January 2005 Archives
My dear friend Elizabeth Mendez Berry has published a milestone of a piece in the Stefani/Pharrell issue of Vibe mag, hitting stands forthwith. It is an investigation into the facts of domestic violence and hip-hop, correlates between one who raps lines like "[she] get beat like tina" and the actualization of that sentiment, airs the true stories of some of the women who were abused by rap's most celebrated--most notably Liza Rios, widow of Big Pun, who was brave enough to go on record about her experience, even after being shunned by an industry that, incredibly, held her in contempt for voicing her story. It is devastating and human, the kind of piece that hopefully will spark real dialogue, not a vicious indictment but an insider's gentle perspective and a wide-angle platform for women who've suffered violence at the hands of a lover.
I will post more when I re-read it. But we're very proud of Lady Ms. M B.
It was blizzarding all weekend, so I stayed inside, because Jessica warned me that blizzards are like armistice--9 mos later, babies come out. having no interest in actual reproduction at this present time i stayed alone and left my apartment only twice. the first, i was dehydrated from the radiator, which emits a constant WWHHHHchhhhh-sshhh-shh, the sound of a hot springs--and which vampire-sucks every last bit of moisture in my caffeinated to the point of passing-out body. to the bodego for bottled water and a tampico--which inspired the new slang "MUY TAMPICO," thus far used as exclamation, or phrase to cover up the space when there is silence and i know nothing else to say. so if we are talking and i am like, "MUY TAMPICO" and I am not modifying a noun, it probably means i am gripped with mind-numbing terror and trying to change the subject. MUY TAMPICO, like lighting fireworks for distraction before i make a break for it. some people fight, some people flight, i speak in tongues. say word.
the second time was after receiving the frantic text message "get in a cab NOW--YR CRUSH IS HERE" its tone mimicked the urgency one might use to summon a person to the hospital. "I BROKE MY LEG, GET HERE AND FAST"
so i took a car to greenpoint in the blizzard.
i would do that and did. i did it. i took a car service to frigging greenpoint on a bet, even though the crush does not meet my criteria: i made a pact w/jessica to only date men who own, or are at least in serious negotiations to buy, a helicopter.
(unless you are donald fucking rumsfeld in which case you can go straight to hell.)
this band was there, so MUY TAMPICO, possibly the best band i have seen in new york thus far, so good they made my friend gigi weep into her dixie cup of wine. and she is not prone to those sorts of things, and i am nearly positive she was not drunk. worst band name ever ("stars like fleas," which makes me think of scabies) but i feel like they should play Brooklyn Academy of Music soon; they were doing 21ST CENTURY MUSIC in a way you could tell they actually had some training and knew how to navigate. but not so married to the idea of doing 21ST CENTURY MUSIC, and not so dissonant/slaughterhouse like Zs, it was all about le charming melodee...after a measure of improv their piano-computer guy would raise up a drumstick, all offishal-like, and conduct them back into unison. they had alto sax, banjo, computer, drummer, melodica doing the pretty pollock art-splatter parts and one unflashy singer playing earthbound--he was even hunched on the floor and singing down into a mic so we had to pay attention to the players-- a ragtag mini orchestra just free enough to let their melodies float above them like snowflakes. because no two are alike.
______ got laid and found his passion again. He is playing Bach on the Casio, high-pitched trills and all, as we speak. It sounds like he is scoring the Fun House.
My Tia Andrea and my grandmother Guadalupe were curanderas; Aztec-desended healers whose general practice was integration of the body and soul, and the curing of both. When my cousins or I had a headache, we would not be fed aspirin; we would use our minds to stop it, and it totally worked. Every chest cold and flu was cured with one remedy: a boiling pot of hot water, half a lemon and honey; drink it as a tea. Take away the honey and add cayenne, and you've got a sort-of Jamaican wake-up drink that's better than coffee; add maple syrup it becomes the basis for Stanley Burrough's Master Cleanser. Great for the liver. Tastes awesome. Gives you a rush. We talk a lot about global culture now, especially in the "We are all connected through the internet" context, but centuries before the harnessing of electricity, indiginous cultures all over the planet were using the same herbs as medicine, worshipping versions of the same gods, and performing some of the same rituals. In other words: the internet has always existed, it's just another version of a constant. Certain Aztec healing rituals are very similar to those in Santeria, Yoruba, Vodun (and everybody was hiding those rituals in the context of the Mass after they were forcibly converted to Catholicism).
