28feb05

From A Mental Void...Words About Music

I'm usually not the type of cat to sit before ye ol blog-spewer without an idea worth mentioning, but here I is. Thank Vishnu and whatnot for back-up ideas...like insurance policies for those days when all energy is expended at the Y and what's left is just a dumb stupor where nothing witty or original can hope to form, let alone grow to full term. Animation work and Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works has been putting it to me, as they in the DP business. So, the back up idea, which is something I've been meaning to do for ages now, is to rank my 100 favorite albums of all time. I shall pick about one a week, write about it, and move on. The list will not be linear.

Now, I'm a dumb bastard in many fields, but there are a few things I think I have a handle on. One of those things is modern music. If you think the Stones are better than the Beatles, you're an idiot, but I won't hold it against you. If you think Linkin Park is better than Black Sabbath then you were probably lobotomized, maybe unwittingly, and perhaps you should look into that. Arguing for the merits of Beck over the Beastie Boys has some legitimacy, though I won't buy into it; but anyone who thinks Madonna is better than Bjork needs to leave the glue alone and learn a marketable skill.

Without further apou:

#50 There's Nothing Wrong With Love - Built To Spill

Ah, the middle ground. 10 years ago, this record would not have made my list.

Doug Martsch once said, Sarcasm is played out. It's about sincerity.

Sometimes this record reminds me of Crooked Rain Crooked Rain, take away the vocalists and there's a lot that unites the two records...both products of 1994, when rave was atop the world and earnest guitar ballads were supposed to be a hair shy of obsolete. Both have the GBV lo-fi sound, even when doing a rock anthem....it sounds like a rock anthem being played in some dude's basement.

Honestly, I didn't think this album was that special back then. In 1994 I was listening electronic music and hip-hop, almost exclusively. We all go through our phases and miss out on some gems. No one asked for Built To Spill songs at the places I spun in DC, so it was for the most part off my radar. I thought that Car was a cute song and that was about the extent of it.

Then came 1997. Built To Spill released Perfect From Now On, I was deep into Radiohead and Blur at the time, so my mind was open to guitar music. Perfect From Now On got my attention. I listened to it daily for a few months and recalled that little ditty-fest from '94. Well, that's when There's Nothing Wrong With Love sprang forth to the front and center of my musical consciousness. This was the record that taught me to keep an open mind to genres I may not be feeling at the moment, cause you never know.

Perfect From Now On, like all the great ones, is an emotional record. It's about childhood crushes and the universe being the size of your back yard. That the sound of the record is at once fuzzy, cuddly, and wickedly sharp, creates the perfect background canvas for Doug's masterful lyrics to shine through to your heart, seize it for a spell, and return it to you at once stronger and more fragile. From Big Dipper:

Backed by a quasi-Weezer slap beat and jangle-fuzz, you're taken back to childhood wonderment and the sense of possibilities. Later on in the song, the lyrics grow a tad darker, as life tends to do from childhood on:

There's Nothing Wrong With Love is packed with a 100 such moments. Every song is great. You get sparse ballads about youngsters falling out of love (Fling) and rocking ruminations on hipsterism and David Bowie (Distopian Dream Girl). The guitar solos remind you of Neil Young's best moments with Crazy Horse, and the tone of the record is amazingly uplifting. There is no sneer nor hint of flared nostrils here. Doug Martsch, like any great composer, loves his audience, and this is proof. If you own this record, play it again. If not, buy it, now.

- k

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26feb05

T-Mobile Terror & FlintToons

The T-Mobile terrorist has a fine sense of humor. Normally I'd be 100% thumbs down on anyone's privacy being stripped and posted up upon seeyonastyass.com, but c'mon, when the victims in question are no-talent hacks like Fred Durst and Paris Hilton, it seems kinda, well, cool. From an artistic standpoint, the last thing the world needed was a Fred Durst sex tape, but then again, from an artistic standpoint the last thing the world needed was Fred Durst. That he's pals with Paris Hilton explains a lot.

Have you seen Paris Hilton's crew: Ashlee Simpson, Fred Durst, Christine Agulara, etc, people who make money by finding the lowest common dominator. Strike that, people who make money by being the Lowest Common Denominator in Gucci threads. Bling sells. These are one and all future Surreal Life candidates. Aside from Tony Danza, most people can not suck and stay famous, unless it's for sucking...but even that has a questionable shelf life and the most it'll get you at the end of the day is free entry into the AVN Awards....

I have a newfound respect for animation pros. It's hard to do. The drawing is the easiest part and even that inspires wonderful reveries culled from my f-bomb catalog. Writing the stories and dialogue for these shorts goes smoothly enough, but writing anything worthwhile takes time and concentration. What makes that part bearable, and in a larger sense the storyboarding process, is that I have some idea what I'm doing and what I want. The real fun of course is actually making the drawing move around and talk and look good doing it. It's all about manipulating timelines, layers, and loops, and that's prolly all you want to know.

The shorts are Flint-centric, of course, but not some Roger and Me whine-a-lot. To bite a Bill Simmons term, the Unintentional Comedy scale here in Flint is off the charts. Whether you seek the belly-laugh at our Wal-Mart locations, the Y, the Cineplex, or one of our many featured 'Hoods, where for no fee at all you can enjoy a rolling Drive-In experience and watch two shirtless and toothless 30-somethings brawl on the porch of a crumbling hovel over a misplaced crackpipe, Flint is the only place ye need to know. I know about the pitch of the brawling crackheads cause I could hear one of the bastard's screaming about his lost pipe...his excited broken and squeaking voice sharp enough to cut through the winter air, the windows of my jeep, and my favorite NPR morning program. But what the hell, some folks have to kick off their mornings with a little drama to make life worth living.

