Sunday, October 16th, 2005

Another Heroes’ Return: The Definitive Watts Prophets

It’s finally here. Thanks to Berkeley’s Runt Distribution, the definitive edition of the Watts Prophets classic albums Rappin’ Black In A White World and Black Voices On The Streets Of Watts is now out. It features rare photos and art from the post-rebellion era. I was honored to be able to do the liner notes.

Get it here now.

Check back here for information on Father Amde’s poetry collection, coming soon.

posted by @ 10:30 pm | 0 Comments

Sunday, October 16th, 2005

Go Sox–White Sox, That Is!

Goodbye Vlad and Shrek and K-Rod and your stupid-ass thunder sticks.

Blez at Athletics Nation explains why most of the East Bay is rooting for the White Sox:

The following teams have been eliminated this postseason, and their payroll follows.

The Yankees – $208.3 million
The Red Sox – $123.5 million
The Angels – $97.7 million
The Braves – $86.4 million

(Source: USA Today Salary Database)

And if the Cardinals follow suit, they have a $92.1 million total in 2005 salaries. Those are five of the top 10 teams in total payroll in the majors. The Yankees and Red Sox being 1-2 and the Angels being fourth.

What does this say? A huge payroll may buy you a look at the playoffs, but it doesn’t guarantee you anything.

And I know a lot of you have said that a huge payroll doesn’t bother you, but I like to root for underdogs and any team with $22 million less in total salary is a team I’m going to cheer for.

Plus Jermaine Dye was a well-liked A and is from Vacaville.

I predict the Red Sux have massive player churn at the end of this year and don’t return to the playoffs. Same with A-Fraud and the Yankees. And I will love every second of it. That’s not hate, that’s underdog love!

You heard it here first…

posted by @ 10:20 pm | 0 Comments

Saturday, October 8th, 2005

Dellums: A Hero Returns

The best political news in weeks: in a dramatic move, Ron Dellums has decided to run for Oakland Mayor.

Here’s Van Jones’ take:

Sinking under a host of socio-economic problems and still in mourning after the Katrina catastrophe, the African-American community is in deep pain. It finds itself directionless, losing ground and lacking the world-class leadership it needs to right itself.

In other words: Black America is in desperate need of a hero. And Friday afternoon, a hero returned.

In an emotional, see-saw speech, former U.S. Congressman Ron Dellums announced to a deliriously happy crowd of 500 that next year he will run for Mayor of Oakland.

The announcement was a dramatic turn-about, since he mounted the podium apparently intending to say no.

A grassroots movement had sprung up to draft him, collecting 8,000 signatures using only volunteer labor. But Dellums, the hero of the anti-apartheid struggle and mentor to anti-war Congresswoman Barbara Lee, has been working for the past few years as a well-paid D.C. lobbyist. Though he looks like a fit man of 50, he is actually almost 70 years old.

In other words, he is finally earning some money. And no one could fairly begrudge him the chance to spend his twilight years unburdened by all the problems of urban America. Oakland has one of the highest crime and murder rates in America. Its schools are crumbling and in receivership. The city council is dysfunctional and firmly in the pocket of big developers. No one in his right mind would willingly take on the challenge of turning this town around.

Rumors had begun circulating earlier in the week that Dellums was going to attend the culmination of the signature-gathering, thank the volunteers and then decline to run. And so I was not surprised as Dellums stood before the expectant crowd and began working through reasons that he might not seek the office.

But as the crowd screamed, stomped, chanted and wept, the old lion began talking himself into making a very different announcement.

He began to speculate about the impact of Oakland as a model city, providing health coverage for all its residents, and setting an example for the nation. The crowd began cheering.

He talked about the need to fix the schools, preserve economic diversity in the gentrifying city and to embrace the young men hanging on street corners. The applause was overwhelming, thunderous. Black women were weeping in the aisles.

Dellums looked out into the crowd, surveying the sea of tearful, hopeful faces. “Like a jazz player, I honestly didn’t know what I was going to say today, how this song was going to end until the very last note,” he said. “But I can see your pain.”

He hesitated, looked at his wife. And then he said: “And if Ron Dellums running for mayor will bring you some hope … then let’s do it.” Bedlam.

