Tuesday, February 21st, 2006

Copyright Criminals Remix Contest extended; New Chuck D and George Clinton samples added!

Great news for all you producers, DJs, and remixers: the Copyright Criminals Remix Contest over at ccMixter has been extended by two weeks, ending on March 14. Additionally, new vocal samples from influential rapper Chuck D (of Public Enemy) and pioneering funk musician George Clinton (of Parliament-Funkadelic) have been made available for use in the competition.

Winners will be chosen according to the same criteria as originally announced; no other contest details are changed.

The Copyright Criminals Remix Contest encourages producers, DJs, and remixers from around the world to use audio snippets from the upcoming documentary film Copyright Criminals in new, original songs. One winner will have his/her music featured prominently in the final edit of Copyright Criminals.

The winning track, along with 11 runners-up, will be included on the film’s companion CD.

Drawing from more than fifty interviews with prominent musicians, artists, scholars, lawyers, and music industry representatives, Copyright Criminals looks at the development of sound collage (also known as sampling). It features artists like QBert, Pete Rock, Miho Hattori, Matt Black of Coldcut, Saul Williams, Bobbito Garcia, and Paul Miller, and commentators like Greg Tate and Harry Allen.

The film explores the complicated impact that copyright law has had on the creative practice of sampling and studies the conflicting opinions artists and others have about appropriation. Check the trailer here/

Samples of dialogue by artists like De La Soul, DJ Qbert, Matmos, Coldcut, and members of Negativland – all taken from interviews conducted for Copyright Criminals – are available online at the popular remix community ccMixter.org for use as source material to be included in entrants’ songs. Entries will be judged by McLeod, Franzen, and your boy right here.

About the judges who aren’t me:

Kembrew McLeod is a professor at the University of Iowa and an award-winning independent documentary filmmaker. McLeod has written music criticism for Rolling Stone, the Village Voice, and MOJO; and has authored two books, most recently Freedom of Expression®: Overzealous Copyright Bozos and Other Enemies of Creativity (Doubleday).

Ben Franzen is an Atlanta-based artist who owns an independent production company called Changing Images LLC, which specializes in video, photography, and multimedia. Franzen edits the animated TV program Squidbillies, which appears as part of the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim line-up.

About Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works by empowering authors and audiences. It is sustained by the generous support of the Center for the Public Domain, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Omidyar Network, and the Hewlett Foundation.

posted by @ 7:39 am | 1 Comment

Friday, February 17th, 2006

R.I.P. Ray Barretto


Hard Hands Barretto straight from the ghetto…Rest In Power.

Here’s a great profile. What it won’t tell you is how influential he was on all the sounds that flowed into hip-hop. He practically invented bugalu with “El Watusi”. He is the one of the links between mambo and salsa and the breaks. It’s hard to imagine Johnny Griggs’ massive solo on JB’s 1970 version of “Give It Up Turnit A Loose”, or King Errisson period without Hard Hands.

UPDATE (WITH MUSIC): O-Dub and I have collaborated on a tribute to Ray. Go check it out now at Soul Sides.

posted by @ 7:20 am | 0 Comments

Tuesday, February 14th, 2006

Just Shoot Me


Note to self: next time hit the Quayle!

Lots of hilarity last night.

Plus, here’s Molly Ivins on Cheney and that good old family value: “Responsibility”.

Soundtrack:
Johnny Cash-“Folsom Prison Blues”
Cypress Hill-“A To The K”

Meanwhile, in the real world:

+ The U.S. is about to give oil companies $7 billion. You read that correctly. We’re saying, here, take $7 billion of our money, you don’t make enough as it is.

+ Oh, and all of you Katrina evacuees? Get back on the street.

I’m sure that bill is much less than $7 billion.

posted by @ 10:25 am | 1 Comment

Monday, February 13th, 2006

Republicans Shooting Republicans


“And before he falls to the ground he sez to me: was that a rifle, boy, or was you just happy to see me, skeet skeet?”

