Telstar - The Joe Meek Story

We went and saw Telstar last night, a bio pic of Joe Meek written and directed by Nick Moran, a nice young Brit, who was at the screening - he said that although the film has done well in the UK, it has yet to be distributed across the pond, and that last night was it's North American premier. However, he must have just been trying to make us feel special, because it screened at the Seattle Film Festival 6 months ago.

Here's a link to the trailer.

It's an interesting film. Great opening credit sequence, for example. There were some great performances, and of course, an amazing soundtrack. My complaint with the film, is that it shared its arc with Requiem for a Dream, starting out riding the highest of highs, and then crashing down and staying way down. I'm not saying I would have preferred a happy ending - Meek's end was tragic to the say the least - although I won't give it away. But, the point was made with the trajectory, the feeling, and the journey, long before the audience was allowed to get off the ride. Some of the choices were a bit heavy-handed, but the dialogue and performances were excellent.

The film also does an excellent job of placing Meek in his proper historical context, particularly for Americans, most of whom are unfamiliar with him. He revolutionized recording techniques, was the first Brit with a #1 hit in America, had Ritchie Blackmore (Deep Purple) playing in the Tornadoes, pointed a gun at Mitch Mitchell (Hendrix Experience), and told Brian Epstein that the Beatles were nice, but would never amount to more than a fad. He also made some truly incredible music as a tortured outsider who lived and worked in a rented flat above a handbag store.

One thing we discovered was a British cult act - Screaming Lord Sutch - who, if you've never heard of him, you should read more about. He did shock rock years before Ozzy or Alice Cooper, dressed all in black with crazy makeup, lots of sinister props, and known for over the top antics.

Trinity's Roc Raida Tribute

Trinity is a new group - with three members, or could you guess that? - Actually, this group has some serious Golden Era clout - featuring Sadat X (Brand Nubian) and AG (Showbiz and AG) backed by DJ Jab. The album drops early 2010. My guess is that they will be big in Europe and Japan - where heads appreciate originators more than audiences in the US, which is depressing but true. I would be willing to bet that only about 10% of young people (18 and under, who listen to hip hop) could tell you anything about Brand Nubian. Now, in defense of young people, the history book of hip hop keeps getting longer, and there aren't a lot of good resources out there for them to learn from, especially if they don't have a guide of some sort - not making excuses for 'em, because it's a fact. All I'm saying is, Trinity isn't going to end up on BET or MTV - for whatever that's worth. (Not much).

Before I was sidetracked, the point of this was that Trinity has dropped this Roc Raida Tribute track (You know he died right? You should.). It's not the hottest track I've ever heard, both MCs show signs of aging, but joints like this are important - paying tribute to artists no longer with us demonstrates the lineage between hip hop and the oral tradition of West African Griots. Songs like these document the culture. Those who are part of hip hop need to write and preserve its history because no one else should be trusted to do it. That's why I'm not surprised that the first Roc Raida tribute track (at least that I've heard) came from two real true school artists like X and AG - and not some of the youngsters you see on TV.

Vintage Sesame Street

Why does the Google homepage have Big Bird's legs on it this morning?

I don't know, but it lead me to find this video, which is pretty amazing - a testament to the grittiness of NYC in the late 70s and early 80s (even for kids it's shown a brown, crowded distopia), and to how awesome Sesame Street is (check the backing track and the puppetry).



If anyone knows why Sesame Street got the spotlight from Google today, let me know. I hope no one died or anything.

Robert Glasper Review

Check out my review of Robert Glasper's ambitious jazz/fusion record, Double Booked, over on Potholes. Deft on the keys, Glasper's project manages to straddle traditional jazz and more contemporary manifestations to offer up a little something for everybody.

Congorock x Crookers = Bananas

If you're looking for some ridiculously hard dance music, then swing by the Fool's Gold blog and check out the collab between Crookers and Congorock - 100% dance floor destruction - you might freakout.

Rap is dead...Hip Hop? Not so much

Last week, the New Yorker ran a piece by Sasha Frere-Jones proclaiming, yet again, that hip hop was probably dead. The piece seemed a little dated, considering the argument centered around Jay-Z's last album, Blueprint 3, which has been out for a little while - at least long enough that I suspect these thoughts were penned some weeks ago and then shelved while awaiting space in the editorial schedule.

In general, I like Frere-Jones' writing, I am not a fan of this piece for several reasons - mostly because I completely disagree with his thesis, and find most of his argument to stem from an out-dated mode of thinking about hip hop.

If I had to pick a year for hip-hop’s demise, though, I would choose 2009, not 2006. Jay-Z’s new album, “The Blueprint 3,” and some self-released mixtapes by Freddie Gibbs are demonstrating, in almost opposite ways, that hip-hop is no longer the avant-garde, or even the timekeeper, for pop music.

I would argue that hip hop music was adopted as a popular music, but that had little do to with hip hop itself (the culture as a whole, including the music), so much as it did the tastes of the listening audience - and that its status as 'popular' has nothing to do with the vitality of hip hop culture as a whole. Hip hop began as a form of expression for urban youth - it gained acceptance and became a multi-billion dollar a year industry, but it's intent was not as a popular music form. It's also an oxymoron to try and define something as avant-garde and popular at the same time. To be popular, something must be of its time, not ahead of it.

