It is now official: MTV: Music Television is now just MTV, and the “Music Television” tagline has been removed.
Four months ago, I wrote an article on the MTV that once was. It seems foolish to be nostalgic about a cable network, I should have been outside at the park, playing with my best friends. But I love music, and seeing people move to it on a regular basis was a true addiction.
The new logo is cut by 25 percent, so it seems shorter but still retains its bold M and graffiti-influenced “TV”. The network abandoned music years ago, so this shouldn’t come as a surprise, but what may come as a surprise is the fact that the success of Jersey Shore helped make the network realize that they needed a new look.
MTV closely but surely became a lifestyle network, less to do with the music and its creators, and more about what you do if and when the radio is on. Remember the early days of The Real World when some of the people on the show were wanna-be music artists, hoping to catch that big break on a music cable network? No longer. The logo will be utilized with the current breed of MTV “talent”, whether it be Snooki, Dookie, or Fungfunklaputukii. By no longer being “Music Television”, wuill there be a need for the annual MTV Video Music Awards? Most likely that will disappear into the cable sunset.
MTV used to be a beautiful woman, in a metaphorical sense. It then went Hollywood, loved the attention, abandoned its original mission, and made a visit with Dr. 90210. It’s had a new face for years, but it looks like, to quote an album title by original MTV enemy Jello Biafra, a “plastic surgery disaster”. Everyone has the same face, same puckered mouth, same eyes, same everything. The sameness isn’t unique, but someone is making money off of that sameness. The almighty advertising dollar is what changed MTV, nothing else, and their greed turned them into the mess they are now. Let them go, for it knows no longer what it used to be.
Rapper Common once said “I Used To Love H.E.R.” in reference to hip-hop music and the changed it went through. In the song, he said no matter how far hip-hop travels, “she” knows where home is and will always be welcomed back. The same can’t be said for MTV.
The original MTV died a long time ago, but it fortunately motivated many singers, songwriters, artists, filmmakers, photographers, journalists, comedians, and sure even a few fashion designers and choreographers, to create. That you can never take away: inspiration. Inspiration has always been around, but between 1981-1996, it was presented all day and all night, in stereo. It was the nightclub we kids wanted to enter, and it made us look forward to growing up.
Maybe when actor/director Alex Winter created a comedy show for the network called The Idiot Box, when one could watch fictitious battles between a fake Wilson-Philips and the real Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E., he had already seen what the network was becoming.
Ashes to ashes, funk to funky
we know Major Tom’s a junkie
strung out in heaven’s high
hitting an all-time low
-David Bowie’s “Ashes To Ashes”
Published October 15th, 2009 at 5:50 pm in Opinion with 1 comments
Tagged with MTV
Anyone remember this logo? It seems almost archaic, perhaps obsolete, but this original MTV: Music Television logo, with the yellow, blue, and, red, felt revolutionary. Maybe it was revolutionary, because up until then, music was listened to on records, 8-track tapes, cassettes, or reel-to-reels, at home. Car stereos made it possible to play 8-tracks and cassettes, but they were still heavy and clunky. Everyone looked forward to a band coming into town. You could find a radio anywhere and everywhere, and it was free music. Recording music on a cassette for free, without having to buy it as a store, felt like a risk, even if you knew damn well no one would ever knock on your door and confiscate your tapes.
MTV felt revolutionary because up until August 1, 1981, the only time you saw music was on something like Dance Fever, Solid Gold, or maybe on the Jerry Lewis Labor Day telethon. In truth, there were many options to watch artists perform live, but it was limited to three networks. Cable TV did exist, but back then Home Box Office seemed like the best thing in the world. A 16-hour cable network that ran movies which you didn’t have to go to the theater to see? Also, if you wanted to experience a movie or concert on TV in stereo, you had to call the cable company to get a converter that would transfer the stereophonic signal from your cable company and it could be broadcast through your parents stereo system. FAR OUT!
Then came 1981.
I was a music fan, and I became a devoted MTV junkie. It was different, it was cool to see all of this cool music (as limited as it may have been). For me, making the jump from AM to FM radio was a thrill, because I could hear music in the same audio quality as a record. Now to have my album cover artwork move around? People of a younger generation will never understand how exciting that was, because it’s a given, especially when music formats are appealing to a niche audience.
Let me get to the point of this. I read on RapReviews.com that MTV will no longer be using the words “Music” or “Television”, and will be changing their logo because they want to continue appealing to a much broader audience. For those of you who may not remember or know, MTV used to indeed mean “Music Television”, a cable network that actually played fourteen videos an hour. I am not joking: 14 videos an hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week: in stereo. Then they would broadcast concerts, some of which were exclusively shot for and by MTV. They used to run tour dates and news segments that were not done by Kurt Loder. There used to be shows like MTV’s Liner Notes and IRS’ The Cutting Edge. It felt like a college radio station, but you didn’t have to drive in a weird part of town to catch the frequency. MTV existed in the post-disco/post-punk era, although post-punk was new wave and it was all the same anyway. MTV existed in a world where if you were black, your record label just didn’t make music videos. Oh sure, artists like Cameo, Ashford & Simpson, Midnight Star, and Prince were making music videos, a few of which were as basic/cheap looking as their rock counterparts, but MTV had a rockist attitude and remained that way for 18 months. Yet it was still exciting to see artists like Adam & The Ants, Joe Jackson, Siouxsie & The Banshees, The Cure, Temple Tudor, and Total Cuelo come on the screen and make music. As a kid, they might have looked freaky, but it meant you could look like however you wanted. Maybe you fell in love with a member of Bananarama.
Anyway, MTV: Music Television became a lifestyle network early on, pushing music-related programming and yet it loved non-music programming. Remote Control, Half Hour Comedy Hour, House Of Style, and The Idiot Box may have been loosely connected with music, but it was the basis for much of what we see on cable and network TV today. MTV between 1986-1990 looked a lot like what Nickelodeon is. Once The Real World aired and became a success, MTV slowly pushed their music programming to the side. As it did this, more non-music programming hit the airwaves, to the point where it did not look or feel like MTV anymore. Even their music countdown shows like Total Request Live felt like trying out samples at a supermarket, but never having a full meal. MTV seemed to get more excited by the personality than the music, and they loved celebrating the celebrity. They could have pushed more music shows, and they did make a number of attempts in the 90’s, but they never seemed to stick. For many, MTV died when the last episode of YO! MTV Raps aired. Even though 120 Minutes and Alternative Nation pushed on for years, that golden era would soon come to an end around the time boy bands were growing in popularity, and MTV finally embraced hip-hop and R&B, two formats they primarily ignored throughout the 80’s.
