Friday, May 21, 2004
We've been good boys up here at the Hut and tried to stick to some general themes but my well-publicized "eclectic" streak is bubblin' over the sides o' the pot. Let's mix it up, shall we?
Howzabout some racist old school RnB, smooth'n'mellow jazz and a little conceptual classical on this sunshiny Friday?
If the sun ain't shinin' where you at, just pretend.
glisten
The Olympics - "Big Chief Little Foot"
(also known as "Big Chief Little Puss", I think)
Okay, I'm gonna be real here for a second: while I can understand the outcry of anger directed at Andre3K over his teepee-hijinx at the Grammys, I gotta say that folks are picking the wrong lightning rod here. Does anyone seriously believe that Andre was doing anything more than fucking around and dressing up like a little kid dressing up all Kaw-liga? Outkast has a rare knack for turning shuckandjive on its head and invert traditional hiphopwear in a way that no one else but Camron seems to have the guts to try. Cut the guy some slack.
I would also suggest that the public outcry is considerably more muted to call for Big Boi to tone down his hardcorestereotype pimpware. Can I assume it's okay for grown men to dress like idealized slaveowning, abusive criminals but if they toss on a headdress THEN it's offensive?
I must need my glasses, cuz I'm seeing doublestandard.
Anyway, we sure have come a long way from the days of The Olympics when lyrics like "I'll give you firewater in exchange for your daughter" were radio friendly. This track is bound to be damned to never see the airwaves again and is likely to be purged in the name of a historically revised, brightercleaner past.
Well, "Bullshit" sez I. This is just too damn catchy, oooowowowowowowow chants and all. Pump it up.
Buy The Olympics All Time Greatest Hits from Amazon
This is some seriously fun dance music. Sure, half the songs sound identical; so did Robert Johnson.
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An excellent article on the Olympics
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The Native American Nations
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Eddie Harris - "Boogie Woogie Bossa Nova"
Eddie Harris is drastically underrated by the hiphop sampling community and somebody needs to get on the ball and start frantically biting this man's action. He's dripping high recognition jewels and nobody wants a piece? I'm baffled. Can anybody refer me to some Eddie samples?
"Boogie Woogie" couldn't be much smoother if it tried. It's an archetypical Harris piece: easy to listen to, cool blue and effortlessly groovy. Harris always makes it look too easy.
Buy the Eddie Harris double CD reissue Free Speech/That's Why You're Overweight from Amazon
Fifteen bucks for two good jazz albums is a fair price.
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Eddie Harris.com
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Les McCann (from the stellar "Swiss Movement" album) remembers Eddie.
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Glen Gould - "So You Want to Write a Fugue"
For those who don't know, a fugue is a "musical composition in which a theme is taken up and developed by the various instruments or voices in succession."
Also for those who don't know, a Glen Gould is "a supremely gifted artist and Canada's most renowned classical musician of the 20th century . . . a recording artist, radio and television broadcaster and producer, writer and an outspoken apologist for the electronic media."
I'm taken with this piece for the sake of its brilliant conceit: it's a specific type of song about the difficulty of writing this particular specific type of song. On top of that, it's got grandeur and drive and bitchin' style.
This is the first classical track I've posted to the Hut; I wouldn't mind doing some more. This is not a genre that I have much experience in, so recommendations wouldn't be out of order.
Buy the double CD The Glenn Gould Silver Jubilee Album.
An excellent way to introduce yourself and vis versa
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The official Glen Gould site
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Anatomy of a Fugue
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Fugues and Fugue Sets
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The Fugue Project
Veddy interesting.
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musicblog clicky
Woooo! Heres FOURTEEN new musicblogs for you to peruse. Your cup spilleth over!
DJJayR's mashes are pretty much one and all worth the DL. Haven't found a dud in the bunch. I'm strongly recommending the Eamon vs. "I'm Your Puppet" (almost made the F.U.C.K. mixtape, but picked another mash instead), the Prince vs. Khia and the Little Kids singing 'We Will Rock You' over 'Tipsy', which is just sparkling.
As if this wasn't enough, son also recommends his fave mashes from other DJ'. All sites are already available here on the Hut but it's always nice to be led to water.
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Culture Deluxe hosts mashes and mixes galore; it seems like another major hideout for the big players of the GYBO crew. Be sure to test out the "Search CDX" option; you'll find loads of interesting tracks. I recommend you start by typing 'Britney', just to get a sense of what's available.
Incidentally, you don't know what fear is until you fire up what you think is a mash of 'Slave' vs. 'A Love Supreme'. Turned out to be 'Love Supreme' by JS16. Whew.