So in 1972, my aunt and mother were in Guadalajara visiting Tia Kuka, my grandmother's sister, who died before I was born. They had been out in the city, walked the path back to Kuka's and along the way, heard a baby's yawl from a neighbor's house. They stopped in to see what was wrong. The baby was colicky and had a sunken spot on his head, and there was no money to go to the doctor. "How much is the doctor," my mother asked. "Thirty pesos," they answered. My mother responded, "We have thirty pesos; we'll give them to you." Tia Kuka said, "No. I will do it." She sat the baby on her lap, said a prayer to La Virgen (Tonantzin), and blew one sharp breath into his mouth. The baby stopped crying, and after an hour, his soft spot "just filled out, like a balloon," my aunt recounted.
Mainstream newsmags misrepresentating inaugural protests: quelle surprise, I know. But after some digging, I noticed here, Yahoo acknowledges in a photocaption there were thousands in DC today.
Also, there is a great, hopeful piece in the Jan 31 issue of The Nation this week by Jenny Toomey and Rob Rosenthal putting the music/youth movement in historical context. It's not online but this line resonated with me in particular: "The cultural division we hear so much about is not a reflection of a gaping difference in the real interests of blues and reds, but the ability of some to frame those interests in ways the speak to divisions instead of mutual concerns, that play on fear and loathing instead of hope and respect. Music has the ability to speak across divides. Surely, we need that now more than ever."
The New Dylan. or at least, she could be touted as much by phallocratic prognosticators looking for a new one, probably. or rather, who is bob dylan, anyway? i haven't even read his book yet. What I really want to know, is, who was La Lupe?
NOTE: I have no probs with Bright Eyes; in fact, I quite like his musical stee. I think I have probs with what he represents, and how he is interpreted. (I.e. why is "fury at the injustices of life" a quality of "only a very young person"?)
Mirah is just as conor oberst as conor is, but nobody ever calls her the new dylan, which is not me splitting hairs or even taking on some hyperbolic rock-crit impulse to hand over the kingdom to the prodigal son. I am, because I adore her music, pointing out she's an equal talent, marginalized. for one, she is an over-30 simply pretty queer chica. pour deux, her distribution on K records might be slighter than that of the the Saddle Creek worldwide underground.
There's'more abnegational tragedy up in conor's world, though; Ms. Mirah doesn't deny herself, her ex-lovers, her sorrow, or her healing. She chooses hope. In a break-up/cheating song, she wrote the sweet line "I'm so number one that it's a shame/that you let other numbers in the game." Perhaps that's not as sexy as Conor's pre-political platform as a lyrical meta-cutter,"sexy" defined in this epoch as the generational martyrdom that gives kids bonerz over their/our own relational melodramas. (& we are all fuct by the emo gender-scripts: in two extreme and general hetero forms*, for the ladies, they read, "he doesn't like me because i suck" viz "he's just not that into me!" in lieu of the boysterz' "she doesn't like me because she sucks"/"i am holding out for something better" outward foisting. toeing the line of all our cot-damn oppression and unactualized "halfness") (word to gloria steinem) (empirically, not scientifically) (p.s. let's change how we do bizness! go team!) (pps these selfsame gender scripts cross over into homo form, too, unfortunately... soon I hope to write about the smart gayboys i know attending a major ivy league school who assume pre-feminist roles in their relationships with older boyfriends. you know, "cook clean and iron" type of Jadakiss relationships.)
anyway! mirah's 2002 album, advisory committee, ess mucho bananas & hot magma. just listening again today. she is just as conor as conor is: as political (though not as barky), as sexual, as relationship-wrought-and-enda-the-world, as going double-'naners for gigantor sweeping melodies, as accompaniment-to-yr-breakup. vegan. about the only thing missing is le booze. maybe folx just like booze in their music. that is why i liked the shawnna record--the arc of alcoholism / realization / repentant step-1 of AA (w/Missy Elliott) mid-album. and Just Blaze.
i mean, mirah has phil elverum, and he is the just blaze of indierock.
in further news, I have stepped up my "Z" game with Raheem DeVaughn's "Guess Who Loves You More." His website is theloveexperience.com, for chrissakes, people. You cannot be mad at me for loving the love experience.
hi, i am mad jacked on fair-trade columbian. i will try to write more coherently next time I am not ramble-riffing.
(& lets not get it twisted, the scribe of conor's inital nytimes magazine blow-up was one pagan kennedy, whose fanzine semi-defined my late-'90s goodtimez in cambridge MASS, big ups to the ellery street posse, thanks for the digital compass. MIT students, I SWEAR!)
Jacques Lu Cont on Martin Luther King, Jr.