Flint is made for cartoons. I didn't realize that until ~2 months ago. Now I'm committed, as they say in the Born Again business, to representing Flint anew. The Flint piece I wrote a couple months back was my honest homage. The cartoons shall be much closer to the darker truths and I expect to catch some hell over it. There's no getting around the hard facts that this is a bitter environment where meth and God wrestle in the steel cage for control of your soul. Paris Hilton is admired in some quarters and if you have the money and the game you're expected to be a pimp, and to do otherwise makes you a pansy and an idiot. Yeah, it's a town where 2D animated fiction will expose the nut of things better than any whining documentary.

Ungh.

How about them Pistons? Detroit spanked another team by ~20 last night, and viola, everyone's talking about the champs having their swagger back. I predicted this a month ago, but no need to gloat. There shall be plenty of time for that in June. My only concern is our size along the front line, but it's a very minor concern. Detroit is simply playing better basketball than anyone else in the Association right now. There are legit challenges on the horizon in the forms of Phoenix and Seattle. Should Detroit beat these clubs next week, on the road no less, the bookies in Vegas will be recalibrating the playoff odds in a hurry.

- k

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24feb05

Dangerous to think of SF and Bush simultaneously

 

I've always enjoyed my People's Republic of San Francisco image. It's heartwarming yet vaguely menacing. If the world was run like San Francisco, which is to say if the people of the world were like the people of San Francisco, then the world would be a better place. I should write a long piece on my adopted home town...a reminder why it's my once and future hat-rest, all that. Okay. I'll cut myself off on the SF odes today, lest I start howling Lights in my best early morning Steve Perry voice. No one needs that.

But since I'm in an SF mindset...

I'm enjoying the taped recordings of Bush the Junior. The guy who did the taping is sleaze, sure, but he's media, so there's no sense moaning about a snake acting like a snake. The tapes have legitimate value. They provide some nifty insights into Bush's scrubbed-clean-by-savior conscience:

"I wouldn't answer the marijuana questions. You know why? Because I don't want some little kid doing what I tried."

He mocked Vice President Al Gore for acknowledging marijuana use. "Baby boomers have got to grow up and say, yeah, I may have done drugs, but instead of admitting it, say to kids, don't do them," he said.

Good nugget of info. See, for Bush, the past means nothing. History books, prior actions, accumulations of mental trash atop a foundation of stunning ignorance mean not a thing as long as your heart's in the right place. Better to be a hypocrite than to appear fallible. I'm not saying this particular fault is uglier than the others, but it is galling. But hell, 60 million voters can't be wrong, eh?

History will have it's own take on all this madness. The environment will speak for itself, and no one really knows how the dollar will fare given our saving / consumption ratio. I am an optimist, yet I'd be more reassured if there was some true intellectual heft atop The Administration. Bush cares not a whit about the details, and the ones that do care strike me as ideologues right down the board. For example, we are not dealing with capital and energy issues in a mature way. Heavyweights in the finance world grow antsy. From Robert Hormats, Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs:

"When people ask what we are doing about these twin vulnerabilities, they have a hard time coming up with an answer, There is no energy policy and no real effort to reduce our voracious demand of foreign capital. The U.S. pulled in 80 percent of total world savings last year [largely to finance our consumption]." .

The Administration is silent about the approaching financial chaos, in part, because because they don't respect the vast majority of their electorate. The Wal-Mart world has no real conception of the forces at work. They don't save. They don't travel abroad- so weak v. strong dollar is just another abstraction, like al dente pasta and good wine. Sorry, I'm being an asshole here, but being in ground zero of terra ignoreland for the time being makes me wanna say screw these people...at some point stupidity shall smite you in the ser and estar sense. You wanna make 10 bucks an hour and continue to vote for Bush or Bush clones because his heart's in the right place, because he knew sin and now he knows the Lord, go ahead. See, if foreign markets decide they'd rather not continue to pay for our gluttony, the laws of economic scarcity will hit like an errant hammer on the thumb-knuckle. Folks who have been saving all along will benefit from the inflation and interest rate hikes to follow a large sell-off of a weak dollar. Most everyone else will feel some pain.

Meanwhile, the fact that the average CEO makes some 500x more than their frontline workers mean nothing to the current administration. They preach that it's all about market forces doing their own thing, which doesn't square well with 100s of billions in corporate welfare for favored Texans or absurd farm subsidies that keeps perfectly good and cheap South Asian grain and cotton away from the U.S.A. See, in that sense, Republicans were never against unionization, it's just that the unions for the Right were always smaller and a tad more exclusive. Like the union of Halliburton, membership ~15 or whatever fits into their boardroom. Or the union of Chevron, one of the largest recipients of U.S. farming subsidies-- yes, you read that right, Chevron.

However, I'll say one thing for Bush Inc., the Middle East is changing in a goddamned hurry.

There's Crumbling Berlin Wall effect happening in the Middle East right now, and no sane person should say it would be happening without 9-11, and without the current version of our war with Iraq. There's something to be said for train-wrecking an occupation so dumbfoundingly spot-on that peoples all across the region say Shit! We definitely don't want the freakin' Yanks all up in OUR Mosques. We better handle our own business. And in Lebanon, Egypt, and sometimes Iran, citizens are forming opposition parties and taking to the streets.

That's a good thing. A democratic, prosperous, and terror-free Middle East will be a wonderful thing, and people will still debate about whether we were right to launch a war the way we did. Y'all do realize it was never about WMD's in the first place. Never was. But that's another can of something or other and I'm done with this for the day. Time for a good workout, with Mastodon on the mp3 player, and then animation baby, bringing Flint's twisted reality to 2D life.

Good Times.

- k

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21feb05

Hunter S. Thompson

It's late, or early, depending on where you are. I was about to turn in for the evening when I discovered that Hunter S. Thompson had shot and killed himself a few hours ago in his fortified mountain-side compound near Aspen, CO.