I remember when people were calling it eMpTyV, or The Dead Kennedys doing songs like “MTV Get Off The Air”. Even Beck, a staple of MTV for years, was smart enough to write and record “MTV Makes Me Want To Smoke Crack”. With that said, I remember wanting to be an MTV VJ so bad. I loved radio, and MTV at the time felt like a few steps higher, because maybe it meant being able to explose my favorite music to an audience of millions, across the country. I wanted to have my own show, I don’t know what it would or could have been, but to be able to call up your favorite artists and say “hey, I’d like for you to come to the studio and perform. Would you?” I wanted to run MTV for a week so it would have the kind of programming I would want, so it would represent me and my interests. MTV ate itself and didn’t mind sipping its own constipation residue, eventhough they might interpret their change and progress as “going where the advertising money shines bright”.
It’s sad, but it would be silly to say that I miss a cable network that was once the source of much great music, incredible program, people who seemed to love music, people who cared about the music and listening experience. They were like the coolest DJ’s on radio, but right in front of your screen. Who wouldn’t want to grow up and want to meet people like them, or to meet them, or to become like them? Maybe as record stores started losing its popularity, and records were less about what sounds good but “how many units can we sell on a quarterly basis?”, MTV started to lose its appeal. As the internet came and brought more music fans from around the world, maybe MTV began to show its grey hair. As fans wanted to get closer to the music, MTV started to move away. It was like a drug, you wanted to get home after school so you could be the first to watch a WORLD PREMIERE VIDEO.
At one point, I think around the time of The Strokes, The Hives, and various other The bands, I realized how much I relied on the video content and I too started to move away. I found myself renewing my appreciation for music, and perhaps saying that is a bit old school, but I also got all of my music listening habits from observing my parents, and they are now my own. So to finally read about MTV putting a few nails into its own coffin, at least in name, is almost a downer, but not quite. Because you see, music existed before MTV, and it definitely existed before the television was invented. Despite the many trends that have come and gone, and the technology that continues to improve and upgrade itself, there’s still music out there waiting to be explored, and it will continue to be out there to explore with or without a network that used to show music an incredible amount of respect. It’s safe to say that MTV no longer needs the M, and why not be like other networks that have changed their name? MTV: what does it represent? It’s just branding, but the same can be said for what it used to represent. It’s just music, right?
Thank you MTV, for your original mission in your life. Now you look like a culture-less face staring into the void at nothing. To the artists and video directors who once made the network so great: keep on creating. Your contributions will never be forgotten.
Unless you haven’t had a television on for the last month, then you should know that next week will be a huge day for Beatles fans. September 9, 2009, a/k/a 9/9/09, b/k/a “the sacred day of the 9″, is the day that the long awaited Beatles remasters will be released on CD, as individual stereo discs, all of the stereo discs in one box, and a monaural box set for the audio junkies. What’s also coming out is The Beatles: Rock Band video game, where you are able to play along with The Beatles in animated form, with optional guitar, bass, and drum set to play along with. Deep Beatles fans also know that the video game contains digital multi-tracks of the various songs used in the game, which will make it possible to hear isolated bass, guitar, drums, and vocal tracks depending on how they were designed for the game. The CD’s have been put on the floor in some record stores in the U.S., while there were reports that a few of them have been sold at Wal-Mart’s before release day. Some people are also reporting that at a few Wal-Mart’s, some cashier’s will say that the title cannot be purchased until September 9th, but not all of them. In other words, the CD’s hit streets before the release date, so it shouldn’t come to anyone’s surprise that the remasters (and the video game) are now available online if you know where to look.
The question remains: what’s next for The Beatles in terms of releases? Critics had predicted long ago that people would lose interest in the compact disc by 2009, and as fans move over to the MP3 for convenience over quality, it seems there’s a bit of merit to what those critics were saying. If you are to look at what’s being released and reissued, 2009 has shown a mad rush to get out as much music as possible, almost as if record labels are trying to give one last hurrah to their catalogs before it gets purchased by Verizon or Google. To a casual fan, it probably seems like EMI is doing all it can to milk the Beatles teet until it truly dries up. Before the CD, EMI in the UK and Capitol in the U.S. compiled Beatles music in countless ways to sell it to the market, making it possible to hear the same songs again in a new package. The 1987 CD pressings pretty much made compilations like Love Songs, Rarities, and Reel Music pointless, and when thousands of Beatles fans were not satisfied with some of the mistakes found on those 1987 CD’s, they pushed for justice. Over the years, EMI would release their BBC recordings and also come up with the three-part Anthology, something that fans felt was a relief over the same ol’, but it also showed how much of an influence bootleggers had on what appeared on the comp.
Nonetheless, a casual fan will see the hairy Beatles on the front cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and go “again?” I’ve heard some of the stereo remasters, I’ll have a formal review later on, but I’ll briefly say that soundwise, The Beatles have not sounded any better. Mindblowing. However, what does the future have in store for Beatles fans? As with anything related to the group and their music, no one knows and no one is saying.
In terms of music, there has never been an official release of their Christmas album.
The album was made by Apple Records in 1970 exclusively for fan club members, who would receive a flexi-disc or cardboard record during the holiday season between 1963-1969. These records had not been heard by most fans until the Christmas album was counterfeited. In the digital era, the Christmas album has been packaged countless times, including outtakes from the recording sessions. The album is no longer a secret, as many radio stations around the world will play them alongside regular Christmas fare during the holiday season, but still no legitimate release. Considering how widely available the album is online, perhaps EMI/Apple feel no need to release it but I’m sure someone is saying “when the time is right”. Well, best to do it now so that Paul and Ringo will be able to talk about it for inclusion within liner notes.
