"This is the uprising of the working class. We're redistributing the wealth," said Bryn Phillips, 28, a self-described anarchist, as young people emerged from the store with chocolate bars and ice cream cones.
I'm excited to let you know that you can now access the CDH show archives online and listen to playlists from Seasons 1-3 on demand via Spotify.
I'll be moving playlists over there in several batches. Currently, there are six published playlists available. These can be heard (with a free Spotify account) 24/7 ON DEMAND. Right now, the playlists include only Xan's material, but I hope to get Joe on board quickly.
World Beat, Afrobeat, Punk Rock, Hip-Hop, Mash-Ups...
The way you get to know yourself is by the expressions on other people’s faces.
It's been several days since the news of Gil Scott-Heron's death, but no word yet on the official cause. Not hard to imagine what took down the crack-addicted, HIV-positive blues-ologist, but perhaps it's not fair to speculate.
I've been trawling for items related to GSH for the last few days. Here are a couple of the stronger picks:
"New York is Killing Me" (2010) by Alec Wilson. A long piece which appeared last summer in The New Yorker. GSH reminisces here about how he got his start, what he thinks about his place in hip-hop, and the place of crack-cocaine in his life. Well written and stirring.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (2004). A one-hour documentary which appeared on BBC4. Lots of gaps in the story, but also meaningful interviews with collaborators like Brian Jackson, disciples like Chuck D, Sarah Jones, and Mos Def, and long segments with GSH himself. The video popped up on Youtube over the weekend in four segments of roughly 15 minutes each.
The sound and the fury. Candy-ass retro bands take note: the 1980s were not what you think. No embed permission, so go ahead and click the link. One hour, one minute, and fifty-one seconds of punk-as-fuck life and art.
At 55 years-old, with Black Flag and the Circle Jerks in his rear-view mirror, Keith Morris certainly has nothing left to prove. But, then, that's not really the point with folks like Morris, is it? It isn't about measuring up to some external standard, or seeing yourself in comparison to some other, earlier, version of yourself. That kind of living, it seems to me, can't resonate in any meaningful way with a punk ethos, where every moment is a trial, and you've got to be reborn in each moment (really, give birth to yourself), or you find yourself forcefully sucked down into a prison-house of intellectual and spiritual unfreedom.
Having nothing to prove and making music outside that whole paradigm is part of what makes Morris's latest project, OFF!, so friggin' good. On CDH, I've played multiple tracks from the First Four EPs collection, which came out in November 2010, including "Panic Attack", "Black Thoughts", and (this week) "Crawl". Soundcloud offers links to two others from the album, "Darkness" and "Upsidedown".
These are driving, tightly condensed hurricanes of hardcore virtuosity. It only takes one or two listens, and you're quickly made to see why so much of what passes for punk rock today is ridiculous by comparison.
I offer up these tracks to anyone who feels prematurely old, to the 30-somethings and 40-somethings (like me), who catch themselves complaining too often about their aches and pains and their stupid, insipid weltschemrz. These songs pull listeners into what OFF! guitarist Dimitri Coats has called the band's "dark party", and they remind us (at any age) about what hardcore means and why hardcore matters.
OFF! have live dates this month and hit the road again for more shows in June. You should catch them (if you can).
Long time, no blog. That's on me. I aim to do better.
There's plenty to tell, actually, just very little time to sit at the computer and compose my thoughts. Here's a couple of morsels, though, to keep you nourished.
I've been poring over old Jane's Addiction videos this morning. It's been more than twenty years since Nothing's Shocking got passed my way (by the cousin of JA drummer, Stephen Perkins), and I find that album as compelling as ever. To see a band from the early alt-rock era firing on all pistons and witness what Henry Rollins once called called "the soul-expanding gift" (in his liner notes to 1997's compilation, Relapse) of a JA live perfromance, check out the video for "Ocean Size" (sorry, no embed available).