"They say, 'ergot, ergot. We have no home, except the one that makes us stop and say this is where the weathered wear lines like armour. And every clock is like another widowed mother born to suffer, so we scream bloody murder! failure playing martyr! and now we wait for the orders.' We are hostage to the ebb and flow. I can't lie, i got potshots lined up. so bright they'll blind you. red tape so they can't trace us. we remain nameless. Turn the page cause you just got famous. Sabatoge or serenade. Slowing to a pace not fit for your appraisal. Lay down your sword and be thankful biding time for idle rifles is a trick without a trade. So welcome to stop."
"you buried your fangs in the heart of their braun. but learning to kill is not fighting a cause. it's more like a life as a coward with claws. You're a calloused carcass, but it means that you can never scratch the surface or subject others to the hell of your life, and I know why. Here's a warning: leave the room without a bruise before she imbibes. Because she gets drunk off fear but it leaves her mouth with a bitter taste. And because this clatch will never last she is bound to burn and bound to slash and burn away."
-Joseph Thomas Haege, with love and apologies from the editor
Outro: in backwards form, forward, backwards, forward or backwards. The end and the beginning overlap. Hale wisdom says to fling it far and strong like a frisbee, not a boomerang, and then, and then, there will be only silence, me, and now.
1. Time to turn off the white noise. It is all right to do so. I so do not want to be loving right now. What I want, what I really really want, what I really really really really want, is to put words together to make sense. I want to put words together so they pile pretty and rickety, with a graceful crunky choreography. Here is what I love: grace, crunk, and choreography. And words. I want the words to bump up against each other until they are soft. I want them to smoosh apart. I want to keep those parts and add, not subtract. That is love. And words and love are all there is. And vulnerability is the car idling outside. It will wait until I step through my front door, even forever.
1. It lies there, and you can't tell if it's a branch or a body
Just lying there, skulking, crumpled.
2. We both talk a lot of smack about changing our hairdos, but neither of us actually do. You still have a swoop of man bangs hanging off the side of your face, the sk8r boi that keeps you feeling antique and untouchable, and I still have the ringlets bobby-pinned to my face like a halo, but more like a helmet. Like when we met. Maybe it means we will grow old together, or maybe it just means we are old now.
3. I want to. Here is the admit, the constant sickly admit. I want to, but I stow it away out back, where it's not easily visible. It's not that accessible. It's not really all that typical. It's just a secret stowed away for the limping days in front of us, to be split down the middle with two conclusions: One is a branch. The other is a body.
3a. I wrapped it in a sheath of cotton and stowed it in a cedar box so its smell does not leak, I shoved it in the ground in a hole dug for potatoes so it would collect the musty scent of soil and masque, I axed it into two so it was easier to hide. One side says branches, the other says bodies. The jury is still deliberating. The jury already knows the answer. I am breathing now, breathing hot earth.
4. Everything else was too big to chop up.
1. So they carved out their cores. Wielding secrets like a scythe in strike mode. Fear-frozen and did not feel. Loving only words and purging to stay alone. Like life would leave somebody dead. Welcome to stop.
TV on the Radio (or TiVO, as they are sometimes known 'round these plasmatic wilds) opening for PFunk in the Opera House at Brooklyn Academy of Music, were aglow. They have four very long hits whose climax relies on percussive breakdowns and they played each one, accompanied by four-person brass section and 90 Day Men's Rob Lowe (ex-Biz 3) on korgs. Guitarist/producer David Sitek did not engage in his normal 10-minute long beatboxing outro, sadly, but the opera-grade sound system and the lamby bleat of horns obscured any of their traditionally off-key vocalizing, god love em anyway, whatevx — they kept the good parts going like Funkmaster Flex. Begun with production and vocals and bloomed out to full-band with fuck-ups, and wracked with the kinda turmoil that makes Tunde's hand twitch heavenward. This is why we like them: they are ordinary extraordinary. I wish they were the kind of band that hands out drumsticks and lets audience members go to town on the high-hat. I would've brought my own tambourine and bumrushed the stage: "yes! we all relate to your pain! each one teach one, dogggeeees!"
Some of my high-art connex up in the mezz, were mad at TVOTR's lack of proper chordal modalities or some classical composition shit. But that's what happens when you spend your free time reading books like Dynamics of Post-Tonal Theory, and what happens when our boys end up exposed to a (theoretically) higher-art context. But I definitely like to see the kids getting paid. Also, the last band I saw with a full horn section was Prince & the NPG, on the 2002 "let's hump all nite" tour or whatever.
