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.
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 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.
“It’s all economics…” Lauryn Hill goes in on Jeru @ 4:15 in the video above.
When the news hit that Lauryn Hill is going on a 17 city tour, I met it with a big “so tf what?”. I’m tired of all this anticipation for her, man. She’s from my geographic area on the map, and next to Redman, she was like the only other person we could claim as our own, our super, mega best. Really all she did was make people question my part of New Jersey. Yeah, more Jersey jokes.
That crazy woman had the whole industry in the palm of her hand. She did the cool thing by rejecting it, but then all that diva-ish behavior and then no solid comeback? Squalid, man. Squalid career. She left a lot of people impoverished, her music fed a lot of souls. A vitamin if you were down. A soothing tonic if you had some relationship troubles. I won’t tell you which songs, because if you look at her catalog, there’s only so few to choose from.
The thing though that really gets me is that she didn’t represent. Here you have Rah Digga, who even though no one buys her records, she’s still grinding. STILL.
Lauryn marries into a musical legacy and hops off the planet. Now, I’ve seen her perform in these “secret” shows and other false Fugees reunions that she’ll do for a corporate buck, but it all lacks. I think she tries to explain in this recent interview what made her a recluse, again.
But back to my main point. She didn’t represent like she was supposed to. See, she was repping South Orange, which is basically (greater) Newark, depending on your degree of boughy-ness. As stated in
“Whether you’re representing Newark (aka Brick City), Irvington (aka Hooterville), or East Orange (aka Illtown), you still represent Newark”
As for Mrs. Hill, I wouldn’t hold my breath for any comeback or new songs, maybe in another 20 years when she’s older. For now, here are the classics, like warm butter on some syrupy pancakes:
I was checking out the list of this year’s Alfred I. duPont Award winners (the annual prize for the best broadcast pieces on radio or TV) and the thought occurred, what if that award transformed into something?
Now I don’t generally shill for Hollywood flicks, but I just saw Tron: Legacy the other day and man is that my new favorite reboot of an ’80s movie. I’m not saying it’s some cinematic masterpiece. When I was a kid and saw the original Tron, I was too young to really get into it. I still find it a little slow, a little boring. This year’s Tron wasn’t that much better on the story side, but visually, it was crack. And the Daft Punk soundtrack, as mellow as it was, really had me engaged throughout the entire joint. So, what’s the connection to the duPont award? A silvery scroll-looking thing? Well, I thought, what if that joint transformed into a grid vehicle? Like a light jet, or a light cycle? I was super impressed with how those scenes of vehicular homicide rendered in 3-D. It wasn’t so much about the eye-popping, in-your-face effect, but this beautiful depth of field.
I don’t know how long this will last, but somebody put up a bit that compares the two light cycle races, first from 1982 and then from 2010. I like both.
channibalsmith.com 