Rest in peace, Guru
Gifted Unlimited Rhymes Universal aka Keith Elam of Gang Starr is dead. Cancer. If you know his work, you understand the extent of the loss. Other rappers have flavor, and some have skills, but Guru was unique and the Gang Starr records will live forever. RIP
VA – Halloween 2009
Every year our house gets in excess of 1000 trick or treaters – I’m not kidding – and every year I make a mixtape to entertain them and keep me alive while I stand outside for hours handing out candy. I kind of love it. Last year far and away the kids were responding best to the metal songs I threw on, so this year I’m going ALL METAL. I’m pleased with how this mix came out, it starts out NWOBHM then skips two decades and goes right to the 2000s. As a side note, I’m impressed by a whole bunch of metal records from this year – Baroness, Secrets of the Moon, Nargaroth and that Dethklok album which you might think is a joke but the musicianship isn’t. Anyway, 140mb, download.
My favorite song of 1996 when it was 1996
1996 was the year before I went to college and my second year of reading CMJ, the College Music Journal magazine, which came with a free CD sampler every month. This was a big deal – I wouldn’t see my first mp3 until October of that year, when I started downloading them from IRC over a V.34 28.8k modem. So anyway, at that time, getting 20 new songs for five bucks was pretty exciting. My musical life was that, the radio, and the excellent, excellent Repo Records in Bryn Mawr, which has since closed down (what happened to you, super-nice Melanie who worked there?), and of course my friends’ taste.
So my favorite song of the year, Possibly Peking, was from one of those CMJ samplers, by a band called Sammy. The profound Pavement influence is clear now, but at the time all I knew of Pavement was that haircut song, and if Cut Your Hair was the only Pavement song you knew, wouldn’t you think Sammy was the better band? This album is interesting because it’s pretty solid, was issued on Geffen, and no one has ever heard of it. The album cover is really evocative of mid-90s New York for me, when everyone had bangs. Anyway…
Radio Friendly Unit Shifter ‘09 by Nick Catchdubs & Mr. Ducker!
Via Caps’ Twitter – volume two of this great mix series! I haven’t even heard this yet – downloading right now – but I’m sure it’s hawwwwasome. click click click
update it’s great. Check out the transition from Closer to the Dust Brother remix of Hey Man Nice Shot – damnnn
Goodbye, Indie 103.1
The radio station I listen to in the car when I’m not listening to NPR, Indie 103.1, suddenly folded tent and moved to the internet. This echoes the closure of my beloved 103.9 WDRE of Philly although that was a greater loss, since in 1997 it wasn’t possible to shrug and hit ‘shuffle all songs’ on my iPod. Hopefully Jonesy’s Jukebox will reappear – where, I don’t know.
In celebration of Notorious
Here’s a rarely heard Biggie joint, his unreleased Pepsi-Cola commercial. You can kind of hear the gears turning in his head – “okay, it’s kind of wack, but I get twenty on it and Puff gets twenty” – and the quotidian subject matter doesn’t stop his sorrowful flow.
If you can’t quench my thirst / what you in my fridge for? / what you want to live for / life with the dry mouth?
2008 HOLIDAY MIXTAPES
This is my last post until early January sometime and it’s always good to close out the year with music. Happy holidays everybody!
Happy Christmas Young World (110mb)
01 Biff Rose – It’s Happening
What an insane album. Supposedly Biff was a big influence on David Bowie.
02 The Veronicas – Hook Me Up
Straight out of a 24 Hour Fitness television commercial. But hey, I like girls on stairmasters.
03 Friendly Fires – Skeleton Boy
Friendly Fires are forgettable, but I thought this song fit the mix.
04 Apes – Walk Thru Walls
Apes, on the other hand, are the real deal.
05 Hot Chip and Robert Wyatt – Made In The Dark
Unlikely collaboration! I can’t wait for the whole EP.
06 The Sea and Cake – Down in the City
This is my free-jazz side talking.
07 Telepathe – In Your Line
With TV on the Radio production assistance.
08 Arthur Russell – Nobody Wants A Lonely Heart
Between this and I Couldn’t Say It To Your Face, it’s a whole other side of Arthur. Who knew?
09 The Lines – On The Air
Reissue comp of the year.
10 No Age – Teen Creeps
Possibly the album of the year. Hard to say.
11 Wild Stares – Piece of the Picture
A punk shambles. The cello makes it.