I'm at a loss for words but I need to pound something out here, because Hunter was the first writer, for me, that made writing look cool. As I've said elsewhere, Hunter wrote and published three masterpieces: Hell's Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. His dark side, with all the base instincts in tow, took over from the mid-70s on, but Hunter had already reached a place in his craft that damn few others even sniffed in their most euphoric moist dreams. Best then, to focus for the moment on what made him one of the 10 most influential, if not greatest, writers of the 20th Century. Indeed, that wiggy bastard should be right up there with Bellow, Nabakov, Cather, Marquez, Conrad, Faulkner, Morrison, Amis, and Hemingway. That's part of the sadness. Hunter had the ability to be number one on that list. Hunter brought the fearlessness of a street fighting journalist, with the soul of a poet, into some of the most tumultuous scenes of the modern American landscape.

His fantastic book on the Hell's Angels was so much more than a rollicking ride with the preeminent outlaw motorcycle club on the planet. It was a heartfelt study of society's other, the left-behinds and unwanted who used fist and grift to make their way. Positing that those who failed at being good may wish to excel at being bad, where competition wasn't so fierce, Hunter took us through a year in the life of transients, tramps, and speed-addled grease-monkeys negotiating parole and divorce suits, and did it by placing himself right in the middle of the fray.

Though the term Gonzo Journalism was attributed to Hunter and the way he inserted himself into the stories he covered, the whole notion was borrowed from Hemingway, who borrowed it from Melville, who...you get the point. There has always been the special brand of artist who demonstrates an awesome blend of talent and balls, and through the two, come upon stories that most of us never see, since most of us are not comfortable around true freaks. Since true freaks rarely have it together enough to write their own story in any form we'd understand, they need a translator. These types of artists are most rare, and when they surface, we tend to call them original and name a literary movement after them. Whether it's Hemingway in a bull-fight or on the lines in WWI, or Hunter S. Thompson in the midst of a criminally insane motorcycle crew with a touch of the messianic complex, we need these rare talents who go into the abyss and come back to us with tablets of truth.

Hunter's writing style, up until the Fear and Loathing era, was sparse and economical. Here's a passage from a piece he wrote about Peru in 1962:

If there is one profound reality in Peruvian politics it is the fact that this country has absolutely no democratic tradition, and any attempt to introduce one is going to meet violent opposition. The people who need democracy don't even know what the word means; the people who know what it means don't need it and they don't mind saying so. If the Alliance for Progress requires that democracy in Peru become a fact instead of just a pleasant word, then the Alliance is in for rough sledding too. This is the basis between the current misunderstanding between Washington and Lima. If the Peruvian people were as concerned about democracy as as is President Kennedy, this country would right now be in the throes of a civil war. - National Observer Aug 1962

Timeless.

One of Peru's most famous exports went on to cause Hunter quite a lot of trouble. I am of course speaking of blow. He started dabbling in the late 60s, and by time he was finished with the '72 campaign, Hunter was knee deep into the Peruvian white for a very long time. I'm not going to rail on another man's vices, cause God knows I have enough of my own, past and present. What had always galled me, however, was the fact that Hunter's excesses held him back from his rightful place in the writer's Valhalla. Hunter is not the first writer to wrestle with serious demons, in fact, most would say that one becomes a writer in the first place because one is fucked up, a priori. I support that notion. Good writers tend to know sanity as only a referent and an ideal for the squares, but not as something intimate. And so it obviously was with Hunter.

Born almost 68 years ago, to a business-class family in Louisville, Hunter was always the striking gentlemen jock, egghead, insane cowboy that everyone wanted to touch. The crazy smart physically powerful ones are the most electric, and Hunter, the man and his best work, was always about the incredible energy he churned forth, like some witch-doctor with a Selectric. As a person, Hunter was famously unknowable by intimates, let alone strangers and admirers, so no need to delve into all that. As a writer, I'm not sure if anyone got to experience the highs and lows of success and ridicule quite like Hunter did. Anyway.

That will do. Hunter left some great work behind, and I'm grateful for it. He chose to go out like his literary hero, Hemingway, and I should leave it at that.

No, I'll leave it at this:

Months later, when I rarely saw the Angels, I still had the legacy of the big machine - four hundred pounds of chrome and deep red noise to take out on the Coast Highway and cut loose at three in the morning, when all the cops were lurking over on 101. My first crash had wrecked the bike completely and it took several months to have it rebuilt. After that I decided to ride it differently: I would stop pushing my luck on curves, always wear a helmet and try to keep within range of the nearest speed limit...my insurance had already been cancelled and my driver's license was hanging by a thread.

So it was always at night, like a werewolf, that I would take the thing out for an honest rundown the coast. I would start in Golden Gate Park, thinking only to run a few long curves to clear my head...but in a matter of minutes I'd be out at the beach with the sound of the engine in my ears, the surf booming up on the sea wall and a fine empty road stretching all the way down to Santa Cruz . . . not even a gas station in the whole seventy miles; the only public light along the way is an all night diner down around Rockaway Beach.

There was no helmet on those nights, no speed limit, and no cooling it down on the curves. The momentary freedom of the park was like the one unlucky drink that shoves a wavering alcoholic off the wagon. I would come out of the park near the soccer field and pause for a moment at the stop sign, wondering if I knew anyone parked out there on the midnight humping strip. Then into first gear, forgetting the cars and letting the beast wind out . . . thirty-five, forty-five . . . then into second and wailing through the light at Lincoln Way, not worried about green or red signals but only some other werewolf loony who might be pulling out, too slowly, to start his own run. Not many of those - and with three lanes on a wide curve, a bike coming hard has plenty of room to get around almost anything - then into third, the boomer gear, pushing seventy-five and the beginning of a windscream in the ears, a pressure on the eyeballs like diving into water off a highboard.