Another side of The Beatles recordings that have been praised by fans are the acetates, where only a small handful were made for each member of the group, perhaps producer Sir George Martin, and close associates. Acetates, known to some as dub plates, were made when a song was recorded in the studio and one of The Beatles wanted to take the recording home for review. A rough mix of a song, the audio equivalent of a “rough sketch”, would be made into a one-off record and given to the intended person. What is of interest is the fact that most of these rough mixes were never released in this form, as they are unpolished and not produced, you’re hearing these songs in the most primitive form without the additions of strings, percussion, vocals, or other elements that may have been added during post-production. These acetates can go for $200+ when put on the market, which is a rare occasion. Existing acetates have also been bootlegged over the years, compiled into CD compilations so fans can hear songs develop from one take to the other. A very small handful are sourced from existing tapes, which would prove to be of value. A lot of times, the rough mix of a song was solely documented for an acetate, it was not saved on tape so the only way that mix can be heard in that fashion is by doing a vinyl transfer from the records.
Over the years, fans and Beatles scholars have claimed that there isn’t much left in the tape vaults to dig up, that everything that needs to be heard has been released. As time goes on, there seems to be stories of newly discovered tapes, adding to the already valuable cliche of recordings. Another option would be to create alternate mixes of the songs directly from the multi-tracks, similar to what they did with the Yellow Submarine soundtrack. Or a series of isolated tracks from the multi-tracks where Beatles fans can hear just the drums, or just the bass, or maybe the string section? By doing that, it would lead to an endless amount of remixes, mash-ups and variations, which essentially opens the music of The Beatles to anyone and everyone, which arguably would diminish the value of the catalog. Almost 50 years after Decca Records rejected The Beatles, their power has yet to fade, but that’s now. There will come a time when the glory of The Beatles will be nothing more than a 20th century memory, and maybe a conspiracy theory will surface, claiming that The Beatles never existed, that the songs that have moved generations to listen to music differently, look at the world with broader strokes, and perhaps pick up an instrument or sing for the first time, were put together by session musicians from Los Angeles while waiting for Frank Sinatra to come in. Yet with all of the books, videos, and of course the music that exists, it’s all there.
If anything, it will become one of the greatest phenomenons of the 20th century, how four goofy kids from Liverpool were able to inspire with something as simple as music. Even when there’s nothing left, people will continue to ask for more. Since there is more left, give the fans what they want.
Here are some other resources you can take a look at for more information on some of the topics discussed in this article:
BeatleSource.com, featuring descriptions and photos of the many Beatles acetates that have surfaced over the years, along with promos, photos, and much more.
Beatle.net by Bruce Spizer, an author, fan, and collector of The Beatles whose many books on the band are criticially acclaimed and are considered essential by other fans and collectors around the world.
I’ve been a Washington State resident for almost 25 years, which may shock a lot of you considering how much aloha I still have for Hawai’i. That’s eternal. However, the Pacific Northwest is very much home too, and I’ve yet to explore it in full.
When I moved to the Northwest at the age of 13, I already had a thirst for knowledge and information. Music was a top priority so I seeked what I could find and I found The Rocket, a now-defunct paper that I would eventually write for in the early 1990’s. In terms of news, I would eventually discover both of the Seattle dailies, the Post-Intelligencer and the The Seattle Times. For whatever reason, I preferred the news stories at the PI. When I had bigger goals of moving to Seattle or at least going to school to become a recording engineer, I had hoped to become a staff writer there since it would not only have been possible to share my talent with them, but more importantly to become a part of a team that seemed to love writing as well.
Unfortunately I have never been a Seattle resident, but always consider it a home away from home because it’s a big city (which I miss, as a resident of a small town), and you can go to any type of concert at any time of the evening. There was a time I could go to the U-District and visit every record store, and I did, from Tower to Cellophone Square to Second Time Around, those visits were for years mandatory stops.
Did I read the PI religiously, no, but when I did pick up the paper that was a part of the habit. When you want news, you “pick up the paper” and maybe in a few years that term will be outdated. My ritual for years has always been to pick up the Wednesday and Friday papers, as the Wednesday paper usually has some good recipes. Hell, a man can’t live by soup alone, so why not look and see what could be cool to make and good to eat? Friday is always for the What’s Happening section, not only to see concerts I’d like to go to but can’t because I’m too broke, but to read the articles and reviews on CD’s, movies, and books, not only from visitors but the Seattle community as well. When those sections were read, I would then look through the rest of the paper.
Today I picked up my copies of the last print edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, because as of today, the PI are no longer a “newspaper” but are choosing to have an online presence and nothing but. Call it economics, call it the threat of the net, call it a downfall, call it “too many outlets” but rather than make an attempt to save the paper and/or downscale, they have sacrified the heart of what the paper was all about. Great writers, great stories and interviews, and it was always done with quality. When there was opinions about politics, they smacked and smacked hard and a lot of times the public would want to smack back. I remember when a Walgreen’s was going to open in a neighborhood, and residents protested because the lights from the store were too bright and had requested for them to dim it, it might have seemed petty at first but it was about the community standing up to a corporation and saying no, we live here, respect us as well. Perhaps that can also be said about the community of writers that were at the PI.
With the demise of the paper, the PI had announced cutting their staff significantly, I believe one report said that their staff of 150 would be cut to 20, and they will now hire people who will be looking for quality stories on other websites and blogs. Now, this can look good for those in the blogosphere and if this is to become the trend across the country and the world, then bloggers will have to step up and take their love of writing seriously, and in turn will be given the same credentials as a respected journalist.
There was also the complaint that with one newspaper in town, how will that change the dynamic of reporting? One could always rely on the PI to report on an angle that the Times didn’t touch, and the Times could easily do the same, so what now? If anything, there’s always the underground/alternative/indie press, and perhaps they will take a small bit of the spotlight that the PI has left behind. Not everyone is going to read something that’s not mainstream, but it will give them a slightly louder voice than before. People know about The Stranger and The Seattle Weekly, and now there will be a bit more exploring, and both of them already have website with extensive stories and articles to choose from.
