El Majority...or the Crowded/Community Effect

This is an interesting list.

100 Best Novels

Brings up some interesting points about community and people's tendencies to rally and whether that is good or bad or even matters. Personally, it annoys the shit out of me sometimes, like this list. It seems the purpose behinds these types of communities is to prevent any kind of tyranny or favoritism, but as you can see, the list is heavily tilted. Of course the purpose of Community goes much deeper than this, as you can read below, but on the surface, allowing the majority or a large community voice to make decisions can be risky (see '00 - '08). There is also a different between a community and majority. I'm kind of disgusted when I see large groups of people honestly, like protests, or Second Life. I think, "if you see or hear about a large group of people doing anything, be skeptical." There's a great song on MMJ's most recent record about this.

More about Communities.

Outside of Society

Word has it, PBS will be screening Dream of Life, Steven Sebring's doc on Patti Smith, on December 30th. For all fans of integrity, I highly recommend making your way there — she's an American Artist.

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Courtesy of JSegertimeradio.

Prisencolinensinainciusol

The lyrics are pure gibberish, intended to sound like American English as heard by a non English-speaker. In an interview, Celentano explains that the song is about "incommunicability" because in modern times people are not able to communicate to each other anymore. He added the only word we need is "prisencolinensinainciusol" which is supposed to stand for "universal love." The song has been described by scholars as "proto hip-hop."

Jordanian

Ever heard the rumor or conspiracy that Jordan was asked to leave Basketball due to his gambling problem, but to stay in Chicago and continue generating money for the "organization" by playing baseball?

Just throwin' it out there.

Christmas Card

L.A. is a strange place. Another thing thats funny about this photo is that when I showed it to my Mother, she ACTUALLY THOUGHT I became a freakin' SCIENTOLOGIST! She told me she wasn't amused.

"Oh ye of little faith."

Bulbous Bouffant - The Vestibules

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Took'd Out

About 150 drawings comprise Nathanael Roney’s exhibit “Take me out,” currently on display at Harvest Records in West Asheville. The sheer volume of work is impressive and when viewed as a whole, the mass of drawings tells a compelling story as strange and beautiful as each individual piece.

Xpress readers may already be familiar with Roney’s work; he regularly illustrates the “Junker’s Blues” column and has illustrated many fine covers. His drawings might best be described as “anti” contour drawings, as the confidently rendered lines run against the natural contours of his subjects, for a stylized effect that is oddly disarming and expressively gooey. Literally these are “twisted” drawings.

Using only a ball point pen, the simplicity of Roney’s medium exaggerates the curious quality of his subject matter, which ranges from baseball players, portraits of historical figures, monkeys, goats, soldiers and landscapes. The artist has drawn himself and his wife in many of the pictures — often in cheeky ways, such as the drawing where he appears as a minotaur. In another he stands contemplatively in front of a gravestone.

Peppered here and there are witty text and thought bubbles which poetically challenge the viewer’s experience.” Go ahead, look back” is written next to an image of Roney, looking over his shoulder — referencing the ultimate iconic rebel, Bob Dylan, subject of the film Don’t Look Back.

“He F--ks Me” is written over a barren landscape in one drawing, and in another drawing of the same landscape (with slightly differing shadows)“He F--s Me Not” is written. This is the kind of thing that is so refreshing about the show — moving through differing emotional textures, Roney doesn’t dumb down or compromise subject matter for his viewers. And his viewers appreciate that.

— Ursula Gullow, Mountain Xpress

See more. Hear more.

The Armpit Collection XXVIII: Soul Jazz

"Soul jazz was a development of hard bop which incorporated strong influences from blues, gospel and rhythm and blues in music for small groups...Soul jazz tends to use an 8th note groove (similar to what developed in rock and R&B music), while hard bop generally uses a shuffle rhythm, although there are soul jazz songs with shuffle rhythms and hard bop songs with steady 8th note grooves (although the latter are arguably definable as both hard bop and soul jazz."