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IDC's mixnmashes are a bit house-y for my tastes and I don't recognize a lot of the bands sampled. Predictably, I _do_ like "Power Kiss" quite a bit. Go experience for yourself.
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In the file under "whaaaaa...?" category, please peek in on Voices on the Wind a soundblog with COPIOUS quantity of purported "ghost recordings".
Burroughs and Gysin were big proponents of this sort of thing; I imagine they'd be amused.
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In case you haven't figured it out yet, I'd like to make the Hut your one stop shopping center for all your musicblogging needs. This means three things:
1) If you have a musicblog that's not listed here yet, email me and let me know about it and I'll happily add it.
2) In the name of diversity, I'm going to be grabbagging A LOT of different sorts of stuff.
3) Some of the things I put up are simply not going to be music that I would ever really listen to.
Which is sort of my way of introducing the Monkees Sing Along page.
Tork, tork, tork.
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Reset Music just made me FINALLY replace 'Gay Bar' on the iPod Gym playlist with his mash of 'Gay Bar' and 'Ignition'.
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I'm LONG overdue dropping props to Fave List newcomer Word in the Alleys, run by fellow monkey pals.
WORD has a flavour like the PENNYARCADE boys doing a musicblog, which may or may not be intentional but is definitely entertaining. Right now, they're frontin' Buck 65, Hot Chip and Tom Waits; plus smarm, righteous indignation and irony aplenty. It's a heckuvatasty stew so get goin' and bring your spoon.
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Those of you on the ATHF tip will instantaneously recognize MC Chris as the voices of Sir Loin and MC Pee Pants. MC Chris has also been MUCH beloved throughout the web for his Nerdcore anthem "Fette's Vette" (check the unbelievably copious collection of remixes to determine just how deep that love is).
Chris' tracks are all fun but the surprise comes when the cat actually shows some real skills ("bust my biscuits over Britney in a bubble bath" had me agog).
His comedic material is VERY funny. Make sure not to miss the "Imperial Senate" skit; this is real must listen material for any one of you who could entertain the idea of engaging in an argument over who would win in a fight between Darkseid and Thanatos (Darkseid, of course. Kirby power).
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STILL not enough DJ ackshun for you? Then head over to Wired Sounds, (DJ cry.on.my.console's spot) and cop the Outkast "B.O.B." vs. Requiem for a Dream (EVERYTHING sounds good with this), the A-Team Theme Remix Remixed (with Cameo cameos!) and the Snap/Clash/DaftPunkMash (leaves your head spinning).
It's Optimally Prime!
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Okay, two more mix and mash sites, then I swear I'll stop: Eve Massacre and bOOmbOx.
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David F. Presents is a French blog chockablockfulla all manner of offbeat musical choices. Can, Missy, Elvis Costello, Bantam Boys.
Special props for directing me to Negativland's Mashing of the Christ, tho.
Those screenshots merely reinforce my intention to NEVER see Gibson's magnum oafish.
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Here's an odd one: Musical Family Tree.
"This site is run by Jeb Banner of Indianapolis Indiana and is dedicating to archiving the music he and his friends and his friend's friends have made, and continue to make, over the past 10 or so years."
Literally hundreds of songs. Close your eyes, throw a dart and get started.
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The Wily Filipino wins the award for best blog name.
Music posting is occasional (betwixt political observations), excessively offbeat (The Trees? Style Council? Icicle Works?)and quite wily.
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spiffy
Satan's Laundromat is "a Brooklyn-based photolog with an emphasis on urban decay, strange signage, and general weirdness."
Tho' it's not quite the same thing as being here (trust me, it's even stranger than dude makes it look), it's awful close. A real eye, good taste, love for the graf and constantly renewing content makes this one a nobrainer.
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Chauncey Billups is a sportsblog that is CONSISTENTLY cracking my shit up.
Consider this commentary on Kevin Garnett, who "had to throw a franchise and a city on his back and deal with the fact that his starting point guard had an 80 year old woman's hip, his Coach couldn't decide on a rotation, his prize free agent center played like he was imitating Nicolas Cage in Birdy, and starting shooting guard had a broken back! WALLY SZCZERBIAK STAND THE FUCK UP! UNLESS THAT HURTS THEN FEEL FREE TO SIT DOWN!"
BILLUPS has become my current "obsessive reload" site. I hope that this guy can keep this level of quality up on the offseason. Maybe he likes football, ah hope ah hope?