12 A Flock of Seagulls – Tricks (demo)
Shades of Gary Numan? Is it just me?
13 TKA – Give Your Love To Me (DJ Shadow remix) (Clitwack edit)
Great little remix by Shadow circa 1990. I cut it in half.
14 50 Cent – My Heart
Fifty is so rich he doesn’t even care. This reminds me of toasting more than rapping because the disco plays out, which is kind of awesome. Rapwise I had to leave off Z-Ro Call My Phone and Lil’ Boosie Don’t I Act A Donkey, shout to Cocaine Blunts.
15 MGMT – Electric Feel
Was this a huge track from a huge record? Yeah, well, it’s a great song. I can’t recommend the Jim Jones version, though.
16 The Hives and Cyndi Lauper – A Christmas Duel
Delightful!
17 The Vince Guaraldi Trio – African Sleigh Ride
This is an outtake, I think. I personally can’t have Christmas without Vince.
18 The Whitest Boy Alive – Golden Cage (Fred Falke Remix)
Remix of the year. Makes me want to live.
2008 was a very metal year for me.
01 The Hand of Doom – There Ain’t No Running Away
Crazy German legacy metal.
02 Pantera – Heresy (demo, alternate lyrics)
Awesome take from the demo sessions.
03 Genghis Tron – Things Don’t Look Good
It took me a while to warm up to Genghis Tron, but I got there.
04 Bison B.C. – Dark Towers
Trad metal.
05 Disfear – The Furnace
I fucking love Disfear. Fucking love.
06 The Haunted – The Flood
Featuring members of Disfear.
07 Equilibrium – Heimwärts
Ferngully metal.
08 Meshuggah – Bleed
RIYL Tool.
09 Burning Star Core – Through The Bars Of A Rhyme
I hate this record, but there’s something metal about this one song.
10 Opeth – Porcelain Heart
Opeth are kind of running it.
11 Krallice – Timehusk
Great album.
12 Earth – Omens And Portents II – Carrion Crow
Somewhere, Kurt smiles.
13 KTL – Wicked Way
Grinding.
I just found my music want list from May 21 2001 [thoughts now]
Microstoria Model 3, Step 2 [I think I was really into Oval at the time? weirdly I never got a copy of this]
Captain Beefheart Trout Mask Replica [I probably haven't listened to this since 2005]
Helmet Strap It On [I was loving Aftertaste. I didn't understand then, but now I get Page's jazz background]
Arab Strap Elephant Shoe [George and I went to an Arab Strap show at the Middle East which is still I think the best show of my life. I was deaf in one ear for two days afterwards]
Prince Paul A Prince Among Thieves [Loved Handsome Boy Modeling School, later found this disappointing]
Aerial M Aerial M [Heavy Slint/The For Carnation/Tortoise listening at the time, wanted to get complete, didn't like it]
Piano Magic Anything [I don't know what I meant, since they never released an album with this title.]
Now nothing is on my want list for more than ten seconds.
Stop everything and download this tape
Via El Stence I heard about this 90s mixtape Catchdubs did for Mishka and you should GO GET IT RIGHT NOW. Dinosaur Jr.’s Start Choppin’ came up and I flipped my shit. I like that he picked Sliver out of all the possible Nirvana songs.
Updata
I kind of have a lot to talk about but nothing I can blog about, feel me? Anyway you’ve seen this but watch it again.
always on my stress mode
Obama on Lil’ Wayne
Obama: “You are probably not that good a rapper. Maybe you are the next Lil Wayne, but probably not, in which case you need to stay in school.”
WOW.
(I must admit, Tha Carter III has completely grown on me.)
THE FUCKING OCEAN IN SLATE!!
John’s band is listed in today’s Slate.com Why Do Bands Give Themselves Unprintable Names? article. The Fucking Ocean have indeed released a very good record, it’s La Main Rouge on Double Negative Records, and if you don’t have a copy you should nab one from iTunes or DNR right now!