Trigger happy? You betcha! I mean this story is like a dang parable. (Soundtrack–Mission of Burma: “That’s When I Reach For My Revolver”)

posted by @ 5:25 pm | 0 Comments

Wednesday, February 8th, 2006

Got It Bad (Meaning Bad)


It’s touch and go. Uh oh oh.

OK. I know it’s not nice to kick something when it’s down. But show me somebody who likes the SF Bay Guardian’s redesign and I’ll show you an employee contract. This week’s cover looks especially nostalgic, with the cliched Pop Art and the new wave typeface. All future cover subjects may be required to wear pink-and-black-checkers with a white skinny tie.

Look, there wasn’t an alt-weekly in the country more in need of a makeover. Yes, compared to the website, it’s a step forward. In fact, now that you have competing aesthetics–the 1967 Haight-Ashbury-for-kids-from-Concord/Gay-Pride-at-half-mast-color-bar-overkill lingers like a wine-cooler-induced hangover–the online thing is a complete mess.

But even though The Cars first album is one of my favorite covers (and favorite albums) of all time, what looked good in 1978…

Ah well, you get what you pay for.

Sigh.

posted by @ 9:58 pm | 1 Comment

Tuesday, February 7th, 2006

A Great Day At Mavericks


Tyler Smith tells em when to go.


Matt Ambrose rides the yellow bus.

While I was working on my garden, Mavericks was blue-sky, offshore, 20-feet, glassy and classic. Congrats to South African Grant Baker for the win. Local boy Brock Little wuz terd, brah.

Super sick-wid-it video here!

posted by @ 7:52 pm | 1 Comment

Monday, February 6th, 2006

E-40 Vs. Trouble Funk: The Go-Go/Hyphy Connect

E-40 (featuring Stressmatic) :: Da Dummy
From E-40 Presents The Bay Bridges Compilation (Sick-Wid-It 2005)

Tilt :: Arkade Funk (B-Side Mix)
From 12″ single (D.E.T.T. 1983)

First of all, thanks to all of you who’ve fallen through the blog in the last couple weeks. I’ve been on the road keeping an unbelievable sched. Back in the house and playing catchup, so this one’s a gift to say thanks.

Now yall who know me know that I make some crazy leaps of logic sometimes, stuff that doesn’t always hold up on scrutiny, at least not in the details even if I’m good on the big picture. But stay with me on this one.

I realized the reason I have such a visceral love for hyphy isn’t just due to the fact that I call the Bay Area home (A’s, baby!), but that I like what’s happening with hip-hop musically these days…which is that the tempos are going back up, and the rhythms are getting more slippery, more polyrthythmic, and interesting again. Whether it’s Missy going back for “Clear”, Amerie mashing up with Ziggy, or whatever, these are the sounds that got me hot-footing back then, and sound extra-futuristic right now. Plus, who doesn’t have nostalgia for the days when videogames only cost 25 cents?

So check this little thing out. Here are two incredible tracks: one from last year’s brilliant Bay Bridges comp, and the other a go-go B-side by DC champions Trouble Funk from 20+ years ago done under the pseudonym Tilt.

The first is E-Feezy’s club-friendly shout to his New Bay offspring, The Frontline and Mistah F.A.B. And it works, not least because it’s a Droop-E./Pharmaceuticals production. E-40’s flesh-and-blood offspring is the truth, the Lebron James of hip-hop. Nuff said.

The second is a rare track that has been cited by lots of electro and vocoder fans, let alone go-go heads. It’s not that rare, but has taken on a helluva rep over the years, based on the sheer immensity of the groove. It was done during the whole “Trouble Funk Express” phase, a way for T-Funk to catch up with the post-Planet Rock club audiences.

The record actually has a history among Yay Area funkateers. Back in 1987, when I was an apprentice to the funk historian Rickey “Uhuru Maggot” Vincent, I was dispatched to find this record for him in Washington D.C. I scoured the bins for weeks before turning this up. It was that popular. Now you know why. Anyway, he played it for months and months afterward.