Fortunately, many of the writers at the PI will be moving on to new things, and many (including myself) will follow. But are there benefits to the demise of an incredible newspaper? Yes. For one, it means one less paper source, reducing what goes into the trash. Seattle is a city that looks forward to becoming more green and healthy as their Portland brethren, and this is a start. For two, we all know how tech-savvy Seattle has been for the last 25 years. When I moved here I knew what Nintendo was but it wasn’t NINTENDO just yet. Starbucks meant nothing to me, and what the hell was a Microsoft? I was still enjoying my Commodore VIC 20, which had a maximum memory of 5 K. Seattle was not the core of anything, I remember driving into Seattle from Eastern Washington on a day that had rain, hail, and sunshine. Seattle was a sleepy town where you could be in downtown at 3pm, yell, and still hear yourself. It was laid back, and you could probably eat some fish & chips without bumping into anyone. I remember when downtown had department stores that are no longer there, book stores that have moved, things look much more upscale now but back in the mid-1980’s it was very humble. But Seattle has progressed big time, and perhaps moving to an all-online route will make the Seattle PI look at how to keep the brand they’ve made while strengtening the power of online news. Many of us already get our news online immediately, so it will be an interesting transition for them.
I grew up with the traditional newspaper, and when I’m done, my stack of papers go into the recycle bin. That has become my information ritual, but the internet has taken that over because you can get everything now and before anyone else. The internet has hurt newspapers significantly, and the PI knows this, this is why there’s no newspaper. The hope is that by going online, they’ll find a way to make it through and make money with online ads. That’s there the money’s at, and in order to be a business you go where the money goes. I will be visiting Seattle PI even more, and if you’ve been a frequent visitor you know that there has been a tranisition for years, but now they don’t have to rely on going to print. I wish them success. I will now have to get to know the Seattle Times a bit more, both in print and online.
In the last Seattle PI newspaper, it was said that the reason people created newspapers was because it was the cheapest way to find accumulated news. A one year subscription to the PI in the late 1800’s was $4. The newspaper was about being economically feasible to offer something the public wanted and demanded. The public now wants, demands, and expects news on a regular basis, and they can now get it for free from not just one or two local sources, but from millions of sources around the world. You can access it at home, on your iPhone, at work, in your car, at a public library. So news will always remain news, but can it be reported and written properly. Someone said the demise of the PI will lead to “journalism without journalists”, which suggests that if people rely on websites and blogs, who is going to weed out quality reporting from selfish gloating? For now, we have the Seattle Times, The Stranger, Seattle Weekly, and The Seattle Courant, and people have put faith in the reporters they read on a regular basis. It’s about time people do that again and start looking for quality instead of quantity. Maybe people are so used to the barrage of information that everyone expects another website to be a filter for them. Then again, it’s time to fully embrace the information age we’re now in because if newspapers are going to become a thing of the past, let’s hope that news outlets of today and tomorrow will retain the same dedication that their forefathers once had.
Anyone who knows me also knows how I’m a huge fan of lists. It comes from a book I read as a pre-teen called The Book of Lists, and being a music junkie at an early age, it’s safe to say High Fidelity was made for me. I’ve made it a passion of mine to have my Best Of album lists at the end of each year, and even with a wealthy list in 2008, I didn’t bother posting my own list.
2008 was a healthy year for music, and as always, I’m still discovering music that I overlooked or missed. This is a list of the albums I really enjoyed listening to:
Aamir-Underwater Regions (Siq)
a faulty chromosome-as an ex-anorexic’s six sicks exit,… (self-released)
Christine Albert-Paris, Texafrance (Moonhouse)
Algernon-Familiar Espionage (Ears & Eyes)
Animal Farm-The Unknown (Focused Noise)
Atmosphere-When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold (Rhymesayers)
Cyro Baptista-Banquet Of The Spirits (Tzadik)
Bar Kokhba-Lucifer: Book of Angels Volume 10 (Tzadik)
Louie Bellson & Clark Terry-Louie & Clark Exposition 2 (Percussion Power)
Marco Benevento-Invisible Baby (Hyena)
Bing Ji Ling-June Degrees In December (To The Curb)
Blueprint-Blueprint vs. Funkadelic (Weightless)
Boo And Boo Too-s/t (Iron Paw)
Hussein Boon-Life Changes (Brown Baby)
Richard Boulger-Blues Twilight (b-1 music)
The Boxing Lesson-Wild Streaks & Windy Days (Big Bigness)
Braille-The IV Edition (HipHopIsMusic/Syntax/Koch)
theBREAX-When theBREAX Sold Out! (Eye Am)
The Breeders-Mountain Battles (4AD)
Jimmy Bruno-Maplewood Avenue (Affiliated Artists)
The Eric Byrd Trio-Brother Ray (Foxhaven)
The Camp-The Campaign (Commonwealth)
Paul Carr-Musically Yours: Remembering Joe Henderson (PCJ Music)
Felicia Carter-Feather/Step Lightly (Alberta)
Greg Chako-Everybody’s Got A Name (self-released)
Coolzey-Coolzey vs. DJ Przm (Public School)
Nikka Costa-Pebble To A Pearl (Stax/Concord)
Curumin-JapanPopShow (Quannum)
Peter Daily-Who is Peter Daily? (Sideshow Media)
Dani Girl-It’s About Time (Island Soul Entertainment)
Roger Davidson Trio-Bom Dia (Soundbrush)
The Diggs-ctrl-alt-del (Sugarspun)
DL Incognito-A Captured Moment In Time (Nine Planets Hip-Hop/Urbnet)
East Side Magic-s/t
John Ellis & Double Wide-Dance Like There’s No Tomorrow (Hyena)
Envelope-Shark Bolt (Weightless)
Fermented Spirits-Demystification (Pickled Beats)
Four Tet-Ringer (Domino)