Whether the on-stage decision-making was authentic or high theatre, it was a powerful and cathartic drama for all who witnessed it. And it is the first sign of hope in Black America in a very, very long time. The cries of joy and relief and hope that swept the room were testimony to the pent-up need for heroic leadership in times like these.

Cynics will say that we have been down this road before, with promising Black mayors disappointing their urban constituents. And Oakland in particular has suffered from eight years of a celebrity mayor named Jerry Brown, who did little to help the poor and much to aid the developers. Furthermore, Dellums’ announcement essentially sinks the very worthy candidacies of progressives Greg Hodge and Nancy Nadel — both of whom have labored in the local vineyards for years, while Dellums grew rich inside the beltway. All valid points.

But Black America needed someone larger than life to step up to the plate, right now. As one man said, “Well, we couldn’t save New Orleans. But maybe we can save Oakland.”

I believe that the candidacy of Ron Dellums is a signal event in a post-Katrina resurgence of progressive Black politics. Oakland will emerge as a laboratory for a very different kind of social policy than we have seen in this country for a very long time. And his tenure will give ample room and space to further groom a newer crop of leaders, who can take over upon his retirement.

And I believe this, not just because of the kind of person Ron Dellums is.

I believe it is true because of the kind of people Oaklanders are.

With the prospect a city hall on the side of the people, and not in the pocket of big developers, this town has a fighting chance again. And, through Oakland’s bright example, so do we all.

posted by @ 8:35 am | 0 Comments

Friday, October 7th, 2005

It Was A Good Day!


Randy’s unit has shrinkage.


Idiots go home.

The AL East was overrated. Money ain’t buying nothing this year, especially chemistry.

What a wonderful world this is sometimes.

posted by @ 6:23 pm | 2 Comments

Wednesday, October 5th, 2005

Martha Cooper’s We B*Girlz Iz Out!


I’ve been waiting all year for this one. Martha Cooper and Nika Kramer’s We B*Girlz is out!!!

Martha and Nika have been working on this labor of love for the better part of the last 2 years, capturing the top b-girls worldwide and documenting the movement. Our girl Rokafella did the introduction, the great Asia-One gets high billing, and they are all going to bring it on tour this fall and into next year. Check their website often for the info.

This is going to be as important a book as Subway Art was to all of us back in the day. In 2 years, the b-girl movement is going to be at a whole other level in terms of size, scale, and influence.

You can buy it here or, for a limited time, cop a signed copy here for a limited time. Do it now!

posted by @ 8:36 am | 2 Comments

Wednesday, October 5th, 2005

Boom Year For Jamaican Music

A big month and a big year for Jamaican music already. Today, there’s news that Sean Paul’s The Trinity had the biggest reggae debut ever–107,000 copies sold, #7 on Billboard’s Top 200, #4 on R&B, and #1 at Reggae.

Check this: He broke the previous record, which was set two weeks before by Damian Marley’s Welcome to Jamrock, with 85,000 (also #7 on the Top 200).

A boom year dat.

The great thing for us longtime Jamaican music lovers is that these albums are very different from each other–so perhaps there is a spectrum opening up in US audiences for a broader range of Jamaican and Caribbean artists.

We’ll see.

Some revisions and some non-revisions on earlier posts are in order:

+ Welcome to Jamrock is the best Marley album ever by someone not named Bob. I’ve had my earlier words for breakfast already.

+ Sean Paul’s record was pretty good after all–even though the video was obviously a rush job–and the wait clearly didn’t hurt the record at all.

+ I Wayne’s album is still way overrated.

+ Why do people still sleep on Morgan Heritage?

posted by @ 7:42 am | 3 Comments

Wednesday, October 5th, 2005

Against Apathy: Criticism That Sucks

When I used to read reviews like this one, I’d just be like, ennh whatever.

But now they are beginning to get me mad.

Not just because they’re overly self-conscious, indulgently snarky dismissals of artists, musicians, and writers I love–and full disclosure, who sometimes are, in fact, some of my closest friends or even me–but because they reflect a growing trend among young writers, the emergence of a new aesthetic that leads nowhere.

To me, being a critic means championing an alternative. The great critics became great not simply because they knew how to skewer a subject elegantly, but because they could make you believe that something new, urgent, and life-changing was arriving or had arrived. They championed a rebel aesthetic, and ideas like independence, difference, novelty, fun, antiauthoritarianism, you know, good shit.

