J Dilla

J Dilla's work has had a major influence on his peers as he embodied the neo soul sound, playing a significant yet modest role during the sub-genre's rise (roughly from the mid-90s to the early 2000s). As he reached his prime, the seriousness of his condition became public in November 2005 when J Dilla toured Europe performing from a wheelchair. It was later revealed that he suffered from TTP, a rare blood disease, and eventually dying from Lupus.
Like many artists who die young, Dilla's greatest public exposure came because of his death. His untimely death has had a significant impact on the hip-hop community. Besides countless tribute tracks and concerts, Dilla's death created a wealth of interest in his remaining catalog, and consequently, Dilla's influence on hip-hop production became more apparent. J Dilla was often dubbed "your favorite producer's favorite producer," and was highly regarded by hip-hop artists and producers.

Reality...music

I watch reality TV...a lot. So, I came across this music video of one of the girls of MTV's "The Hills." This is Heidi Montag with her wanna be pop hit "Higher." As I watched this, I thought (besides, "how embarrassing"), is the music business so glamorous and amazing that someone is willing to put out in the market something like this? Or is it just that audiences have become so unpredictable that a strike of luck might have made this song an actual hit? Maybe they think we're stupid...or deaf.

Watch it for yourself and think...is this what we have become as an audience? Don't you think we deserve better?

Felt - Early Mornin' Tony

Is a video by two of the most popular underground hip hop artists of the time. Murs from the group Living Legends, and Slug from the group atmosphere have joined forces to put out an album, that can break down the color barriers of hip hop music. The video is edited to show the two protagonists going through a typical day in a comic book cartoon like story. Together they make the audience believers in their lyrics and musical integrity.

Illusions of Bravado and Toughness in Music

Often musical genres mostly derivative of 'rock' and 'punk' (thrash, gutterpunk, grindcore, death metal, etc.) evoke a sense of toughness and machismo. These types of music attempt to assuage deep-seated insecurities and create a new persona for the mainly male listeners. Unfortunately, such pomp often fails when confronted with that little, tiny thing called Reality. The following video is a spendid display of my point. Glenn Danzig, former a lead singer of The Misfits (a great band mind you), Samhain, and his own solo stuff took to heart the idea of being a tough SOB and, well, just watch the video and you'll see. As the poet says, "there is no courage in the idea of battle."

Fucking Reality Without Getting Pregnant

THE BOREDOMS 77 BOA DRUM CIRCLE





THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN (north london poly riot)

Mexican 'Gangsta' Rap

Although music used to be related to a higher culture, scholars have now come to the realization of the connection between music and the dominant masses. This change refers to the way in which subjugated social groups, such as the working class and immigrant minorities remain culturally stable in a country which is not their own. There is an enduring bond between music and social struggle, specifically cultural survival. For this reason, during the 1970s a new type of composition evolved: narcocorridos-- Mexican folk ballads (more like "Gangsta" Rap if you ask me) in which a drug trafficker is a bandit hero whose story is being told. These ballads talk about violence, drugs, and power, idealizing the drug dealer.

I know, what do you care, right? Well, there are 23 million Mexicans living in the U.S. today. The Mexican-U.S. Border represents a place of cultural isolation, where both regions evolved as a unified territory. These areas are also recognized as trouble zones, where the most drug trafficking takes place. Most narcocorrido groups are either from the border area or natives of Northern Mexico, where loss of socio-cultural control is inevitable. It is this struggle that pushed for the development of an identity, evolving with the intensity of these tensions. 

In respect to their popularity in the U.S., these are more eminent in L.A., where there is a near-majority Hispanic population. Although I am not a big fan myself, it is important to understand that we are referring to an American culture-- a melting pot of ethnicities and diversity. Narcocorridos are the musical strength of a culture that bears nostalgia and struggle. And an underestimated social phenomenon.

Feel free to watch.

Cold War Kids

The Cold War Kids are an indie rock band from Fullerton, California. The Song "Hospital Beds" depicts the joy and misery that is contrived during a human lifespan. Specifically, the lyrics of song is about the relationships between hospital patients that get to know each other from being placed in the same recovery room. One patient enjoys the relief of surviving and carrying out his or her life further. The other feels the remorse that comes with knowing that the end is soon to come.

The video truly captures the emotional ride of the lyrics. The story is about a love triangle between two best friends and a girl. The editing jumps forward and back between about two decades. From two men in a boxing ring about to duke it out, to an earlier time when two best friend are hanging out. is kissing the girl, and the other guy, walks in and int erupts. Clearly the girl was cheating on the guy with his best friend. The guilt of the friendship takes us back the boxing ring, where the one best friend kills his best friend with a vicious blow to the head.

The beauty of the song is that it generates the feelings of total opposite spectrum's. The audience goes through an emotional roller-coaster. The lyrics of chorus take the listener into a situation of emergency and chaos. There is a desperate need for help and assistance. The nature of the content can be universally felt. The relationships made by disasters have far more an impact because of the situation. The reality of the song has not been touched by many artists. The Cold Wars Kids website has a blog as its secondary page. The band keeps a diary of there tour. Keeping there fans up to date with there location giving the fan a real connection to the band.