Bent forward, far back on the seat, and a rigid grip on the handlebars as the bike starts jumping and wavering in the wind. Tail-lights far up ahead coming closer, faster, and suddenly - zaaapppp - going past and leaning down for a curve near the zoo, where the road swings out to sea.

The dunes are flatter here, and on windy days sand blows across the highway, piling up in thick drifts as deadly as any oil slick . . . instant loss of control, a crashing, a cartwheeling slide and maybe one of those two inch notices in the paper the next day: "An unidentified motor-cyclist was killed last night when he failed to negotiate a turn on Highway 1." Indeed . . . but no sand this time, so the lever goes up into fourth, and now there is no sound except wind. Screw it all the way over, reach through the handlebars to raise the headlight beam, the needle leans down on a hundred, and wind burned eyeballs strain to see down the centerline, trying to provide a margin for the reflexes.

But with the throttle screwed on there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right . . . and thats when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at one hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporise before they get to your ears. The only sounds are the wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it . . . howling though a turn to your right, then to the left and down the long hill to the Pacifica . . . letting off now, watching for cops, but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge. . . . The Edge. . . . There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others - the living - are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to chose between Now or Later.

But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it's In. The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions.

H.S.T. San Francisco, 1965.

Selah

- k

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18feb05

Syria and Iran: Despot Buddy System 2k5

Syria and Iran have formed an alliance to fend off their mutual adversaries. That clears things up nicely. Whose side are you on?

Before I launch into my diatribe, I want to make a distinction between the governments of Syria and Iran, and the people they abuse. As it tends to be with long-running Authoritarian Theater, Syria's secular Assad clan and the ruling Mullahs of Iran's theocracy maintain their legitimacy through fear and bribery. Both betray the supposed lofty ideals they claim to represent-- Syria: Pan-Arab glory; Iran: Islamic paradise on earth. Both governments also represent the bottom of a long slippery-slope brought to form by poorly managed colonialism.

Though I feel sorry for these people, one must also wonder why they let such governments come to power in the first place. It's a question I wrestle with regarding Stalinist USSR and today's North Korea. Do people really get the government they deserve? I tend to think it true in the U.S.A., especially when I have to duck inside a shopping mall for something I want that very minute. Sometimes though, you don't get the government you deserve as much as the one that's foisted upon you. In that respect, Iran's post-colonial governmental background reeks of tragedy.

The Iranians freely elected Mohammed Mossadegh in 1951 to run the country. Mossadegh was socialist, but nothing worse. His policies were indistinguishable from those of post-Gaullist France. His crime in our eyes was nationalizing Iran's oil fields after the Brits refused to pay market royalty rates for the petrol they extracted from Iranian soil. The nationalization of Iran's most liquid resources shut out the Brits and the Yanks, and knowing how we feel about losing money, Mossadegh must have known he was on the clock. From the LA Times:

In 1953, the U.S. had its first success at regime change in the Middle East. In August, the prime minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh, was driven from power in a coup and replaced by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Mossadegh was the victim of covert action by the CIA, but Americans didn't find out about that for another two decades. Elected two years earlier, he had nationalized Iran's oil fields, which the British had monopolized since the end of World War I.

After the coup, the shah agreed that U.S. companies, led by Gulf Oil, would receive 40% of Iranian oil. The CIA's budget for the coup was $1 million; 300 people were killed. Regime change in Iran was quick and easy.

So, when the Arab Street screams that we only tussle with the Middle East to score cheap oil, there is more than a kernel of truth to it. Arabs and Persians tend to be more historically aware than we are, as the wronged tend to remember crimes against them more clearly then the criminals remember what they did the night before. Shut away the bad stuff, Forrest, we'll try anew tomorrow not to debase ourselves.

With the Shah in power, we got our cheap oil, and the Iranians got progressively and collectively pissed off at the Shah and the fact he was building a police state to keep his people in check...while the ruling elite of course did anything that pleased them. Imagine how angry you'd have to be at your system to think of the Ayatollah Khomeini as a viable alternative. Less overt corruption, sure, more stoning and head-chopping. We weren't pleased with midwifing the birth of the world's first Islamic Republic, of course, because the oil spigot was turned off, a sworn enemy was born, and some people started taking all that Great Satan talk seriously. Not that we refected on this kind of thing until we had to.

Syria is different but more of the same. Their authoritarianism is secular, not religious, but the details are executed in the same fashion. Syria lacks natural resources, so no one much cared what they did after the British gave them artificial borders and cut them loose from the colonial teat 1946. As so often happens, a power-vacuum meant a perfect opportunity for thug-culture to assert itself. With Syria, that culture took the face of Baathism (a tangent of Pan-Arabism). Serving as the Godfather family were the Assads, or Assheads, whatever works for your tongue.

The Assad family, Hafez and son, Bashir, have ruled Syria for almost 40 years. The old man Hafez was a real piece of work-- calling for the destruction of Israel one minute, and leveling a rebellious town of his as a means of pacifying it, making the Fallujah takedown look downright humanitarian. Hafez's boy Bashir is not quite the dragon his daddy was, but that's due in part because he can't get away with as much. Despots have grown nervous with Bush 43 having his hand on the button.

The Iranian people are over their bullshit government-by-clergy. They want to rejoin the west. There is little debate about this between Elephants and Donkeys, the question as always becomes what means to employ for the desired ends. The Syrian people are getting antsy as well, and with the recent assassination of former, and pro-western, Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri being blamed on Damascus, well, you can see why Iran and Syria might want to buddy up. No one likes to die alone.

In the end, I expect the Syrian and Iranian people to off the heads of their nefarious dragons themselves. There will be an inevitable and messy transition period, and then things will improve. The fact that the governments of Iran and Syria have formalized things with an alliance means that both regimes are truly on countdowns to extinction.