The Grouch-Show You The World (Legendary Music)
Haj-Yoga At Home Vol. 1 (Dumhi)
Gunnar Halle/Jeppe Kjellberg/Steinar Nickelsen-Echidna (Ilk)
Bill Hart-Subject To Change (self-released)
Herd Of Mers-Aurora Caught Napping (it’s Twilight Time)
Hot In Pursuit-s/t (self-released)
Howlin Rain-Magnificent Fiend (Birdman/american recordings)
Hunger Pains-Dirty Aloha (Siq)
I Heart Lung-Interoceans (Asthmatic Kitty)
Improvvirussoundexperience-Supercoclea For New Apes (Setola di Maiale)
Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey-Lil’ Tae Rides Again (Hyena)
Joe Dub-Pooretry (Asita)
The David Joel Quartet-Spiral Sky (Turning Point)
Kelpe-Ex-Aquarium (D.C. Recordings)
Kid Dakota-A Winner’s Shadow (Speakerphone/Graveface)
K-The-I???-Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow (Mush)
Søren Kjærgaard-Optics (Ilk Music)
Piers Lawrence Quartet-Stolen Moments (Jazz Net Media)
Lazy Magnet-He Sought For That Magic By Which All Glory And Glamour Of Mystic Chivalry Were Made To Shine or Is Music Even Good (Corleone)
Eliot Lipp-The Outside (Mush)
Lorna Doom-The Diabolical EP (Corleone)
Gary Louris-Vagabonds (Rykodisc)
Pete Malinverni-Invisible Cities (Reservoir Music)
M*anifest-Manifestations (self-released)
Menahan Street Band-Make The Road By Walking (Dunham/Daptone)
Mochipet-Microphone Pet (Daly City)
mr. Gnome-Deliver This Creature (El Marko)
Mr. Meeble-Never Trust The Chinese (Absolute Motion)
Doug Munro-Big Bossa Nova 2.0 (Chase Music Group)
Nights Wounds-Allergic To Heat (Corleone)
No Doctors-Origin & Tectonics (self-released)
Noyeek The Grizzly Bear-Face Crunch (self-released)
The OaKs-Songs For Waiting (self-released)
O! The Joy’s Zen Mode (Distile)
Obsidian Blue-Sound Design (self released)
Mauro Orselli-Sulle Tracce Di Ned (Studio V38)
Lizzy Parks-Raise The Roof (Tru-Thoughts)
Grant Peeples-It’s Later Than You Think (self-released)
The Pharmacy-Choose Yr Own Adventure (Don’t Stop Believin’)
Pleasureboaters-¡Gross! (Don’t Stop Believin’)
Power Struggle-Hearts & Minds (self-released)
Nancy Priddy-Christina’s Carousel (Monte’s Moolah Music)
Bill Prouten-Low-down, No-good… (self-released)
Psapp-The Camel’s Back (Domino)
The Raconteurs-Consolers Of The Lonely (Warner Bros.)
Roommate-We Were Enchanted (Plug Research)
Thom Rotella 4-Tet-Out Of The Blues (self-released)
S&S (Stephen Inglis and pianist Shawn Livingson Moseley)-Na Po Makole: The Night Rainbows (‘Aumakua)
Felipe Salles-South American Suite (Curare)
The Gus Spenos Quartet-Swing Theory (self-released)
Colin Stetson-New History Warfare Vol. 1 (Aagoo)
Dave Stryker-Strike Up The Band (Steeplechase)
Swamp Cabbage-Squeal (Zoho Roots)
Tangria Jazz Group-s/t (self-released)
John Tchicai/Jonas Müller/Nikolaj Munch-Hansen/Kresten Osgood-Coltrane In Spring (Ilk)
tREBLEFREE-The Return Of The Dirty Cymbals (mitc.)
Vincent Black Shadow-More Deeper (Heartbreakbeat)
Walter “Wolfman” Washington-Doin’ The Funky Thing (Zoho)
We Were The States-Believe The Thieves (Chicken Ranch)
Why?-Alopecia (Anticon)
Sam Yahel-Jazz Side Of The Moon: The Music Of Pink Floyd (Chesky)
Lindsey Yung-Opal Essence (self-released)
John Zorn-The Dreamers (Tzadik)
For the longest time I had a certain album on the top, and then within a two months time a new album would come out and battle it out in my mind. But by October of November, it was obvious for me as to what would be on the top.
Hands up, who saw the goofy ass performance of Stevie Wonder and The Jonas Brothers? That, my friends, was pure ass.
But how about the rest of last night’s Grammy Awards? I only watched the first 45 minutes before I couldn’t take it, fortunately I could rely on the DVR the next morning. But for the first 45 minutes, you did have a decent performance by U2:
I read a comment somewhere which asked why did the best performances happen in the last hour, when most people are too tired to watch or had given up? The first two hours were dreck.
Was it awe inspiring? The performances of Radiohead, Sugarland & Adele, and Jennifer Hudson were really good, and we all know Justin Timberlake can sing. I did like Paul McCartney with drummer Dave Grohl sitting in, but the awards themselves seemed boring and almost predictable. I did hate the fact that there were a hell of a lot of actors up there, and as someone said elsewhere, they should have been replaced by artists who could have had time to sing.
While Radiohead did not win Album Of The Year, they did get the “Best Alternative Album” award. Here are some other honors that were given away before the televised ceremonies began:
Best Contemporary Jazz Album: Randy Brecker-Randy In Brasil (MAMA)
Best Reggae Album: Burning Spear-Jah Is Real (Burning Music Production)
Best Musical Album For Children: They Might Be Giants-Here Come The 123s (Disney Sound)
Best Recording Package: Death Magnetic, Bruce Duckworth, Sarah Moffat & David Turner, art directors (Metallica)
Best Boxed Or Special Limited Edition Package: In Rainbows, Stanley Donwood, Mel Maxwell & Christiaan Munro, art directors (Radiohead)
Best Album Notes: Kind Of Blue: 50th Anniversary Collector’s Edition, Francis Davis, album notes writer (Miles Davis)
Best Historical Album: Art Of Field Recording Volume I: Fifty Years Of Traditional American Music Documented By Art Rosenbaum, Steven Lance Ledbetter & Art Rosenbaum, compilation producers; Michael Graves, mastering engineer (Various Artists)
Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical: Consolers Of The Lonely, Joe Chiccarelli, Vance Powell & Jack White III, engineers (The Raconteurs)
Producer Of The Year, Non-Classical: Rick Rubin (Dangermouse and will.i.am were also nominated in this category)
Best Surround Sound Album: Mussorgsky: Pictures At An Exhibition; Night On Bald Mountain; Prelude To Khovanshchina, Michael Bishop, surround mix engineer; Michael Bishop, surround mastering engineer; Robert Woods, surround producer (Paavo Järvi & Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra)
Best Short Form Music Video: “Pork And Beans”, Weezer; Matthew Cullen, video director; Bernard Rahill, video producer
Congratulations to all of the winners, and let’s spruce it up for 2010.
