Monday, July 19th, 2004

HOUSE AND POST-PUNK NOSTALGIA

Thanks to the wonderfully generous Matos and Daddino (I owe, I owe, so off to rip I go!), eMusic, and Mick Jones and Pennie Smith, I have been swimming in nostalgia all weekend.

The first two compiled a humongous discog of Simon Reynolds’ Generation Ecstasy. (Matos just boiled it down to a 6-CD box set) I’m not ashamed to admit I can’t get beyond the 80s. All those late 80s house and techno discs make me pine for the crate of records some (very smart or just very lucky) asshole swiped from me as we were dismantling after a gig one night at a club on Durant Avenue. If anyone out there wants to give me back my complete collection of Bonesbreaks records, rare-ass Metroplex records and other-stuff-that-fetches-mad-loot-on-eBay no questions asked, I promise I will not prosecute or otherwise beat the shit out of you.

eMusic has the entire early Gary Numan discography. Forget “I, Robot”! Note to electroclashers: this is why most of you suck.

And thanks to Mick Jones, we now have the rehearsal tapes for the London Calling sessions. Appropo enough, he found these tapes recorded in a garage in a box in his garage They’re called The Vanilla Tapes and they’re being released as part of a 2CD+DVD London Calling set this fall. The DVD includes about an hour of footage of the making-of-the-album, including a Don Letts doc and videos for “London Calling”, “Train In Vain”, “The Clampdown” and the famed “Fridays” appearances. I’ll detail the tapes another time in some review for somebody.

I first heard of the Clash with their “This Is Radio Clash” video and my cousin (who soon after got a college radio show at KTUH and called himself “Tommy Gun”) turning me on to “The Magnificent Seven”, probably in the impressionable summer after eighth grade. I was mesmerized by Futura’s mural and the b-boys and rappers. Then I found out these guys did reggae too. Whoa! I got to London Calling and the US debut and was hooked.

It’s funny because in Honolulu, punk was accessible first mostly to the haole and Local kids who could afford the imports and black leather jackets, so in my private-school setting the context was funny: it signified wealth and brattiness, forget eating canned beans and eggs and recording demos in a dirty, carfume-filled garage.

Not that I was a Marxist then, or even prole for that matter–although summer jobs cleaning restaurant toilets and cooking huge vats of rice (not at the same time) do develop sections of the brain that remain inert in vast swaths of the planet…

Weirdly enough my exposure to good post-punk that didn’t come through sifting through my cousin’s 45s happened via trips to the Hawai’i State Library downtown which, thankfully, stocked all the Rolling Stone 5-Star Records like Gang of Four and Talking Heads. (No Gary Numan that I remember. Critics hated him!) Anyway, that’s what you gotta love about socialism–bureaucrats filling the Library record bins with funky agit-prop.

By the time I was in college, I had complete access to all this stuff at the KALX library-a home away from home for a while-not to mention free tickets to see the bands at The Stone or the Berkeley Square and student loan money to go and buy stuff on the return-it-for-full-credit-if-you-don’t-like-it-or-just-want-to-build-up-your-cassette-collection-plan from Rasputins. But I had already been deep into hip-hop and was reading about house in British music mags.

So on weekends like this, it’s cool to catch up on things I missed.

You live long enough, you learn about shit you should have known the first time.

posted by @ 3:37 pm | 0 Comments

Saturday, July 17th, 2004

The plight of the Young Right. Ah, would that the Young Left had it so bad.

posted by @ 8:28 am | 0 Comments

Friday, July 16th, 2004

PLACE TO BE

Bay Area peoples: OUTFOXED: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism premieres tonight, 7pm at the Victoria Theater, 16th and Mission. Q+A with director/producer Robert Greenwald to follow. It’s a benefit for Media Alliance, Alternet, and Global Exchange.

See it before the lawyers at Fox News shut it down!

While I’m on the topic of media, there’s gonna be a FCC hearing in Monterey July 21 to talk media diversity, local content and local ownership. For more info, check here. If you can’t make it, tune into KPFA which will broadcast live beginning 5:30 PST.

posted by @ 10:30 am | 0 Comments

Wednesday, July 14th, 2004

If you missed “Re-Vote Control” on The Daily Show last night, you now have no excuse. The funniest thing they’ve ever done, for real. And those are some funny motherfuckers. Unfortunately the clip doesn’t have Rob Corddry’s floor-rolling “report” on the conspiracy, I mean inquiry, into postponing the elections. All you Brooklyn bootlegers–DVDs of this shit, please? I promise it’ll be Chappelle-type fire on the streets.

posted by @ 8:55 pm | 0 Comments

Wednesday, July 14th, 2004

GOOD NEWS FOR ONCE

It’s We Love Monie Love Week at The Suburbs Are Killing Us! Bonuz beatz: the return of hip-house!

Yes, in two weeks we’ll wonder why we were so excited.

posted by @ 8:48 pm | 0 Comments

Wednesday, July 14th, 2004

My review of Ragga Ragga Ragga…it’s all about Vybz! Bonuz beatz: the great Matt Cibula on the great Tanya Stephens! (Not in haiku.)

posted by @ 8:33 pm | 0 Comments

Wednesday, July 14th, 2004

Bill Simmons’ brilliant take on Shaq and Kobe.

I am doing a furious whop to celebrate the Lakers’ self-destruction. I can’t imagine anything topping it.

Well, OK. If Kobe gets sentenced to 12 years. Or the Yankees implode.

Hell, even I don’t deserve that much fun in one year.

posted by @ 7:46 pm | 0 Comments

Thursday, July 8th, 2004

URB’N PROPS

Janet Tzou’s piece on The Roots in this month’s URB could be the best one ever done.

Apathy is still a baby boomer lie. Erin Kaplan on L.A.’s new education activists.

posted by @ 4:24 am | 0 Comments

Thursday, July 8th, 2004

Mosi Reeves on the National Hip-Hop Political Convention.

Mark Reynolds on the National Hip-Hop Political Convention.

posted by @ 4:16 am | 0 Comments

Thursday, July 8th, 2004

Paul Collins, hilariously, on book agents.

posted by @ 4:12 am | 0 Comments



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