- k

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15feb05

Pistons In Control

Darko scored eight during garbage time last night, and garbage time lasted a quarter-plus of the Pistons / Bucks game. Granted, Milwaukee ain't the '86 Celtics, but they're not the 2k5 Warriors either. Detroit was scary awesome: 4 turnovers for the game (one off a travel), 31 assists, 6 players in double figures...and Darko playing an inspiring 16 minutes of garbage-time ball-- with two authoritative stuffs and a sweet feed to B. Wallace for a hook-slam and a stake through the heart of another team. The Pistons need to go 29 and 3 to win 60 games this year, and it's possible. They're that good right now, and they're going to get better because whatever it was that was missing through the first two months of the season is back. Larry Brown hasn't had anything to bitch about and it drives him crazy. He's such a coaching hag, not to mention a stylish Brooklyn Jew, that he lives to critisise...and teach, we must not forget that.

Rasheed continues his accent with another double x2, with enough pretty passes and brutal picks to send half the Bucks on a painkiller diet. I'm legitimately stoked about this, and have preformatted emails of pure sardonic vitriol to send forth to the nonbelievers. Belly up to the bar and drink the Pistons kool-aid...made from the blood that our Detroit Red Wings will never spill this season.

More 90s Music Redux:

I was listening to De La Soul's The Grind Date last night and soon found myself wondering why folks who know something about hip-hop tend to think De La Soul is Dead beats Bulhoon Mind State. Can't be the lyrics...with tracks like the intellectual ebonic I Am I Be, squabble satire Area, and ode to black music exploitation-- The Patti Duke, Bulhoon is undeniably lyrically deeper than De La Is Dead, maybe not funnier (De La is Dead's skits rule) or darker, but definitely deeper. So, it must be about the beats. De La Soul Is Dead, like The Grind Date, is funk-based...like almost all hip-hop released since the Towers went down. I think I've figured something out.

Great funk-laced hip-hop albums are given more props than great jazz-laced hip-hop albums. I'm not sure why this is aside from the fact that the funk can come heavier than the jazz, physiologically. You have to meet good jazz, like good Classical or good Literature, half way. For me De La's third album and half of what jazz-beat prodigy Madlib puts out ranks among my 20 hip-hop favs of all time. But then I also like the In A Silent Way more than Maggot Brain, and a good Bill Evans ballad over a good Earth Wind and Fire ballad, so maybe it has to do with my intrinsic honkiness.

Though the Funk moves me (Mandrill's Ape Is High reliably gets me dancing on the tabletops), wondrously executed jazz movements move me more, deeper down than my mere body parts. I can't listen Keith Jarret's organic take on I Loves You Porgy out in public because the thing makes me...you know, um, sentimental. George Clinton, Bootsy, and Eddie Hazel conspired to put out the most complex funk imaginable, and even Miles gave the funk a go with his Bitches Brew era, but thump in itself can be but so complex. Thus incorporating jazz beats into hip hop was always risky because at it's heart, hip-beats are meant to frame what the MC says...though I know Shadow, Spooky, and Coldcut fanatics would argue that with venom.

So, De La serves as a nice litmus for society's hip-hop values. Public Enemy has a larger place in posterity than Tribe. Wu Tang, Jay-Z, Biggie, and all them cats brought back East-Coast hip-hop in part by turning back some Daisy Age conventions, chief among them being complex jazz beats that appealed to the egghead backpackers. The Roots sampled a nice line from Mo Better Blues on Things Fall Apart. Danzel's character was talking about the grief associated with playing black blues and jazz music to white audiences, and was complaining about how folks don't respect their heritage and other things you'd hear in a humanities class or on PBS. The Wesley character's response was: The people don't come because you grandiose mutherf***ers don't play shit they like. You play shit they like and the people will come. Then of course the Roots drop a beat that could have come straight from Superfly. Nuff said.

The grandiose mutherfu***rs swing towards the jazz and it's classical nuances. The day-to-day grinders don't wanna think too much, they just want to shake a little, let off some steam...and swing to a timeless groove.

- k

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13feb05

Passing The Rock

Not sure when it became cool to pass again in the NBA, but I'm pretty sure that the Pistons and Lebron James have both had much to do with it. I watched the Pistons dismantle a good Wizards team yesterday, and today saw two excellent games that've convinced me that the NBA has finally recovered from Jordan's retirement in '99 (to paraphrase Bill Simmons, Jordan's Wizards tenure never happened).

The San Antonio Spurs and the Pistons are considered the two model franchises in the NBA, and it's because they both pass the ball well and defend. Running isolation plays all the time is passe because folks like Tim Duncan, King James, and now even Kobe want to make Oscar Robertson cool again. It makes the game a lot of fun to watch.

The early game was the Spurs against the Miami Heat, and I was left with a few impressions. For one thing, Darko Milicic may just turn out to be a Slavic version of Tim Duncan...no, I'm not wasted. Darko can run like a deer, handle the ball, post up, and shoot like you'd expect a European to shoot. He get's frustrated because he doesn't play much, but you never hear Pistons brass of Pistons players talk trash about him because Darko does very well in practice. Rasheed has made him a personal project, which admittedly carries some risk, but unless I see Darko roll a blunt on Larry Brown's clipboard, I'm not going to sweat that angle. Darko's going to be in the rotation by season's end...but he'll still have a long road before reaching Duncan's level, I'm just saying it's possible he can get there.

Duncan played well against the Heat, but Miami is for real...Shaq has made that big of an impact on the Heat's psyche. Final was 96 - 92 Heat, but it was even closer than that. Wade was fearless. He passed well, and charged fearlessly into the paint whenever Miami needed points and or fouls. It doesn't hurt that Shaq is only too happy to clear out lanes for Wade to drive through. It's nice to watch. The rest of the Heat, obviously, are playing their supporting roles to the big two. This kind of thing has worked before...until last year it was working pretty good in L.A. Apparently, all of Diesel's talk about Wade being the man, and being leader of the team has affected Dwayne in the best possible way. Meanwhile, the Spurs are still the deepest team in the league, and if the Pistons slip, today's Heat / Spurs battle was a Finals preview.