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Weighing in at a manly 190, we have Byron Crawford; talking shit about Avril Lavigne, reviewing the new David Cross album and copping the best visual feel on the mostly naked Alexandra Kerry that I've seen yet.
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I've been meaning to add Throbbing Skunk Ape to the sidebar for weeks now. And here we are.
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Big props to my cousin Shane and his fiancee Kayla. Drop by Kayla and Shane and show them love. Buy them silver. Buy them china. I cant. I'm too fucking broke.
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Matt and Sean and Keith have already weighed in on their loverly promos from Sumosonic's Heavy CD series; and I suppose I should do the same.
Here's the game: you pay $40 bucks, these fellas mail you twelve CD's on th' monthly tip. The packaging is all artsy and swooft and you get your CD's in a DVD box, which makes for nice storage. The CD's are some reasonably vivacious mix action with new music of considerable variety; the two I got had Kelis, El-P, Telefon Tel Aviv, the Van Bondies, Prefuse 73, Dangermouse, Prefuse 73 and Count Bass D (among many others); fairly akin to FLUX, TtIKTDA and GRAMOPHONE's tastes.
My only beef would be as to the considerable paucity of info on each artist, but the fellas at Heavy counter that by giving Hut-like links to each artist's site.
At something less than three bucks a disc, this is a pretty good deal for those of you who:
A) like your music on CD, not MP3 and/or dig the packaging,
B) don't have access to a DSL/Cable line to DL tracks from the many musicblogs out there,
C) would like a prepackaged smorgasbord of fairly new tracks to pick through.
If you got answered "yes" to any of those three, Heavy is definitely worth your dime. Drop by and tell 'em the Hut sent you.
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Without sounding too much like a preening idiot, can I say that I'm happy to see all the heavy hitters in the blog community "doin' th' right thing" and linking tracks (when applicable) to a "here's where you can buy it" source?
Just seems to me that this is only going to make our collective case stronger when our canoe gets rammed by the QE2, knowwhutimean?
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Here's a big "hell yeah" for GMail. Thanks to a friendly heads up from Sean at GRAMOPHONE, yours truly went hunting on blogger and got himself a GMail account. I'm just starting to explore with it but thus far it looks bloody great; the kind of improvement over hotmail that mozilla was over IE, which is to say MASSIVE.
I'll switch out addy's afore too long and with my 1 gig of storage I can stop worrying about having to obsessively checking my mail to make sure it isn't filling up any more. Don't let THAT stop you tho'; I love gettin' mail.
On a related topic, thanks to the many of you who've been droploading tracks. I'm sorry I don't have time to reply with personal thanks, but there's just too many people tossin' me music. It's great!
You've all provided some interesting songs and occasional hits for this wandering jew. It's a pleasant mitzvah.
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gotham
A pair of finds while knocking about the streets of the city:
Kidrobot (in Soho) presents a scenario I've long envisioned: a store that sells action figures exclusively to adults. Sure, they front a little like it's art, but the geek-friendly staff (they were playing Dinbot's "Whipsta" when I dropped by!) knows the score; it's a toy store for rich kids with condos. Out of my price range, but hella fun to browse.
I was quite surprised to see a live broadcast booth all Radio-Raheemish goin' on streetside at EVR (in the East Village, natch; 21 1st Ave if ya wanna visit, 212-254-7104 if ya wanna call).
On closer inspection, the card in the window informed me that "Eastvillageradio.com is a 24/7 live nonprofit, freeform 88.1 FM station with over 50 local DJs and personalities. At our streetlevel sound booth in the heart of the east village, we are committed to providing a diverse mix of music, news and views unavailable on mainstream radio."
If you're in OR out of New York, check this shit out. Seems pretty damn neat to me.
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On the job front: where there was once no gig, there are now three. I've got two waiter gigs I'm starting on Friday and Saturday, respectively (we'll see which of the two stick; possibly both will and that might be okay for awhile too) and a gym that I'll be picking up a few hours at. I've been busy.
The goal is to have at least ONE stable job by the end of next week.
Again, none of this is the final answer (copy writer or bust), but they'll do to continue putting food on the table and music on the airwaves for a bit. Again, please keep me in mind for all your media-oriented action.
I also do bar mitzvahs.
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Hey, I know this is some petty shit; but the recent Morning News mitzvah and various links have swollen the daily hits to about six hundred a day. Meanwhile, I got ONE comment yesterday (thanks Beat).
Hello? Talk about the weather; talk about your bypass surgery; heck, you can even talk about the frikkin' MUSIC, just say somethin', ahight?
I get so lonely and I can't let just anybody hold me...