PFunk was a two-hour long magical misery tour. How is it that a 237-person funk band — including a hula-hooping contortionist, a guitarist wearing a diaper, George Clinton and a dude playing a Chapman Stick — could possibly be rote and uninteresting? But it was; by now, everyone knows the script: immortal funk = wacky timez!, an unfortunate go-ahead for ladies to drag out the hot-pink feather boas from Halloween. Not to mention a bevy of stoned brahs in tie-dyes who seemed to be getting bizzz-ayyy, but were, in actuality, haywire like C3P0 sans torso. It hit my tortured cohort PFUNKamanica hard — I thought he was going to stab the free-survey pencil into his own eye — but I just directed my brain inward and absorbed whatever classic basslines they got around to playing; that is, after the first two and a half hours of ill jam sesh. (i.e., opening song consisted entirely of solos and was 35 minutes long, G. Clinton didn't come out til 2008, some people rapped about herb, etc. I am now .038% deafer.)
also, at dinner, we sat near to yr boy.
also, if your idols think of women as stewardesses, that idea is bound to sink in to yr own brain on some level, no matter how spitshined your brain's iron hatch of theory may be.
also, i still prefer the slow, vibrato'd version of "Staring at the Sun," when Tunde sings with himself in full-spectrum redemption, a solitary but wholly actualized meditation on death and, I think, hope* — "note the trees because the dirt is temporary." The song has more impact when it's ginger, with space to breathe.
Please feel free to metaphorize any of the above statements however they may suit your best and worst needs. "Staring at the Sun" on repeat, got me feeling flexible.
*yes, even if the song is about Camus--spend some time with de Beauvoir and you'll feel better
Cause I don't really feel like talking right now: here is realaudio for one of my favorite songs pretty much ever.
(The A side, not the B side.)
That is all.
Sir Fennessey scribes on Busdriver, the best weird Los Angeles institution after Harry Perry. I would like to add to mr. fennessey's busdriver nerd trivia: I am partial to the fact that bus was on blind date and spent the episode mind-warping his poor suitor, starting with the moment she rang the doorbell, and bus introduced 2mex as his cousin. i didn't actually see the episode (CERTAIN PEOPLE promised to make me a copy ages ago) but i imagine a date with Busdriver would include la jolla, back massage, and comedic Gore Vidal impressions flowed too quickly for you to understand he's mocking you.
that is fairly similar to a date i had once with a puppeteer (at the beginning of a string of accidentally dating men with "P" occupations: puppeteer, professor, painter) where, in the car back from the oregon coast, he performed his entire repertory of childrens' show characters, including Anansi the spider and the Very Scary Princess. he was driving, the radio was busted and i was trapped and motion sick anyway, so it was "har har" and "haw haw" and "yodel yodel" for like an hour and a half.
Temporary Forever is still my favorite Busdriver album, even though it is 65 tracks long and there's a lot of harring and hawing and yodeling. I would have to have to dig up his back-catalogue from my moving boxes to tell you why, as I haven't listened to it since 2003. I do recall that, as with Nas, the older the Busdriver record the better. It is also possible I only like it for the drive-thru skit, where he orders fame at the Carl's Jr. from an amazingly patient employee, and which was not a dramatization. His freestyles are like Jarmusch shorts, mundane, surreal and ad-libbed with the unlikeliest motivations.
Anyway, if you know of any other rappers on dating shows (besides The Game on Change of Heart), please hit us up, we are working on an essay about the voraciously codependent clutches of the TV dating game versus the aloof defensiveness of rap's dystopian love-scape.
Related: let us know if you want to participate in our group therapy experiment, where we meet at Training Camp and talk about our feelings over leather. i.e. "Nice RIG!" = "I'm so alone"
The two best books I read in 2004:
1. The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love by bell hooks
2. Can't Stop Won't Stop by Jeff Chang
I also enjoyed Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates (fiction), Revolution from Within by Gloria Steinem (non-fiction), Cuba and its Music by Ned Sublette and the Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem, all old books gifted to me by people I love. No gift expresses love as well as a book; it says, "I care about the bettering of your person." (Unless you give away the atkins diet book or something.)
Learned I do not like two Philip Roth books. (I can't remember the titles because I stopped reading them both halfway through. The first big one, and the last one. Portnoy's Complaint and the other.) Quelle surprise. I bet we'd catfight if we met on the street. Except I wouldn't, cause it'd be just like him to write about how it got him hot, dredge up some dogmatic Freudian neuroses, then he'd kill me off.