Then in the late game, BronBron and the Cavs welcomed Kobe (back from a nasty ankle sprain) and once-upon-a-Showtime to an up-close presentation that Cleveland is no one man show. Doesn't matter how well Kobe plays when Zydrunas Ilgauskas drops 30, and Drew Gooden has yet another double-double. Gooden is proof positive that King James makes his team-mates better. Not so long ago, folks in Cleveland were tweakin mad that Carlos Boozer made a verbal commitment to the Cavs owner, a blind man no less, and then bailed for Utah and a fat contract. Drew Gooden was supposed to replace Carlos, but no one figured it would work out that way because Gooden has spent most of his early career doing a spot-on impression of a wasted draft pick in Orlando. Now Gooden still falls asleep during games, but not often, and he's definitely playing better than Boozer. This is part of LeBron's magic- making people like Drew Gooden and Jeff McGinnis look like respectable pros...possibly a sign of the apocalypse...now I'll be watching for Paul Silas to start speaking in tongues.

With Miami, Cleveland, and the Wiz on rise, the balance in power between East and West closes daily. The addition of Shaq to the Heat plus the emergence of D. Wade and LBJ as top-five talents has sealed the deal...oh, and the defending Champs reside in the East. Speaking of which:

Blockheads who wrote off the Pistons last month must have either been camping under a rock or been smoking one. The difficulties Detroit has coped with, by both players and coach, have been legit, and taxing-- injuries, new players, and the strange terrain inherent in defending one's title. Everyone says it's harder to defend than to win the first time around. Yet here they are, 2-seed in the East, fresh off convincing victories over the Wizards and Hell-A. Tayshaun Prince has raised his game to an all-star level, and Rasheed's playing really nice-- dropping shots, blocking shots, and boarding like a beast, and of course Chauncey and Rip have been great all year. I wrote a couple weeks ago that the Pistons won't lose more than another five games. Since then they crapped the court in Jersey, but that's been the lone downer. They've shown in the last month-plus that they're ready for another run, and they're only going to get better.

And yes...Darko will soon be contributing, write it down.

- k

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9feb05

Peace Offerings

So Israel and Palestine will officially stop whacking each other for awhile. This can't be bad, unless the truce is but a reprieve for Palestinian militants to re-arm and further plot the destruction of the Zionist entity. Scary monsters baby. However, I'm a terminal optimist, and I think that Abbas wants to do the right things, meaning he wants Palestine to have the same kind of living standard as Israel and the modern West. That, in the end, is the only way out of this mess-- for Palestinians to be as well-educated, wealthy, and happy as Israelis. There is no other way. Japan taught the world in WWII that no matter how righteous you think your cause, and no matter how willing you are to die for that cause, better machines from a better financed foe will destroy you. Abbas understands this. Arafat never did. It's a dark mindset to have on such a hopeful occasion, but it's what the militants understand. No matter how justified, angry and determined Hamas is, suicide bombs and homemade rockets-on-the-cheap are no match for Israeli gunships with personalized missiles. Technology has no ideology.

There is much to be sorted out between the two sides, assuming that the truce is for real. For one thing, I don't see how the Jerusalem question will be settled to anyone's satisfaction. For Palestinians, Jerusalem is to be the eternal and whole capitol of Palestine. Yet Israel has made is clear that even in their most generous and perhaps drunken state of mind, Jerusalem will be divided between the two countries. More likely, it will belong entirely to Israel. Palestinians will not like this. The right of return issue is a non-starter for Israel. Most Israelis are loath to risk the demographic earthquake that would happen if ~4 million Palestinians were allowed into Israel proper, as things stand...and that's the operative.

Abbas and Sharon need to sit down and figure out how to make Palestine into a modern democratic society in ~25 years. That is the ticket to Palestinian dreams both real and spiritual. If Palestine is not longer even remotely a threat to Israel, if there are vast exchanges of culture and commerce between the two, then issues like control of Jerusalem and the right of return don't mean as much. It also follows that, if ~25 years from now, both Jordan and Iraq are modern and prosperous democracies, Palestinians wouldn't give a hoot in heel to strive for a right to return. There are many sets of causal relationships at work here, but in sum, if the Palestinian Territories, and later the Palestinian State, transforms into a modern stable democracy in step with its Arab neighbors, then the entire Israeli / Palestinian conflict fades into the history books.

Funny how Pulp seems to have more influence over today's rock/pop than either Blur or Oasis...and if you can't stand the idea of a retro fancy-pants BritPop reflection here on Da Sack...flee while you can. I love BritPop...f***in love it, always have. It's a guilty pleasure, I know. Worse than guilty, I'm prolly bringing down things around me by constantly milking the aural teat of music so melodic and faux sophisticate. Thing is, every time I throw on Modern Life Is Rubbish or The Bends, BAM, I'm back in a time and place where everything was, how to put it, less menacing...part of that had to due with the fact of me being in my early and mid 20s, spinning records for paying audiences full of hot drunk girls, and....well. Americans who fawned over BripPop in the 90s did so not for the underlying tomes about class warfare and death of the British welfare state, we didn't care about that. We swooned because of those lovely melodies, and the assurances that life was getting prettier at a predictable tack, and it was full bliss ahead. I've often said that good BritPop was the prep music for raves, meaning, it's what you listened to from happy hour till ~10pm. Screamadelica was the ultimate confirmation of this...at once the official birth of BritPop and notice to the squares in the pubs that the underground rave scene was about to bubble to the surface, with Fatboy Slim denouncing the Housemartins for BigBeat and everything. Ungh.

