Friday Night

Wow 

Never seen this vid!

Warning - Does not contain the full intro, which is the best bit of the song along with the middle bit and the end. Good hair into bad hair! The original vid is better.

Eric B & Rakim & Coldcut

Information Overload

You know when I started this blog it was just a hoot to be writing about music again after a very early retirement. I had an existential crisis about the point of being a critic, when you yourself haven't got out there and created art. Who was I to judge? I was just another opinionated Australian and who needed another one of those? Being a published music critic at age 18 and getting paid for it ended after 4 reviews. Anyway as I got  further into this blogging caper I really started to think I've got to add something useful or unique to the discourse. There are many blogs that offer information on similar topics and I didn't want to add to the glut. So the whole notion of striving to be concise had to be reviewed in my mind. Being concise is good as I believe people do prattle on a little too long and  tediously about topics that don't necessarily warrant their word count.. I've also realised particularly with the Glaring Omissions series that adding my own personal history of my admiration of particular artists and how they came into my life is unique to me and therefore not just adding to the information overload unnecessarily. I don't need to repeat information that can be found in hundreds of different places on the interweb. Is this just me rationalising a reason to continue blogging? Rationalising Andy Warhol's Fifteen minutes of fame? Perhaps some bloggers need to have a little think and figure out why they're doing what they're doing. Is this just navel gazing though for its own sake? I mean people are compelled to blog and who am I to begrudge them?

Another aspect of my blog at the start was keeping an Eye on the critics/journalists involved in discourse of particular dis/interest to me. I felt that hey they can criticise the shit out of someone or something but they were for some reason immune to being pulled up on something or criticised themselves. So they were allowed to say what they wanted but then would get all catty when a taste of their own medicine came their way. Some of the ugliest insults have come my way because of this. All I have to say is toughen up Princesses (ie. critics). I have to admit the only insults/sledges I have received have come from websites with advertising. So certain editors feel the need to throw insults your way to protect their brand. Heaven forbid an advertiser should realise the site they are sponsoring is not really that great or perhaps shite. Some of these sites are not about music at all, they're about business and money. I think I was a little naive when I started blogging thinking music websites, theory based blogs, miscellaneous blogs and music blogs were all part of the anarchic cultural discussion together. How wrong I was! I must admit I don't really trust websites with advertising anymore. Is money gettin in the way of real intellectual opinion?

Down with the kids, me!

It turns out I'm actually down with the kids. That is my fave song of 2012 is by Skrillex who is my (nearly 2 year old)  niece's favourite artist. This one goes out to Harry!

Wu-Tang Clan/Trace & Nico

*The whole point of mentioning Ol' Dirty Bastard the other day was the Wu-Tang Clan connection with a track off the Torque record. The song in question Damn Son by Trace & Nico contains a sample from Raekwon's Only Built For Cuban Linx LP....er which I forgot to mention. I thought yeah I know that sample but it took me a while to pinpoint it. I thought it was ODB but it wasn't then I put on Only Built For Cuban Linx and there it was. A funny bit to sample really. Whatever works I suppose. Here's the two tracks in question!

 

 

 

How could I resist?

Wu Gambinos

Fave track off that record!

 

friday night

 

EPIC

 

He really comes across as an arsehole doesn't he? Which if memory serves he was in interviews at the time. You know the usual misogyny and homophobia. That never stopped me likin Public Enemy, ODB or Snoop though. It's this video I find hard to watch. Great song, it can't be denied.

I'm Livin' In The 90s

Still in 90s zones, I pulled out ODB's debut record the other day. How fuckin' funny is he? Scary & hilarious! He died right? I must check that out. I'm pretty sure he'd already been shot by the time Return To The 36 Chambers had been recorded. He's one of a kind The Old Dirty Bastard. He had me laughing out loud on the tram the other day. Anyone who can make me smile whilst commuting is ok in my book and I do have a book.



Psychotically Hilarious!

The word commute always makes me think of Lipstick Traces, Greil Marcus's peculiar opus on Johnny Rotten's voice and everything that could have possibly been connected to it. Commuting often in its loneliness and isolation reveals to me that I am part of a huge pulsating industrial monolith that doesn't necessarily need me and can spit me out at any moment without a care. Whoah!, that got heavy all of a sudden.

RE: Straight Edge/Torque & any old crap

*Ian MacKaye of Minor Threat/Fugazi & Dego & Mac of 4Hero were both at the forefront of Hardcore lineages albeit very different ones but funny that they were both straight edge. I didn't even realise when I was writing that the other day. Also both had a Mac in the group. Can I somehow get a Fleetwood Mac connection here as well? I fuckin' doubt it as they were the antitheses of straight edge.....er....all 3 had great rhythm sections. If you can call what 4Hero had a rhythm section?

**After purchasing Torque, the compilation on No U Turn from 97, the other day I realised that in fact I knew most of those tracks either from the radio, clubs, a friend of mine-some kind of osmosis anyway and hey me likey very much.

***Discussions among a few different people recently has ended up in this question: What ever happened to R & B? That lineage seems to have come to a halt doncha think?

****What about Hip Hop? A lost cause or what?

*****Indie Rock? Any life left in that? I doubt it.

******What about Exotic-Retro Psych/Funk/Rock and its Hybrids? Those compilations seem to be arriving less & less. I think I've only bought 2 this year. One from Iran and one from West Africa.

*******Is there anything out there apart from Skrillex & K-Pop?

RE: Techstep

To listen or not to listen?

I got off the hardcore train before techstep it's true. There may be some good stuff I've missed and I'm lookin' at that No U Turn comp Torque thinkin 'Go on give it a go!' Anyway I couldn't get into stuff that followed either Speed Garage, 2 step, Grime and only really liked a couple of things in the Dubstep universe. I didn't hate Big Beat but that was hardly part of that hardcore lineage. I kept half an ear on the experimental side of things in the electronic world but even Mouse On Mars were makin crap by 2001. I didn't really get back into underground electronic music in a big way until Ghostbox and it's Hautological friends arrived in the mid 00s. Then the strange Hypnagogic stuff caught my ear and the new Kosmiche/Ambient skool. I don't really think I'll be delving into old school tracks of 2 step and Grime when their time comes back around though.

RE: Interstellar Martians

Kowalski liked both types of speed.

*When I said in that previous post that Jungle "was for hopped up martians going interstellar!" I meant that's who it sounded like it was for. The reality was it was for druggy young urban jungle dwellers going nowhere except oblivion in their brains. This thought reminds of the film Vanishing Point and its subtext of a need for acceleration, to pioneer, to hunt etc. So Kowalski has all this instinctual energy but nowhere for it to go. The worlds been mapped out, we've even gone into space, all our food is at the supermarket etc. Did any women make Jungle? So Kowalski fills his desires with the speed (meth & going fast) and chaos of the road and being chased across America by the authorities. He makes the road his home. With jungle, the makers of and their followers wander a similar path. They enjoy the endless horizon that awaits in the music and their minds (usually drug addled ones) to escape the urban jungle's drudgery of daily life at least for a little while.....er.....discuss. Have your essays on my desk by Friday kids.

 

 

Two more classics from the Reinforced label for speeding into endless chaotic wide open vistas and dark futures. Having said all that stuff above it is interesting to note 4Hero were as straight edge as Fugazi's Ian Mackaye. Weird huh?