I’m not gonna argue that the links between “Da Dummy” and “Arkade Funk” were conscious–it’s not clear that there’s a direct sample going on, and who knows if Droop E. ever heard this track? He was born quite a while after it was made.

(Also, I know I’ve gotten some producers in trouble over the years for making comparisons that were more fortuitous than note-for-note-beat-for-beat exact, and I’m sorry for that!)

But here is the beauty of black music, the way that rhythms and textures circulate in the diaspora like memes, traveling over thousands of years and thousands of miles.

So mix ’em together and go dumb!

BIG CORRECTION 2/14/06: Tapan at Youth Radio corrects me–Bosko, not Droop E, was the genius who produced “Da Dummy”. Portland transplant Bosko is old enough to remember “Arkade Funk”!

posted by @ 10:37 am | 4 Comments

Tuesday, January 24th, 2006

The Reality of Crack Rap

Joining this to Hua and Oliver’s recent writings about the Pet Rock fetish that is crack rap, here’s a new movie called “1 More Hit” that promises to uncover the reality of crack, hip-hop, and reality TV through the story of Pharcyde producer J-Swift. For me this trailer was particularly difficult to watch. J-Swift was a roomie of one of my best friends about a decade ago. The tragedy, of course, for older hip-hop gen folks, is that his music epitomizes the innocence of the “Golden Age” (a term BTW that I don’t believe in any more than “conscious rap”). Call me corny, but this is beyond sad.

posted by @ 7:35 am | 38 Comments

Monday, January 23rd, 2006

On Generational Change

Generations are fictions. Or so someone said once.

Marketers find them first. That’s basically what Howe and Strauss, with their “Generations” framework and consulting business, do–they make loads of loot drawing lines around populations for companies that sell snowboards and spaghetti-strap tops and yellow plastic wristbands and stuff. So unlock the malls, because here come The Millennials.

Howe and Strauss surveyed 600 students at high schools in upper-middle-class Fairfax County, Virginia, to generate insights into young’ns that they then resell to multinationals. Their big finding? Young’ns prefer being called Millennials to “Generation Y”.

Pssssh. Who wouldn’t?

And who decided on these damn names anyway?

And hold on wait a minute, just what does a survey of seniors in Fairfax County–67% white, by the way–have to say about a generation of kids growing up in Richmond, California? Or Richmond, Virginia, for that matter? Can I vote for “not as much as you think”?

This weekend the NY Times ran an extensive piece on The Millennials, focusing primarily on their use of media (80% of you read blogs), their clique-ishness (“They are very bound to ethics and values. But in a funny sort of way, it prevents some of them from developing as individuals,” says one concerned doctor), and whether or not companies will succeed in attracting them (“Downloading is the poor man’s Tivo”, says one broke Millennial).

Ho hum.

It’s the same thing old folks (the ones now called “The Greatest Generation”) used to say about their Spock-coddled Baby Boomers, minus the hysterical alarm.

It’s too bad the alarm still hasn’t stopped ringing about that old scapegoat, “Generation X”. And by extension, the old straw-men–the ones blamed for conformity and greed in all the old manifestos–are now called “The Greatest”. Amazing how a fat inheritance can change a perception.

According to Howe and Strauss, even the Millennials know the deal: “By a five-to-one margin, they agreed that the elderly G.I. Generation had a “mainly positive” reputation. By the two-to-one margin, they agreed that Generation X has a “mainly negative” reputation.” Oh yeah? Well fuck you!

The thing to point out about all this quackery is that Howe and Strauss are, you guessed it, Baby Boomers. Everything is colored by their kaleidoscope eyes. Indeed, the dominant discourse in American life about generational change is still framed by Boomers.

Interestingly, a lot of Boomers themselves don’t believe the hype anymore.