But as I was saying about Pulp...they were definitely in the shadow of the UK's big three: Blur, Oasis, and Radiohead (and seriously, until OK Computer, Radiohead were most certainly Britpop). Jarvis Cocker and the boys were the ugly stepchild, even taking a backseat to the unspeakably average Verve, but ha, revenge is their's via what came forth from North American shores. Three of the best bands to come up in the US and Canada since 2k have bourne many resemblances to Pulp: Interpol, Broken Social Scene, and lately, The Arcade Fire. There are differences of course, and some think playing spot-the-influence is an asshead pastime, but still, it's interesting how things things happen, and the anthropologist in me marvels. There always a disconnect between conventional wisdom and reality, and the truth is usually bourne by the results of work as opposed to what was written about it. I'm not even sure how much bands like The Arcade Fire realize their musical likeness to Pulp, and maybe it doesn't matter. But at the end of the day, nothing springs fully formed onto the stage without a wealth of external influences. Listen to Pulp's Different Class...quite stunning, and it sounds as fresh today as it did 10 years ago...which is why it's informing so much of what's being done today.

Ah, ye ol spot-the-influence. It's like a sense of irony. Once you're infected with it, it stays with you forever, like a herpes virus, no matter how hard you try to embrace straight-faced sincerity or music on its own merits.

Right now, out there somewhere, there's a band that sounds like a cross between Johnny Cash and Neurosis...and I'm excited to hear it.

- k

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6feb05

Loony Tunes & Another 3 Point Blowout

Been working on an animation project, of the Flash-end variety. From that, I've come to realize that I needed a wacom pad, and so I've ordered one. This will save me many hours not to mention the wear and tear my heart and mind absorbs when I'm trying to draw fine digital drawings via my laptop mousepad. I'm drooling just thinking about it. See, technically you can draw just about anything with a laptop touchpad with good pressure sensitivity (like the one embedded in my trusty machine), really, but it can be a grind. My animation is created in Freehand, because it imports to Flash better than Illustrator, not because it's superior to Illustrator, and anyway Freehand can do some very cool stuff (great blends, layers, and fill/stroke effects)...and with a 6x8 tablet with an insane number of pressure sensitivity levels, I can basically draw all my figures in about a tenth the time it would take me to either do pixel-perfect work with the laptop mouse, which lets me expand my f-bomb-based vocab; or draw on parchment, scan, trace scan, etc, which is wasteful in other ways. I have a sketch pad, that's where the characters' physical shapes take shape, but what goes onto the parchment should never have to be on the computer...like church and state, one usually informs the other of course, but it's wise in the long term for the two to keep a respectful distance, officially that is.

I love it when Laetitia Sadier and Mary Hansen kick out them French vocals on ETK. When Metronomic Underground gets going, it's like stumbling into a high-rent Tokyo crack house, if such a thing exists. Wait, you might say, what does French have to do with Japanese? Oh, but listen, it sound very choppy and chirpy, especially if you're only catching the tones. I'm usually doing something when listening to the Lab, because conversation or work music is what they do, it's Eno's late 70s / early 80s stuff for the Ritalin generation. Frogs n Moogs, like peas n carrots, Jenny, like peas n carrots. Besides, 1996 / 97 were good times.

Interesting game in Jacksonville-- which will never host another Super Bowl again-- and the better team won.

Donovan McNabb will not sleep well for awhile. He was average tonight, and no. 5 is not an average quarterback. They'll be back, I mean Philly is the best team in the NFC by a good sight, and McNabb'll be working his tail off in the off-season, with T.O. in his ear, telling him what it is. Funny how things change, because I'm pretty sure I've written bad things about T.O. and I've definitely said ill things about him, but damn, he manned up tonight. 9 catches / 122 yards is a good line for anyone, but not enough, not when your qb is chucking dying ducks into Tedy Bruschi's mits...oh man, those interceptions are always tough to watch, and the bad throws were tough to watch. Why should I care, the Lions weren't involved, and I have nothing against the Patriots, but for some reason there's a gluttony light that's gone off in my head with those guys. They win too much, and when they win their Super Bowls, the Patriots just barely do it, by three points.

Is that dynasty?

Guess so. Three trophies is three trophies, and the Pats did smoke the second and third best teams in the AFC convincingly during the playoffs. Yet, if McNabb plays his A game... But that's what I always say about a Patriots opponent-- a little dink here, a better thrown ball under pressure there, a better read, etc. You know, the least the Pats could do is maul a team in the Super Bowl. As much as Jimmy Johnson's Cowboys irked me, they beat the drooling snot out of very good teams...especially in the Super Bowl. Retired Bills players still shake in their sleep...cold sweats and bed-wetting episodes derivatives of maulings inflicted by them Cowboys. Folks used to complain about Super Bowl blowouts...hell I like to see the Pats pull a Bowl blowout, but at the same time I should be grateful for the suspense. Tampa Bay and Baltimore smoked their respective teams, but they were one and done. Funny how that happens. Is there a larger pattern here? Does Belichick tell his players, after the trophy presentation, that they could have done better, and that they will all work harder next season cause they won by but three points? Maybe the Patriots save a little of themselves for the next season, avoiding perfection so they have something to play for the next year...saving part of the wad...yep that must be it.

As always, props to Tom Brady, and this time to Deion Branch and Tedy Bruschi, and the rest of those crazy cats. Everyone knows by now that New England never wilts, which is a good trait to possess in high pressure games. Philly looked like a bunch of glue-sniffin' Pop Warner retreads during the 4th quarter. Their clock management was awful-- two turnovers and huddles where the no-huddle was needed in the 4th. McNabb was not the man when he absolutely needed to be the man. Tom Brady was mellow the whole way through. Part of it has to be physiological...Brady just deals with pressure situations better than others, must be special chemicals in his brain. I suspect that time slows down for him in the kind of pressure spots where it speeds up for others. If you're seeing more than anyone else, and seeing it better, chances are you can do more than anyone else. Lack of doubts and confusion bring clarity on many levels, and it certainly enhances performance...as any Cialis Steely Dan would tell you.