SFJ seems to bemoan the fact that the rappers everyone talks about - the popular rappers - from Hova to Gucci Mane - aren't as good as the rappers everyone used to talk about back in the day. This point, to him, means that hip hop is dead. What he fails to recognize is that he's mistaking hip hop and rap - as defined by KRS-One ("rap is something we do, hip hop is something we live.").

When hip hop became pop music in the early 90s - around the time Dre and Snoop were on MTV every 15 minutes - it's direction within the mainstream began to be dictated by giant corporations - Viacom, Sony, I'm looking at you - whose interest was in profits, and marketing a popular music for financial gain, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the vitality of hip hop as a culture or an art form.

However, there were a few years there, '92-'97 or thereabouts, when there was enough hip hop culture in power to base which artists were popular on the same meritocracy found in the streets that birthed the culture. Hence, the most talented artists were the most recognized, and folks like Nas, Jay-Z, Biggie, Snoop and others established themselves at the top of the game.

Hip-hop has relinquished the controls and splintered into a variety of forms.

SFJ recognizes that it has changed, birthing numerous stylistic offspring, but what he fails to see is that hip hop as it's served through the mainstream media today is no longer decided by merit or skill, but by financial backing from international corporations. The industry has changed. It's not like it used to be, which is obvious if you've ever wondered why Soulja Boy is printing money while artists like Reks, Elzhi, Blu, Finale, Jake One - even Little Brother - and thousands of others named and unnamed - heard and unheard - hold down the underground.

From a true-to-hip-hop's-original-intent standpoint, I would argue there are more good artists coming out now than there have been in recent memory. The quality of the music has been pushed incredibly far by access to technology and the internet - a combination providing quality of production and a listening audience previously only achieved with label backing. The problem isn't that hip hop is dead - the problem is that rap music is no longer judged on merit. Hip hop is alive and well, it just doesn't get heard by anyone who doesn't know where to look for it - which is sort of how it used to be back when it started - only now, there's a lot more white dudes, and a lot less kids from poor urban areas, which is something that needs to be corrected, and which stems largely from the disparity of internet access, aka the Digital Divide.

Respect the Foundation

Here's a nice little video talking about the transition from Dub to Dubstep, following Lee Scratch Perry, on his journey from founding one genre, to starting to participate in its bastard offspring. (hint: it then turns into a promo for the new Jahdan Blakkamoore album, but he's pretty awesome, so that's not a huge downside.)



Found via Fader.

Kurt Vile

I stumbled across Kurt Vile off of a recommendation, and I'm glad I followed through, because he's making really good music. He's just about to release his second album, Childish Prodigy, the follow up to Constant Hitmaker. Creative Loafing in Atlanta had a good piece on him yesterday too, which revealed that Vile is in fact his real last name.



I'd give him props just for the album titles, but the music is worth talking about too.

This is a cut off the new album, "Freak Train."



The musical output pays homage to a lot of different styles. I think there's a lot of similarities to The Replacements, some muted tones of Richard Hell and, also, right before the first solo, when he's chanting 'freak train' and gives a little 'whoo' there's some Springsteen in there, which, if you grow up in proximity to Central Jersey is all but impossible to avoid.

I also love how train-like the percussion is: Steady, droning, it falls behind everything else, but permeates throughout, just like riding on a real train. This makes me think that while Vile makes this stuff seem easy, there's a lot of conscious effort and careful crafting that goes into this. It shows, because it's awesome.

Maybe the rawest cypher ever

In the first real hip hop thing BET has done in a long time, with the exception of freestyle fridays, I guess...Mos Def, Black Thought, and Eminem getting busy with Premier on the decks. Wow. Em kills it. Thought is dope, and Mos is not to be slept on, but Em? Fuhgeddaboutit.

Album Review: Birds & Batteries

I was excited when I got an advance of the forthcoming EP, Up To No Good, from San Fran's Birds & Batteries. I was not disappointed when I popped in this 5-track adventure to meet a truly unique style that struts around the crossroads of alt-rock, electronic, funk and pop in search of its time machine, looking down on everyone else like they're half-retarded, similiar to Luke Wilson in Idiocracy.

The name of the game is density - rich, full layers of sound building on top of each other like a musical re-interpretation of the adobe village seen here.

"Out in the Woods" off the new EP.


I had the pleasure of seeing an earlier incarnation of the group 2 or 3 years ago at the Art Bar in Columbia, SC - my friend Neil from Low Red Land was playing guitar for them, and both groups were on a curious bill opening for American Gun. They both played incredible sets to a nearly empty house, and then the place got packed for the more traditional hootenany bar rock of AG. We drank whiskey in the parking lot in a van, and they gave me a copy of the their self-released Nature vs. Nature, which, if Birds & Batteries become wildly famous, will be remembered as an album that was a little ahead of its time. Here's the 3rd track off that album, as a point of comparison to where they've come from.

"Machines That Dream"


Besides seriously enriching the sonic landscape with this new record, they've tastefully brought a retro-80s primal quality to the drums that pays homage to Kraftwerk-esque electro without being lost in some nostalgia for the past or blatant re-creationism.

Check out "Sneaky Times" the final cut off UTNG.


The intro is like a dub version of classic "Bustin' Out"-era Rick James slap bass chopped and filtered, which gives way to a darker take on the intro to MJ's "Thriller" before opening up to disembodied vocals.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this album, and am glad to see this group that blew my mind a few years ago reappearing with some serious magic, and drastically upping the stakes in the integration of electronic music into myriad other styles to create a truly interesting record.

Look for Up to No Good starting today.