These days, with the dot-com crash and a lot of alt-weeklies gone corporate, too many of us critics write like cubicle schmucks unlucky enough to not to land a job at Entertainment Weekly.

But it’s not the ambition that’s bothers me, it’s the lack of imagination.

There is no blood or fire. There’s just an unearned jaded-ness with the world. There isn’t a Johnny-Thunders-with-cigarette-and-guitar detachment, to be all Lester Bangs on folks, there is simply an utter lack of conviction masquerading as an outsider stance.

Which is ridiculous.

Because the one thing that so many of these critics don’t seem to appreciate at all is the desire for an alternative.

They’re basically engaged in creating an alternative to the alternative, which may not scan like “Laguna Beach” or “Extra!” at first, but sure isn’t challenging that kind of stuff at all.

Do you want the opposite of “conscious” aesthetics (a term I don’t believe in but let’s just make this point)? Here it is. Unconscious aesthetics–it isn’t self-aware in the remotest sense.

In fact, these unconscious critics get most rankled by folks who are still about being self-critical and trying to make a difference. At its most basic, it’s a knee-jerk remote-control reactionary aesthetics.

Really, you can’t trust their very definitions. Kenny Loggins=cool. Blackalicious=bland. ‘Nuff said.

The biggest struggle in their writing is a personal battle against boredom. (For the poor reader, it’s a battle to simply stay awake 500-word or even 100-word count.) The sum of it all is a thinly disguised effort to preserve the status quo–in politics, in art, in culture, in society.

Which is fine.

Let’s just call it what it is. A celebration of sameness. An indulgence of apathy. A reaction against change. A critical dead-end.

posted by @ 6:07 am | 2 Comments

Tuesday, October 4th, 2005

The Birth of Hip-Hop Through The Lens of The Great Joe Conzo





He was there–and you probably weren’t!

Photos by Joe Conzo Jr.

Here’s one very good story about the great Bronx photographer Joe Conzo Jr.. I met him this past February at that out-of-body experience called the Bronx book release party.

Joe was there, a youngster who came up after the 1971 peace treaty, and he was close to both the gangs and the activists. His grandmother, Evelina Antonetty, was the founder of United Bronx Parents, a kick-ass neighborhood organization that emerged in the early 70s to save the borough from the politics of abandonment.

After the peace treaty, Ms. Antonetty hired a lot of the gang peacemakers, including Benjy Melendez and other Ghetto Brothers, to literally serve the people. She was a powerful, if still largely unsung, positive force in the community.

When the next thing after the gangs came along–hip-hop–Joe was just learning how to use a camera. He tagged along with his homies from the Cold Crush and captured everything they all did together. The result was pure genius.

Imagine you have some of the earliest photos–that aren’t just historical documents, but works of beautiful art–of a culture that takes over the world. They’d be valuable, right? They’d be a hot commodity.

But here’s what you should know about Joe. He has kept it real all these years. He’s warm and humble and has never sought fame.

Instead, now fame has found him–his photos have been exhibited in London, Europe, and New York these past few months to widespread acclaim–and I think there couldn’t be another person more deserving.

It’s really interesting to see Joe’s photos of the Fort Apache protests, organized by Richie Perez and other Bronx community leaders, in the New York Times now.

Those protests proved very crucial for the development of what came to be known as the multiculturalism movement of the 80s, the grassroots cultural and political force that helped make icons of people like Greg Tate, Spike Lee, and Public Enemy. But it has largely been written out of the history books.

To me, it says a lot about Joe’s view of the world that he chose these images to represent his work in the New York Times. And this quote sums up his greatness:

“When I’m gone from this world, I hope my grandchildren can go to a library and see Joe Conzo images,” he said. “I am carrying on in the legacy of my grandmother, photographing music and the community. I don’t think I’ll get rich off this. But having this legacy is worth more than money.”

posted by @ 10:43 am | 2 Comments

Monday, October 3rd, 2005

Mike Davis & Anthony Fontenot On The Mysteries of New Orleans

On Mother Jones, 25 Questions About New Orleans.

posted by @ 11:27 am | 0 Comments



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