Welcome to The Run-Off Groove #229. I am John Book, and we’re a few days away from the Super Bowl. Buy those chicken wings, there’s a shortage, or just buy some decent Boca burgers with some mushrooms. Fresh!
If you are new to this column, let me tell you a little about things here. Each review features links to the artist’s home page or MySpace page, so if you want to hear them, you can do so easily. Links are also provided to make a vinyl, CD, or digital purchase, since your local mall probably doesn’t have most of these titles. If you would like to buy the compact disc, click the icon that looks like this:
If you wish to make a digital MP3 purchase, you can click the digital player icon that looks like this:
Vinyl junkies, you are in luck too:
Also please consider clicking some of the links under the “Music and more” category to the right, which will help keep this website afloat.
Now, the column.
When going into a new column, I always make the CD’s I receive a first priority. Sometimes I receive new albums through digital files. Other times I’ll go through the intrawebs and come across something I’m curious about, and if I like it, I’ll tell someone. It doesn’t happen often, but I came across an album recently and I was immediately blown away by what I heard, moving me to play it again. Then again. The next day, and the next. Yes, also the next day. I hadn’t heard of them before, and it makes me wish I did but now I can catch up.
The album I speak of is by a group called Indigo Jam Unit, and keep in mind when I found this, I had no idea who it was or where they were from, but I knew it was jazz. Jazz can be anything and everything, but when it affects you within the first five seconds, you can sense that it’s going to be something quite brilliant. These guys are dedicated into creating and keeping a groove, making hot bebop and hard bop that’s done with the passion of hip-hop’s insistence on endless loops, to where it works like a mantra. Within that trance, a piano works its way by speaking to the rest of the musicians, and helps speak for everyone. Then the bass diverts and takes the off ramp, only to jump back on and off for the remainder of the destination. Jazz fans will love how tight their musicianship is. In the track “Rumble” it sounds like something you’d expect on a Dave Brubeck with the same kind of drive Brueck and his bands always had, complete with a slight Latin feel. All of the musicians are at one with each other, but by the end of the song the actual rumble begins, where it sounds like heavy traffic going into a tunnel and filling up to where you think no one can escape. The heat increases, and something is about to blow up, and it does. Indigo Jam Unit owes a lot to the jazz of the 50’s and 60’s, but combine that with the acid jazz funk of the late 60’s/early 70’s with a small but not-so-obvious nod to hip-hop, and I can’t get enough of it.
Who are they? Indigo Jam Unit are a quartet from Japan who have been around for a few years, and Pirates is their fourth album. Take the mentality of Jazzanova and Jaga Jazzist, remove the electronic tendencies and put them in Soulive, Medeski, Martin & Wood, and have them hang around Breakestra for a bit. Now let them reincarnate themselves as the jazz musicians they admire. While Indigo Jam Unit sounds like none of them specifically, when you hear their music you’ll understand the references. The music is perfect for an intense Sunday morning listen, but you can’t help but dance to the healthy grooves found in “Giant Baby”, it’s the perfect ass shaking music to play on a normal day of rest, or any day/week/month/year. The 7/4 time signature of “Arctic Circle” is the perfect chillout song after a long night at the club, but it may leave you wanting more satisfaction. If this is what the new movement of jazz in Japan is like, I want to move there right now.
The movie has been out for a few weeks, it has done fairly well and as used to be the tradition, if you loved the movie, you’d opt for the soundtrack. In this case, the soundtrack to Notorious is an interesting one, for it of course honors the life and music of the late but great Biggie Smalls, and before I review this CD, has anyone noticed that with the release of this movie, the mainstream media is calling him Biggie? When he released his first album, or really after the release of “Juicy”, he had always been The Notorious B.I.G. but longtime fans called him Biggie or Big. I’m curious as to why the shift.
Anyway, the soundtrack. Most of it is Biggie tracks of course, and it does feature most of his greatest hits: “Juicy”, “Warning”, “One More Chance/Stay With Me”, and “Hypnotize”, along wth key album tracks and material that came to be after his death. Sadly no “Big Poppa”, no sign of Super Cat’s Bad Boy remix of “Dolly My Baby”, or even the remix to Craig Mack’s “Flava In Your Ear, but we do get the classic “Party & Bullshit” from the Who’s The Man soundtrack when it was released under the name BIG. Early demos for “Microphone Murderer”, “Love No Ho”, and “Guaranteed Raw” is the perfect look at the grimey hip-hop of the early 90’s, when the East became hungry as the West dominated the charts, and it was people like Biggie who said “I don’t fuck a fuck”, and we’re all thankful for it.
Unfortunately, the soundtrack is held back by a song that should not have ever been released, yet thought of. There’s a new take of “One More Chance/Stay With Me”, but in this case the mix is called “One More Chance/The Legacy (Remix)”, and it features Biggie’s son, CJ Wallace. His role in the song is to do some of the lines that his father did, so Biggie and CJ pass the mic to each other metaphorically. The idea may have worked for Nat King Cole and Natalie Cole, but to hear a 12 year old rap in a song where his father speaks about how girls urinate when they see him, and how he’ll tell their boyfriends to masturbate as he pleases the ladies by having rough sex, then he penetrates deeply until she climaxes. It doesn’t matter if they are Native American, he will step up in their homes and make her orgasm. This is not what a 12 year old needs to hear from their father, and the idea that someone thought it was a cute idea shows extremely bad taste.