Too fucking right
Tha Carter III
I basically don’t have it in me to talk about this whole album, so let me focus on just one track for a second:
13 – Nothin’ On Me (featuring Fabolous and Juelz Santana)
Fab – whatever. JUELZ* turns in an ISO 9000 certified BURNER, I think – “You’re sloppy like seconds / obey me like peasants / or get opened up like presents” and then later “I’m a shark / y’all just koi fish / what else / octopus / what else / oysters.” With his cleverness and clear delivery he sounds to me like an orthodox inheritor of Jadakiss – the pinnacle of mixtape rap in the year 2000, and I mean that as a compliment. So then, after a noodling autotune chorus, Wayne staggers in with a good line (“It’s Weezy / F you – now you gotta have a baby”) and proceeds to – freestyle, I guess, for a minute and ten seconds. For someone who seems obsessed with sports references and competition (elsewhere: “even the referee / thinks I need an Espy”) Wayne seems uninterested in one-upping Santana. His portion of the song is flawed, deeply flawed, not what you’d expect to make it onto a highly anticipated album that was supposed to become a classic or reinvigorate hip-hop or whatever. Wayne is fucking around, and it’s that exposed roughness that makes you either love or despise him. His great commonality with Jay-Z (track two; Jay seems to be making fun of him) is their relaxed sprechstimme style of delivery and at the end of the song when he turns the autotune back on and slows down, gangster-whispering “I got everything / you got nothing / you ain’t got nothing on me” he sounds like – my turn to free-associate – an inverted Tracy Chapman. Soo woo, damu.
* “Santana was arrested outside of his Teaneck, New Jersey home in March 2008. After being pulled over for driving with a suspended license, a search by police of Santana’s Bentley found a bag of marijuana, 29 hollow-point bullets and $19,500 in cash inside a plastic bag filled with Jolly Rancher candies.”
I love that feeling
when you’re looking for a song, and it’s really hard to find and you’re looking and looking and finally you find it, and it’s downloading so slowly, and all you have is the name of the song to go by, and you’re imagining how incredible it must be, and you have this idea of it in your head. Before you’ve heard it. Apparently this is how Talking Heads wrote The Overload on Remain In Light – based on an idea of Joy Division, even though no one in the band had ever actually heard Joy Division.
I love Born Under Punches from that album; here’s a live performance of it in Rome, 1980. Sometimes classics are best.
The zoo
- Nature has been producing photonic crystals for quite a while in the form of the shell of a beautiful beetle. (We need photonic crystal to produce optical computers.) Bonus link: rare breed of stag beetle being hunted to extinction because of Mushiking.
- The Telegraph: Extinct Tasmanian tiger DNA implanted in mouse cells. “‘This is the first time that DNA from an extinct species has been used to induce a functional response in another living organism,’ said Dr Andrew Pask at the University of Melbourne, who led the research.” Radddd
- Song: ODB, Brooklyn Zoo II – underrated!
Not much
- Amazing reconceptualization of the US dollar and other currencies. Maybe a little bit unfair – does the world really only see us launching missiles and burning crosses? But striking.
- Best news story evs: “They told the suspicious working girls they were people of restricted growth working with a traveling circus, and as State law does not allow those with disabilities to be discriminated against they had no right to refuse them.” Update: DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ! The story was complete fabrication developed by a SEO to drive traffic to money.co.uk – shameful!!
- Chip Kidd is a big comic book nerd
- Song: Plastic Bertrand, Ca Plane Pour Moi – love it!! Wooo eee wooo oooo
Quickly
- Pentagram on the interactive exhibitions they created for the Detroit Institute of Arts.
- FontStruct – make fonts online – looks interesting! via Kottke
- Crazy building cover – is that Beverly Hills??
- Josh Kopelman on Lifecycle Messaging – dovetails with the Wired article on SuperMemo.
- Song of the day: Robyn, Who’s That Girl. Great pop single. She’s backed by The Knife!
It’s already morning
Totally fun story of the week: an interview with the staff of Yujin’s planning department. Yujin is a Japanese company that makes toys in little plastic bubbles you get out of vending machines (in Japan).- Song of the day: Daliah Lavi, Vielleicht schon Morgen, the source vocal for Jürgen Paape’s So Weit Wie Noch Nie, which you know from Erlend Oye’s deathless DJ Kicks volume. (Sendspace link via ILM)
- Amazing video from 1997 of Kaws putting up the bus shelter pieces that made him famous – he replaced the MTA locks with his own! (via SlamXhype)
Bad luck
Architecture: Inside The World’s First Billion-Dollar Home. Actually $2bn. I sort of like the exterior – well, I like that it’s not some Romanesque monstrosity one logarithm too large – but the interior looks like a midrange hotel, and that’s because it was built by “Perkins + Will and Hirsch Bedner Associates, the designers behind the Mandarin Oriental.” The owner is Mukesh Ambani, whose net worth is ~$43bn, which means this residence is around 4.5% of his fortune. In that light he almost seems house-poor. (Link via Kottke.)- Infographics: Rad NYT biological cell chart of an average American’s spending, with hotspots for increase in costs over the past year, lead by fuel obvs.
