a beaded this or leather that. Some people had the Malcolm X. Kind of fun finding these objects again. I’ve been secretly rocking this medallion since I rediscovered it last week. I guess in some way, pieces of “junk” like this tell us a little about who we were, and where we were at in life.
This song is a bit post-pleather medallion but I’m finding out it’s one of my favorite 90s era rap songs.
I live in what I like to call an “academic project.” It’s a pair of towers on the edges of Harlem. A reminder to some of the locals around the corner, who still live in this area, that eminent domain in New York State is like the Wu-Tang Clan:
Being an incessant collector of shit I don’t need, I’m often drawn to this closed off area where we add money to our laundry room cards. It’s not always just to re-up my $1.75 a wash/dry card. There’s also a bookshelf back there where people put old books and magazines.
I take it mostly graduate and doctoral students live here, along with some professors (What up, Dick John!), as well as people who’ve figured out how to game the system and get permanent residence. Since you get such an intellectual lot, oftimes there are some good books and many times a semi-recent New Yorker magazine or two. One day I crept in there and found a box of tapes. Video and audio. I’m usually not one to take a second look at someone’s dusty TDKs, but something drew me to this box. Maybe in hopes of finding a gem or two. There were at least 100 tapes. All meticulously marked with track lists. Damn, I thought, I remember when I did something like that, just way sloppier and I could never get all the tracks names to fit evenly on the line. I ended up squishing most of it together, or just putting the album title on the top sticker and calling it a day.
Inside the box, within the crusty Frank Zappa and Steely Dan tapes were several Coltrane tapes I thought might play in my handmedown CD alarm clock.
Seriously, who listens to analog tapes? Definitely the 8-tracks of Gen-X. But I’m glad I grabbed those tapes (I even took the Zappa ones), hearing Coltrane blow his sax over all that analog grit just makes listening to the maestro all the more authentic. Hard to explain the feeling I get, I just know I can’t stop listening. I keep flipping the tape again and again. Pure uncut Crescent. I think I’ll keep rocking this until the tape pops.
It’s not the same thing, but Coltrane’s great nephew bangs almost as hard.
The white collar set will always have a fascination with “urban” America. But living in Harlem, I’m always astounded by some of the non-brown and non-Dominican faces I see strutting up the street (more hurriedly after it gets dark). “This land is your land,” is required singing in kindergarten, no? The new mantra for 2011 midwest suburban migration to the hood.
That’s maybe what made the Urban Dictionary so popular. People started moving to the hood because rent was too high in the normal “friendly” places and they wanted to be able to feel like they belonged. The biggest point to assimilating into any culture is getting past the language barrier. But I find Aaron Peckham’s Urban Dictionary (above is a page from the 2007: Mo’ Urban Dictionary) as a tool that serves the initiated and the uninitiated. I’m able to explain better to my journalism peers what the hell I’m talking about, and the squarest of the bunch can seem cool when they rattle stuff off like “word is born”. Thank you, Internest.
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