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2feb05

The Longest Month In The Midwest

I know, I know, a dark blog header for this here February 2k5. Sorry. I think there's a message of hope, really, without much LSD-assisted imagination or anything, hope springs eternal on the image above. I've actually been in a good mood for a few weeks running. Anyway.

Good thing the Pistons are playing well again. Maybe Larry Brown will stick around till the end of the season before he bolts for NYC. He's sworn up and down that Motown is his last coaching stop in the NBA, but if memory serves, he's said that before. But it could be different now, who knows? Brown's in his mid-60s now, coaching a good team that he likes, and Olympic debacle aside, has assured himself of legendary status till the end of time, or the end of basketball...and basketball will always be around as long there remains a market for dark and somewhat sophisticated ghetto comedy. Hollywood couldn't invent things like Shawn Kemp trying to sire his own basketball league or the last ten years of the Portland Trailblazers. The creative Hollywood mind doesn't want to go there, because they can't imagine a debauchery greater than their hamlets in the Hills or 4am Sunset Strip S&M coke parties. That's why basketball's so important, keeps us both from getting too comfortable about the human condition in advanced societies while providing more horrified laughs per season than anything else this side of Ultimate Fighting Midgets.... Make no mistake, coaching the Knicks would be a swandive into the dark ghetto comedy, and I don't think that Brown has it in him anymore to do that. You never wish Stephon Marbury on old coaches, it's not cool.

However.

Larry Brown has never dealt well with comfort zones. His m.o. is to take over a terrible team (Pistons are the exception here), get them to play the right way and lead them to a few decent playoff runs. His stints with Philly and Indiana were typical in this regard. He loves to teach the game, and by extension, he loves watch his work play out in noticeably better execution. He wants results that even the non-basketball fan would notice...say L.A. Clipper enthusiasts, who must have wet themselves in seizures of glee when Brown brought them from a 20-62 monstrosity to a respectable playoff team in just a couple years. That's results.

With the Pistons, there was nothing Brown could do to make them that much better. Rick Carlisle is a damn good coach, one of the five to seven best in the NBA, and I wouldn't be shocked to see him lead the Pacers to a title some day ...especially if they make sure Ron Artest takes his lithium. Detroit was already a 50+ win team when Brown came aboard, and honestly, until Rasheed arrived, I'm not sure if Brown made that much of a difference. Wait, I take that back, Tayshaun Prince has become an all-star caliber small forward, and Carlisle ignored him, so, that's pretty huge. But to me it seems like ever since the Olympics, Larry Brown has not really enjoyed coaching, even though he's always sworn it's what he's all about...to the end and whatnot. Maybe, but his demeanor early in the season (kinda blah), followed by his demeanor after fight nite at the Palace (looking like he was being forcefed spam and castor oil before every game), led many of us Piston faithful to assume ol' Larry was ready to get the hell out. Between the Olympics, an early season hip surgery, and a struggling team in a gloomy city, I understand why this could happen. Then came grumblings from Piston Player No.1, Ben Wallace, about effort, then this whole thing with New York. Make's a man wonder.

Thing is, last night the Pistons came back in the 4th to beat a very spirited Wizards team at the MCI center. Tayshaun, Chauncey and Sheed were all money on both ends of the court, and Brown looked to be enjoying it deep down in his cockles and sub-cockles. Maybe meeting with Pres. Bush for last season's championship, and being told that he showed the nation the importance of playing the right way has re-invigorated him, but it's prolly more simple than that. The Pistons have been playing steadily better now for almost 20 games. There's no way they beat the Wizards playing like they did in November. An Aside: I'm really glad Washington's doing well. I lived in DC for the better part of my 20s and saw Webber, Juwan Howard, Rod Stickland, Kevin Duckworth, and other supposed saviors and co-saviors, who did nothing but drain the franchise of money and karmic energy, come through every year and just snuff out the pro flame of a basketball mad town. Seriously, if you've ever been to a Maryland or Georgetown game, you know, D.C. is both Chocolate City and ground zero for basketball fanaticism. I also think it funny that the power base of the current Wizards are ex-Golden State Warriors, but I'm not going to get into that here...maybe Friday.

Ben Wallace and crew, at some point in the last 45 days, decided that they were going to properly defend their title whether their gloomy coach was into it or not. That's a step that most teams never take, winning despite their leader, and I'm not saying that Brown was trying to screw things up, but he's been through a lot, he's 64, and sometimes you just get tired in the ser sense, from the inside out, like so tired that you just can't care even though you know it's your job and your purpose. I noticed that when the Pistons beat down Indiana last week, that wry smile was starting to etch back across Larry's face, but he still spoke like a man who wasn't' into it-- that monotone yeah it was a good, a nice win, our players defended, Chauncey needs to take fewer threes...yah yah. Water under the bridge, and it seems we've learned something new about this franchise.

Detroit's players, instead of pointing their fingers at each other, blaming injuries, or blaming their exhausted coach, decided to pull together and fix it themselves, and Brown has noticed. I suspect that if there is one thing that trumps Brown's wanderlust, it may be an appreciation for folks who help him when things are dark. Next year is a long way's away, but regarding this season...I'll be surprised if Detroit loses another six games between now and the first round. Under the radar, half mentioned and partially alluded to, The Detroit Pistons have had their trial by fire for the year and methinks they want to remain champs. It's pretty awesome, if you think about it, and I love it when the words heartwarming and NBA can co-exist. Of course, I'll always come back for the Sprewell quips and The Kobe Stare, just to take the edge off.

- k

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