- Television: So are you watching The Office? Did you see the last one, with Dwight’s org chart? This scene:
NBC posted a PDF of the actual chart. It’s kind of priceless. Your viral marketing is working, NBC! - Song of the day: Del Shannon, Hey Little Girl. Kind of creepy, right? It has the same general tone as Runaway, but there’s something sinister about it. “I’ll replace each broken part that’s gone.”
- LATE BREAKING: NEW NIN ALBUM “THE SLIP” OUT TODAY, and FREE!
Never not blogging
- Games: Snatcher Pilot DS: The Snatcher demo disc ported to Nintendo DS – quite an achievement. Snatcher’s an old cyberpunk game by Hideo Kojima of Metal Gear Solid. You’re going to need a NintendoDS flash card to play. Via Insert Credit.
Jules Guerin: The Chateaux of Touraine: Four pages with images from this incredible 1906 book of illustrations: one, two, three, four. Via the Comics Journal’s Journalista blog.
- Have you ever entered into an agreement without a contract? Song of the day: Method Man and Mary J. Blige, You’re All I Need To Get By (You Don’t Need A Ring To Be My Wife)
Journal-Inc: Grocery bag alternatives. Boy, I like the Porter one.- Late update: NEW DARK KNIGHT TRAILER!!
All – night – long
- Ars Technica: New Orphaned Works Act would limit copyright liability: Huge, important story from last week and NO MENTIONS on the New York Times or any other major news outlet. Shameful. Anyway basically there are now House and Senate bills that would limit your exposure to litigation if you make a good-faith effort to determine the status of an orphaned copyright, fail, and republish it in some form yourself. So like Amazon and Google could put up full text of every single book they’ve scanned that’s in a grey area – and Amazon could actually sell these things on Kindle and deal with rights owners in a uniform way if they pop up and demand compensation. AWESOME. Link via Louis.
- Matt Prager on the WGA strike (PDF LINK): Now this is interesting: Matt Prager asserts that spec screenplays which get bought and produced can never count as work-for-hire, and writes an essay about the consequences. You may not be interested in this, but it’s interesting. Via Lessig’s blog, where I went to check to see if he was involved in the 2008 version of the Orphaned Works Act – if he is, he’s not saying. (You know Prager works in Hollywood because his essay is set in American Typewriter.)
- Engadget: Disney/WowWee Wall-E robot: I might just have to get these for my nieces and nephews.
- Music: Kevie Kev, All Night Long (Waterbed). Old school Sugarhill classic. It’s long, really really long, six minutes long, and you have to be in the right mood, but girl, will you meet me at the waterbed tonight?
- Movies: Guy Maddin – Brand Upon The Brain! The Rapidshare links still work…
What’s up Monday
Kitsune Noir: House Uc by Miyahara Architect Office: Great use of concrete. I wonder what’s on the roof. - Wired: Deutsche Bank Loves Shai Agassi’s Plan to Bring Us EVs (Electric Vehicles): “Bean counters at Deutsche Bank absolutely love Shai Agassi’s plan to sell electric vehicles like cell phones and think it could be a “paradigm shift” that causes “massive disruption” to the auto industry… a typical contract would cost $550 a month and provide 18,000 miles a year.” Basically, energy is 7¢ a mile versus 24¢ a mile for gas in Europe. This should work, right? People who would buy a loaded Smart would just lease this instead?
Ian Albert – Video Game Maps: Amazing maps of territories I know well. The San Andreas map effort is a real marvel. The clickable version to the left is scaled down to 11% of a version already scaled way down from a gigapixel. (via Selectbutton forums.)- Music music music music: Pilooski edit of Alan Parson’s Project I, Robot for D*I*R*T*Y Edits Vol.1.
The Strawberry Zots – Get Me To The World On Time
This song is the penultimate – that’s right, PENULTIMATE – box marked off on my WDRE playlist. I scoured the internet for this single, but in the end, I had to go to Amazon Used for a physical copy.
It’s not terrifically good; it sounds best in context next to “Full Of Love” by Doctor Calculus or Shona Lang’s “(Glad I’m Not) A Kennedy” or something. It’s a cover of an Electric Prunes song, and the sound is halfway between They Might Be Giants and REM, maybe? Anyway.
I write