"I Don't Want to Grow Up" by Tom Waits

Perhaps my second favorite Tom Waits song off of his album Bone Machine, the recording sounds so incredibly dense and full, when, in reality, the only instruments being played are an upright bass, an acoustic guitar, and, of course, Waits’ voice (the trick is carefully placed microphones in a room with natural reverb - an old church, a cave, Rosie O’Donnell’s bathroom, etc.)

The song is not, by any means, suggesting that one ought to remain a puerile and immature dumbass. Instead, this song seems rooted in Thoreau’s oft-quoted remark about ‘most men leading lives of quiet despair.’ Without overtly attempting to do so, this song is a poignant critique of the unexamined life. The songs shares an intimate proximity with Tolstoy’s novella, “Death of Ivan Ilyich” and Kurosawa’s film ‘Ikiru.’ Both focus on individuals who are unable to grasp the majesty and grandeur of life until faced with their own mortality. In this way, ‘I Don’t Want to Grow Up’ compels us to move beyond our dreams of complacency and routine. I’ll drink to that. Amen.

Red Hot Director

The legendary Red Hot Chili Peppers are ready to release a new music video for their third single "Charlie" off their album, Stadium Arcadium. The band is from Los Angeles, and they have become one of the outstanding rock bands of the last two decades and have emerged as the top selling rock bands in the 21st century. The band is known for bending rules and breaking down walls to further their artistic creativity. Their fans were given an opportunity to create their own vision for the song "Charlie." The band held a contest for their fans to direct a video. The video didn't have the band members in it, so the fans had to use their creativity to capture the true essence of the band and the song. The video that they chose is amazing considering that the band members weren't involved in the creation of it. The winner of the video contest was Omri Cohen. He showed how young American Teenagers act. He captures the free spirit of America's youth. He tells the story of the four young boys, who go out and run wild through the city and the beach, with all their friends and girlfriends. It's a really fun video to watch, and I think definitely deserved to win the contest. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Token Hipster Joke

Rhea: Hey Kashif, how many hipsters does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Kashif: hmmmmm, i give up.

Rhea: It's a really obscure number. You've probably never heard of it.

Kashif: I don't get it

In Rainbow$$$$$$$$$$$$

When Radiohead released their latest album, In Rainbows, just three days after the final mix was completed, nobody was going to the stores to pick up a copy. The band decided to put the album online, available as a download. The most surprising detail to this decision is that the band allowed customers the choice to pay whatever they wanted. If you so desired, you could download the album for $0.00. There were no review copies shipped to the press beforehand which means the fans were able to pass judgment at the same time the media got access themselves.

There were many interesting speculations and judgments being made the day before the 'leak date'. Examples include:
"What a bunch of pretentious communists. Are they trying to say they're better than everybody?"
"This is going to spark a music revolution!"
"This is a conspiracy. I bet Thom Yorke (lead singer of Radiohead) got paid a shit load of money to do this as a ploy. They've totally sold out."

The truth is, it was one of the band's managers, Chris Hufford, who pushed for the band to allow fans to choose the price. Radiohead is not a group of communists, nor were they intending to spark a revolution against major labels. Whether or not this was merely a marketing strategy, is up for debate.

In a recent interview, Wired magazine asked David Byrne (of Talking Heads) to sit down with Yorke and discuss the state of the music biz. When Yorke was asked why their recent marketing strategy was successful he had this to say,
"The only reason we could even get away with this, the only reason anyone even gives a shit, is the fact that we've gone through the whole mill of the business in the first place. It's not supposed to be a model for anything else. It was simply a response to a situation. We're out of contract. We have our own studio. We have this new server. What the hell else would we do? This was the obvious thing. But it only works for us because of where we are."

Radiohead signed a six album recording contract with EMI (one of the largest record companies in the world) in 1991 after the band was fresh out of highschool. Throughout these six releases the band received lots of critical acclaim, a steady fanbase, even a Grammy. But they were having serious problems with their label. Their problems were typical of those many bands face when signing a major label contract early in their career. Radiohead did not have the rights to their material and were not in control of their financial earnings. They left the label in 2003, after their 6th album, and did not release In Rainbows until 2007, releasing it themselves.

In terms of digital income, Radiohead has made more money on the current album then any of the 6 previous albums combined. 60% of the downloads were purchased at an average of $6.

What did the fans think of the new album and marketing strategy once it was 'leaked'?
MTV put out an article October 7, 2007, one month after its release.
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1571737/20071011/radiohead.jhtml

From the article, I learned that Radiohead released the digital In Rainbows at 160kbps (what the hell that really means I'm not an expert of) whereas their cd releases and all other digital relases are available at 320kbps. This basically means, people who bought the actual cd when it was released early 2008, or shelled out $80 last year to get a boxed set that contained the first hard copy version of the album, got a SLIGHTLY better sound quality version.

Does it matter?