I doubt they’ll release a second pressing of the album to remove the song, but without it, it’s a nice retrospective of Biggie’s work and maybe a formal introduction to those who were introduced to his music for the first time through the movie.
(explicit version) (clean version)
E Reece is back with a brand new album, and this time he’s backed by Core Elements, a genuine band playing genuine music for a genuine MC.
l.i.s.n. 2 this live.in.studio (Elevated Mental) is the next album in his catalog following 2007’s The New Breed, and anyone who enjoyed his flows and ways of writing and rhyming will find a lot to grasp onto with this new one, with the spontaneity of having a live band behind you. “Everything”, a song that celebrates all that is hip-hop from its origins to what it is and was, will definitely be a song that will move crowds to destroy the venue they’re at. The guy likes to party but they’re not party rhymes per-se, more like “around the block” rhymes where it feels like comfort food due to its familiarity, but it’s still fresh, new, exciting and inviting.
Have a band that know how to play and fill in all of the pockets at the appropriate moments, and you have a recipe for success. Now let’s hope he’ll knock down a few heads, enough for them to want to hea rmore from what he has to offer in the future.
Krohme has one of those laid back voices that sound like he would have been perfect in Channel Live or doing some pass the mic action with Big Daddy Kane. On The Onset Of Change (Godsendant) the album begins with a recording of President Barack Obama speaking to the world, and then Krohme himself offers up “Yes”, where he (like Jay-Z is honored to say that his/our president is black. Krohme is socially and poltically aware, and that in itself is nice to hear over someone who may talk the talk but isn’t fully aware of certain situations. Tracks like “Sound Off (Riot)” sounds like something from the Paris catalog while “Live The Dream” could have been done by a Relativity-era Common, or even Brand Nubian. Krohme tells his listeners to improve their situations and become more aware of what’s going on because “yes we can, so we did/accomplish, succeed, now feed the seeds”. It feels like hip-hop circa 1993 when people were inspired by the changes hoped for by President Bill Clinton. I think with Obama, the inspiration for change seems more real for others because it’s change that feels legitimate, and not just another false promise. Krohme represents the movement in the country today, and if someone were to ask me in ten years how the country felt, I would suggest this EP as a hint of what was experienced by the people.
(free MP3 EP download)
Caroline Peyton is a singer/songwriter who should have received a lot of attention in the 1970’s for her music, and perhaps if things had moved to where she was heard and accepted by the major labels, she would be a huge influence on many of today’s singer/songwriters, male or female. For the most part she is fairly obscure but anyone who has ever dug for private press records knows that these are the things that make those long days of digging worth it. In this case, Caroline Peyton and the band that backed her up did audition for Clive Davis when he was the head of Columbia Records, but due to a few circumstances (which you can read in the liner notes), he passed. However, someone told Peyton herself that if she ever felt a need to get rid of the band, she could be huge. So is the story of the give-and-take music industry, and so is the partial story of Caroline Peyton, who The Numero Group are focusing on with the release of two, long out of print albums also featuring a few EP’s she released along the way.
The story of Peyton begins in Bloomington, Indiana, the home of John Mellencamp although while the former Mr. Cougar was still listening to and enjoying music on the radio and his phonograph, Peyton was hard at work making music along with her companion, Mark Bingham. The music they created together ended up becoming the Mock Up (Asterisk/The Numero Group) album, featuring music performed by the two along with Peyton being backed by Bingham and a full band. The music sounds like something you might hear on a Carole King or Judy Collins album where you feel the earthiness and roots of these songs, a bit closer to the source since you’re hearing it from the person who wrote it, feeling the experiences and perhaps remembering when you too felt like that. Songs like “Engram”, “Tuna”, “Pull”, and “The Sky In Japan Is Always Close To You” are life experience songs, and they fit in perfectly with what was going on at the time in the United States, the idea that love and isolation could lead you to frustration if you don’t find the definition of freedom you’re looking for. The wildest (and for me unexpected) moment of the album happens in track #3, “Don Beggs”. Peyton starts singing a bit operatic and comes off like Lene Lovich and Nina Hagen, years before punk and new wave existed. It’s a bold move to sing these tentative folk flavored songs and splash it with a slight freakish act, but it only helps to expand the perception of what she may have been as an artist.
If Mock Up captures 1971/1972 beautifully, the same can be said for 1977 Intution (Asterisk/The Numero Group) . In comparison, this is a very different album from Mock Up as it’s more electric, more bluesy, and it also shows the rise in popularity of the hybrid of rock and country. The thing that amazes me about hearing this album is that Peyton’s voice is ever so soulful, easily comparable to everyone from Lydia Pense to Linda Ronstadt, and unlike the open-eyed wonder of Mock Up, you hear a sense of experience, pain, sorrow, and struggle, even as she bathes herself in the disco light with a track like “Party Line”. “Still With You” could have fit in easily on an Allman Brothers Band or Dickey Betts Band album, while “Light-Years” could have sparked the Yacht Rock movement a few years earlier than normal (there’s a slight “Just The Way You Are” tinge to it too, complete with saxophone solo.)
Upon hearing this, one senses that this is an album that could have been huge in its time, and one can only imagine if this received the same kind of airplay that Tapestry, Rumours, or Back In The U.S.A. did. It has everything that makes it the perfect album: great songs, great instrumentation, produced and mixed beautifully, complimented by a voice that becomes endearing, a voice you’d like to take home to mom. If I had a way to program oldies radio, albums like these would be played along with the mainstream so music fans can discover a talent that did not get the recognition it deserved. Don’t take my word for it, the albums are back in print, pick them up immediately.
He was an MC called Jake The Snake, but perhaps being aware of the threat of trademark infringement, he decided to shorten his moniker and call himself simply J The S.
Rooted in the West Indies, raised in Massachusetts, but now calling NYC home, J The S has been working hard in perfecting his style of rhyming, and as he gets into moving into the next phase of his career, he has put out an album for free with the help of Mr. Peter Parker and the incredible DJ Warrior for a mix-CD type situation called My Will (self-released).