“The Aging of Aquarius” is a barbed-wire gem by Jamie Malanowski on Boomer navel-gazing. If Brokaw projects all his guilt on his parents, and Howe and Strauss project all their happy feelings onto the Millennials–who just happen to be the age of their children–well, American University professor Leonard Steinhorn only has to look in the mirror to declare all is good.

Before going there with Dr. Steinhorn, Malanowski addresses that uniquely Boomer gumption epitomized in Tom Brokaw, yes, he of the “Greatest Generation” fame:

Readers will recall that it was Tom Brokaw’s great good luck as a journalist, as a reporter of news, to uncover that back in the 1930s and 1940s, a large mass of young Americans had to suffer, a) the trials and deprivations of the Great Depression, then b) fight a terrible war —a “world war” in the parlance of the time—against countries bent on global domination. Not only did Brokaw have the courage to bring to light this virtually hidden chapter of our history, but he or an associate had the marketing savvy to title the book The Greatest Generation, an irresistibly flattering phrase which sustained the book through many printings and multiple sequels.

This article is a must-read, so I really don’t want to spoil Malanowski’s killer close.

But just to say that if generations are created to scapegoat, there have to be generations to honor. The thing is, history doesn’t always help. I found this, what, every single fucking day I was working on this damn book. For like 10+ years! Maybe I still got a chip on my shoulder, hell, a rock. Rather than grouse any more–which I am told I wont to do as a Gen X-er, trapped with a name he never made in a world he never made–I guess I’ll just take a cue from Howe and Strauss and say buy my damn book already.

ADDENDUM 1/24/06: Scratch that last sentence. Buy this book instead: Letters From Young Activists. Now. What are you waiting for?

posted by @ 6:11 pm | 9 Comments

Sunday, January 22nd, 2006

Miggy to O’s: That’s Not What I Meant!

Well, the Orioles may not lower their ERA this year, but they did lower the team’s IQ several points by picking up paleocon nudie Anna Benson and her gold-digging little right-hander Kris:

Anna Benson had a lot to say during her stay in the Big Apple:

‘Hell no, I’m not going to change for anybody. (Kris) loves me. I’m very true to myself and to Kris.’
–To reporters, after showing upat a Mets event in a low-cut Mrs. Claus outfit to distributetoys to children.

‘You are a selfish, pathetic excuse for an American, and you can take your big fat ass over to Iraq and get your pig head cut off and stuck on a pig pole. Then, you can have your equally as-fat wife make a documentary about how loudly you squealed while terrorists were cutting through all the blubber and chins to get that 40-pound head off of you.’
–In an open letter to documentary filmmaker Michael Moore.

‘I wear fur. I wear dead rabbits and dead minks and dead anything that will keep me warm. I love it. I don’t like to be cold, and nothing keeps me warmer than my dead animals.’
–In an open letterto People for the EthicalTreatment of Animals.

‘How are they going to sit there and say it’s so controversial when they sign someone like Delgado, who turns his back on our flag?’
–On new Met Carlos Delgado,who in the past has refused to stand for the playingof ‘God Bless America’in protest of U.S. policies.

‘I said, ‘You better put that $5,000 chip away before you get f—.’ The dealer heard me and cast me out. .. It’s bull—-, the whole thing. .. Why are they trying to get moral? I’m mean, we’re gambling. People are drinking. This is Las Vegas. I don’t want to hear this. There are no morals here.’
–Describing her outburst at the World Seriesof Poker in an interview with the Daily News.

‘I told him (Kris) — because that’s the biggest thing in athletics, they cheat all the time — I told him, ‘Cheat on me all you want. If you get caught, I’m going to (have sex with) everybody on your entire team. Coaches, trainers, players.’ I would do everybody on his whole team.’
–During an appearance on Howard Stern’s radio show.

Think she’ll fit well in Baltimore? Money is he gets traded before the year’s out and she divorces him.

posted by @ 6:29 pm | 1 Comment



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