Also, since I gave up fistfighting in 11th grade (mostly), my physical fights manifest themselves solely in dance form. (Except for Keisha. I don't like that girl. I jump right out the car to fight that girl.) I could probably take Philip Roth on the dancefloor, though. I would like to see him drop down and get his eagle on.
I also meant to vote for United State of Electronica... I have been down on the hierarchal nature of top-tenning (would you tell your eldest child you loved him more than your youngest?); regardless, they were the best live show I saw all year (except for the rapping parts, and when the people at the show started puking Sparxx). Watch the live video on their site, it is Up With People.
In double news—because if I have to think about another best-of list I will slice open my right eye: The honorable dr. exo is humble enough to admit when he has been served (to his credit, he did not know that Emmy-Nominated Fly Girl choreographer Rosie Perez was my sensei). And yet, he still owes me and Nick two bucks for our dance-off, which we both won thanks to our deep understanding of bass and mutual ability to recite Tag Team verse. ("Slept," Nick lamented, "on.") ("Unfairly dismissed," I rued, "due solely to their appropriation by major sports teams and ESPN 'chicks have titties' halftime spots.") Armed with new confidence after wiping the floor clean with kris's not-so-mean mug (in a sparks-inducing breaks-off like The Rub hath never seen), I am now mentally prepared to challenge anyone to a 24-hour dance-athon/video-style choreography contest, like Omarion. Because I HAVE seen the movie. Not just the credits. Not just the impatient TiVO flip-thru. The whole movie. So... WHO WANTS A PIECE OF THIS?
p.s. here is my best-of movie list of 2004
1. the revolution will not be televised
2. honey
3. you got served
4. the day after tomorrow
5. the RZA/GZA/Bill Murray sketch in coffee & cigarettes
6. that song in Life Aquatic*
*"Ping Island/Lightning Strike Rescue Op" by Mark Mothersbaugh
May the gods shower peace on the soul of Shirley Chisholm.
Speaking of establishments that are ruled by a small group of men, here is my pazz and jop ballot. I am super bummed I did not get to vote for TI f. Bun B, Chingy, UTP Crew, Spoonie Gee and J. Hova's "Fucking Crunk Hat" or Muy Romantico's cover of Mary J. Blige's "Never Been", or Janie Jimboree's "Twee Finger," but 10 singles and 10 albums are not enough to contain the awesome breadth of my love. Still, but for a precious taste and a lasting internet-moment "in the club" with the 14,000 or so other critics across the country polled for Pazz & Jop, I consulted the post-it collection list of my favorite albums that I have been saving in the bottom of my purse (found beneath a wad of unsheathed/melted Spearmint Orbitz [true story]) and shrunk my list to fit the allotted space. R&B list-haters... Qué?
1. MIA/Diplo - Piracy Funds Terrorism Mixtape - Hollertronix (10 points)
2. Silentist AKA Mark Evan Burden - The Nightingale - Celestial Gang /www.jyrk.com (10 points)
3. Ghostface - The Pretty Toney Album - Island/Def Jam (10 points)
4. Theo Parrish - Parallel Dimensions (reissue) - Ubiquity (10 points)
5. Madvillain - Madvillainy - Stones Throw (10 points)
6. Visqueen - Sunset on Dateland - Blue Disguise (10 points)
7. Various Artists - Lif Up Yuh Leg An Trample - Honest Jon's (10 points)
8. Shawnna - Worth Tha Weight - Disturbing Tha Peace/Def Jam (10 points)
9. Teedra Moses - Complex Simplicity - TVT (10 points)
10. Smoosh - She Like Electric - Pattern 25 (10 points)
singles
1. Dizzee Rascal - "Stand Up Tall" - XL
2. Mya f. Ch***y + Polow Da Don - "Fallen (Zone 4 Remix)" - Universal
3. Caro - "My Little Pony" - Orac
4. MIA - "Galang" - XL
5. Britney Spears - "Toxic" - Jive
6. Angie Stone - "U-Haul" - J
7. Futureheads - "Le Garage" - Sire
8. Visqueen - "Buttercup" - Blue Disguise
9. Terror Squad (Remy Ma + Fat Joe) - "Yeah Yeah Yeah" - Universal
10. Daddy Yankee f. NORE, Gem Star + Big Mato - "Gasolina (Dirty Mix)" - Militainment US
My number three single of 2004, a club track called "My Little Pony" made by Randy Jones AKA Caro, on Orac Records. Cowbell is LIVE.
"i'm perfect
but nobody in this shithole understands me
cause
I don't put out"
-ladies and gentlemen the fabulous stains
p.s. do not see the movie closer unless you are prepared for 2 hours of humans at their absolute worst.