Many fans were upset by this and felt duped that the band would be getting credit for doing such a revolutionary act for its fans. The band's managers don't seem to be helping the situation either, especially after a quote from manager Bryce Edge was 'leaked.' He is quoted as saying that "CDs are a fantastic bit of kit. ... You can't listen to a Radiohead record on MP3 and hear the detail; it's impossible." Fans were beginning to feel as though they were being manipulated.

Does it matter?

All of this leads me to raise questions about authenticity. What are fans really buying when they purchase an album? Is it a matter of music appreciation, or do fans want to be sold something that has been packaged with seemingly authentic intentions? I'm thinking about the Scholes' essay Just Looking. I wonder how many people purchase albums because the band and its music seem to fit into a cultural category they want to identify with more than because of the musical aesthetics. When people listen to music, are they actually hearing the music?

*****(itunes gives potential buyers exactly 30 seconds of each song to determine whether or not they like what they hear. When did this become adequate time to decide?)*****

I remember when a group in our class was presenting a video analysis of a Three Doors Down video used as an advertisement for the National Guard. Several of the group's members made sure to announce to the class that they did not listen to or were not familiar with the band they were giving their presentation about. I found this interesting. Why disclose this to the class? For many, music is a large factor in shaping personal identity, myself included. For the most part, I don't think the members in that group said this because they are genuinely concerned about what the rest of the class thinks of them. I do recognize it as a way of reinforcing one's identity. We do it all the time, whether we are conscious of it or not.

What does this have to do with In Rainbows? No matter what Radiohead does, their identity is a commodity and the judgments made about their music has as much to do with what they've come to represent as it does about what they create. Similar to our own identities and judgments made about each other, no?

You can read the article here:
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_yorke

Strawberry Fields...Forever?

Although we might all be familiar with the lyrical content of this Beatles classic, "Strawberry Fields Forever" takes on a new context when its history comes into play. Written by John Lennon in the 1960s, I found this hit is more arrogant than appealing. Turns out that Strawberry Fields was a Salvation Army home in Liverpool, close to Lennon's residence at the time, where he attended garden parties as a kid. Having dealt with his mother's death and trying to handle every day hardships, this was a place where he isolated himself from the rest of the world-- a refugee from reality.

Far from this innocence, Lennon seemed to believe that he could see or feel things that nobody else could...and I am no one to judge. In Lennon's words, "psychic vision to me is reality." I can say that I definitely don't know what that feels like. Some of the original lines of the song read "No one is on my wavelength, I mean, it's either too high or too low ('Either I'm crazy, or a genius')/ That is, you can't, you know, tune in/but it's alright." He later modified it to more alluring, less egotistical words which, I believe he thought, less people would be capable of deciphering...for modesty's sake. 

I feel so fooled. But on the other hand, let's take it for what it is...whether it's another place, a special person, or a maniatic  nervous tic, every one has a 'Strawberry Fields' of their own. 

"Because Strawberry Fields is anywhere you want to go." -John Lennon

"Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl" by Broken Social Scene

The song starts out with this strange, innocuous voice repeating the lines, “used to be one of the rotten ones and I liked you for that.” Emily Haines’(she mainly sings for the band Metric) voice is run through a heavy maze of effects (maybe a phase, a flanger, and a pitch-shifter of some kind). Her voice seems altered enough by the effects to be raised a pitch or two for the sake of the song. The tone of her processed voice is eerie and childlike and initially off-putting. There is something uneasy, yet captivating about it. A minute into the song and it starts to beautifully break open. It’s the banjo and the violin that shapes the harmonic structure of the song and suffuses it with the ineluctable longing of adolescence.

I listened to this song for the first time while strolling down some neighborhood on the outskirts of Atlanta, Georgia this winter. A friend had given me a BSS mix and I’d thrown it on my ipod for the trip. Halfway into listening to the song and suddenly the leafless trees around me were decorated with all the pretty girls I’d known: The one’s that broke my heart and the one’s whose hearts I’d broken. I thought about that wilderness of veins and arteries that we could so easily get lost in as boys and girls, without all the artifice and dross of modern adulthood, and it felt like a kind of bittersweet spell. If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is. Amen.

Recommended Reading

In my experience, those of us who are deeply affected by music can pinpoint at least one experience when we realized there are no limitations except those we create for ourselves. This can be both a liberating and frightening moment.

Greil Marcus begins his book "Lipstick Traces" by describing his own experience first hearing Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols declare "I AM AN ANARCHIST!" While this statement was in essence, merely a pop song created by an anonymous delinquent, it was a moment when societal facts and sound came together and created the opportunity for anyone who gave a shit to share that voice. This moment is suspended in time, the voice of Johnny Rotten crying out with a passion to change the world. Did the world change because of Rotten? Of course not. "The Sex Pistols were a commercial proposition and a cultural conspiracy" writes Marcus, the world did not change directly, but each moment in time that disrupts a person's everyday complacent routine is what shapes our culture. Marcus' book traces our culture backwards to find some of these 'forgotten' and 'unappreciated' events in our era that culminate into our shared experiences.

I've only just started to read the book but it is as much about decoding everyday life as it is about music.