This is a unique posting in the Armpit Collection because it depends entirely on your motivation and research to fill in the big blank _______. No specific record is officially chosen for slot XXVIII for a few reasons, one of which being that I'm personally still researching this whole Soul Jazz / Studio One phenomenon myself.

Basically, there's this great record label in the UK called Soul Jazz. I first ran into Soul Jazz during my year-long free record spoilings courtesy of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" 45 dangling from a chain around my neck. The consequence of wearing this necklace was winning a free record each month for a year from Harvest in Asheville. One of these records was Studio One's Rockers. Studio One is Reggae music the way you want Reggae music. Soul Jazz has been blessed with free range over the Studio One vaults, to which they're doing incredible justice by re-issuing and compiling a virtual historical retrospective on many aspects of not only Reggae music, but also musical culture of the mid twentieth century.

My palette is ripe with the possibility of how many of these compilations I can justify getting. At this time, I only have two, the aforementioned Rockers, and Scorchers, a collection of Reggae Soul Instrumentals. I'll continue with the second Volume of Scorchers and likely move on to the 3 Volumes of Roots and the 2 highly coveted Volumes of Soul as soon as possible. I urge you to browse the vast and compelling catalog of Soul Jazz.

"Roots music flourished in the 1970’s as Rastafarianism, Black consciousness and self-determinization became the most important aspects of Reggae music."

"Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and the civil rights movement of the 1960s loom large as self-determination, economic power and musical freedom led to jazz artists finding new paths – both musical and economic."

See Also:

Trojan Label and Box Set Series

Perfect Day (with old people)

Celebrating 20 years of the Velvet Revolution in Prague on 17. November 2009.

Fishing Bloopers

HILARIOUS! Via Gawker.

To Live and Die in L.A

Last weekend my girlfriend and I went on a somewhat impulsive trip to California. The plan was to see her family in Santa Barbara for Friday through Sunday, and then visit my old Towson friends in Los Angeles Monday, and fly back Tuesday.

Our plane touched down late Friday night, close to midnight. By the time we went to the car rental place, it was close to 12:30am. We get in our newish Mazda and head down the road. For the sake of convenience we got GPS for the car. Amanda was in charge of the GPS and I was driving. When we got to the first stop light, I glance at the little car in the GPS machine and noticed it was still driving down its imaginary road. Hmmm.

I drive a little farther, and then start seeing familiar street signs (familiar for all the wrong reasons): Crenshaw, Florance, Normandy. Yes, I'm in Watts, one of America's less fortunate and infamous neighborhoods. The GPS keeps slurting out directions, but when I hear "turn off the ramp here on your right," I know we're completely lost, we're in a goddamn hood nowhere near any ramp.

I had been up since 6:30 that morning, it's 1am now, and I have an hour and a half drive to Santa Barbara ahead of me. I do not have time to be lost in Inglewood ("always up to no good," according to my outspoken family physician, Dr. Dre). Amanda and I start to panic...

I pull up to a restaurant and a homeless man approaches the car explaining, "Just because I'm homeless doesn't mean I don't know where I'm at. You're lost." Keep driving, Matthew.

I drove into the parking lot of a gas station to ask for directions. No less than eight hoods are standing together outside of the station. I can't leave Amanda in the car. I don't want to get out of the car. On the other streets covered in trash thrown about, stray pit bulls eating whatever they could find, shitty cars with dark tinted windows.

Finally we approached a McDonald's drive through window. A kind lady approaches the window, a window complete with jail cell-like metal bars protecting her while she works. You can fit a large drink between the bars, but well, I just hadn't seen that before. The first thing she tells us is "You're lost." She told us what turns to make to get us back to LAX.

On the way back to the airport I tell Amanda to turn off the GPS and then turn it back on. She did and voila, it finally showed us on streets we were actually driving down. I was expecting the GPS to tell us, "Why are you here? Please leave the neighborhood immediately."

Zero "New Blood"

We Are All on Drugs: War Edition

Here's a link to another clip where U.S. soldiers speak rather bluntly (pardon the pun) about how high the Afghan Army is on the battlefield.