The CD has the feel of a mix tape in that the DJ’s are talking over sections of each track, and for me it can be unnecessary especially when you as a rapper are trying to impress listeners with what you’re about, not established DJ’s, but that’s a minor complaint. One thing I will not complain about is his presence on the mic, or what he is able to communicate through his music. He will be the first to call his style of music “blacktop hip-hop”, and it’s very much down to the earth, of the streets, of the neighborhood, of the now and you hear the sound of today, complete with sped up samples, well recorded vocals, and production that for the most part is quite good. J The S is not a bullshit rapper, he gets to the point and then goes deeper, making sure his lyrics are embedded in your consciousness as he talks about delivering the “new slang” and “coming up fresh” while talking about one of the problems of the world: “Oil”. Yes, the man is effective in touching on the headlines and does it without sounding like he’s piggybacking on someone else’s schtick. It’s a message song with a chorus that has the T-Pain touch (courtesy of The Greater Good), and while he could build his career off of message songs alone, he lets people know throughout the rest of the CD that he’s out for the kill and if he wants to have fun, he’ll have fun every now and then. However, we live in a different world and My Will is a statement about the conditions we live in today. J The S states this is a mere tease for what he’s about to offer with his forthcoming full length, The Last Days.
If there’s only one problem with this mix CD, it’s that some of the songs do not sound like they were mixed or mastered properly, with a small handful of tracks lacking the boom and bass that’s sorely needed. Fortunately the album is available as a free download, so one hopes when the proper album is released, the boom will pound as deep as the intelligencia stored in his cranium.
(free MP3 album download)
…AND NOW, THE HAWAIIAN MUSIC CORNER Cityside are a Jawaiian band from Honolulu who are brand new to the scene, and you know how I am with Jawaiian music: either it’s going to be decent, or it’s going to be a huge epic fail, and in this case, Welcome To The Cityside (DDD) is far from a failure.
When you look at the three guys that are Cityside, they look like they’d be down with hip-hop, and they might be, they might hang out at A’ala Park doing freestyles or busting moves at the Hongwanji, I don’t know. Instead, what these three have is the proper sensibilities to combine reggae music, pop accessibility, and island style living to become a success. They’re not as abrasive as New Zealand’s Katchafire but what they have are quality songs that will appeal to people of all ages, but doesn’t sound like 5th grade notebook puppy love scribbles. What will impress listeners at first are the vocals of D. Kekoa Tsukiyama, who has a great voice and it will definitely take him far. Bassist Kekoa Onaga and ‘ukulele man Devin Yamada (who also plays keyboards and percussion) handle background vocal duties, and together they sound like the classic Jawaiian styles of Three Plus and early Ka’au Crater Boys.
I think what made me impressed to hear more is hearing them branch out to do other styles, showing how it’s perfectly okay to bring in other influences. There are hints of pop, rock, and soul coming through, and it’s not just reggae-fied versions of pop, rock, and soul, it’s successful attempts at simply playing and jamming the music they listen to on a regular basis, and I hope fans will welcome that as a sign for other Hawaiian bands to open up their songbooks. While “Make You Mine” will no doubt gain a lot of airplay with the interpolation of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’”, the rest of the album should bring them to a wider audience, especially with songs like “Watchin’ You”, “Back To The Days”, and “Girl I”. There’s a lot of love songs too, because people in Hawai’i love to love and fall in love, but it’s not stereotypical fluff. Their songs could easily help them crossover to mainland and international audiences, with reggae being their core but not the sole reason for their existence. If these guys keep at it and dedicate themselves to their music for the next few years, they could be huge. I hope they take on the festival circuit this year so they are able to bring their music to a wider audience.
That’s it for this week’s Run-Off Groove. If you have any new music, DVD’s, books, or hot sauce, please contact me through my MySpace page and I’ll pass along my contact address. In the past I have generally frowned over receiving digital files, but I will accept them on a case by case basic. I still prefer hard copy as I want to hear the quality of the recording (which is important to me), but digital files are fine.
History in the making, and it was an incredible moment. A lot of people have something to day about the events of today, and I’d like to share mine.
I was listening to something on NPR this morning where the commentator said he was speaking to a few teenagers and they feel that because Barack Obama is now the 44th President of the United States of America, racism will no longer exist. It sounds naive at most, but I go back to when I grew up in Honolulu, living in a place that to me seemed perfect even though my parents sometimes went out of their way to “talk stink” about certain “other” people. It struck me as odd since both my mom and dad are mixed, but as the old song by Keola & Kapono Beamer, “Mr. Sun Cho Lee”, states, it is about tolerance, and through tolerance a bit of understanding so that we can all live in the same place. I grew up hearing all of this but coming up with my own opinions, and it was great to live in a place where I associated myself with friends like Traya, Bernaldes, Estrada, Chow, Chang, Bollig, Oki, Matsumoto, Kinimaka, Shimooka (in case any of you are curious, I am indeed talking about surfer John Shimooka, who was a grade above me when we attended Royal Elementary), Pimentel, Domingo, Savea, Mauga, Ramirez, Horio, Hong, and Ball. It was never a major issue, and a lot of us who were mixed never made it an emphasis to talk about being “mixed” because that was an automatic part of who we were/are. We talked about “the chinese guy” or “the girl who is hapa”, made fun of each other in a way that was indeed childish. You know, “your dad Filipino, he must work for city & county, right?” or “your mom is haole, I can tell because you half ugly”, or “your dad is Samoan, I hope he doesn’t pound you like he pounds your mom”, the stereotypes are out in the open and while it may seem funny at first, you go out of your way to learn and understand cultures, discover the truths and falsehoods, and then slowly get rid of what you may have heard at home.
When my mom moved my sister I to the mainland, it was truly a culture shock. The ways I learned, my comfort zone, seemed to erode immediately when I became the target of other people’s stereotypes. When I was enrolled in a middle school, they looked at my papers and they said that I should not have levels this high, that I can’t be *that smart* and they put me down two levels on every subject. I felt like an alien, and at that moment I felt “why not me, why can’t I be that smart?” when I was? Perhaps they felt no one from Hawai’i could be intelligent, and I was immediately hit with my first dose of racism. I would slowly put up bricks to my personal wall, and I became more adamant about who I was, where I came from, and what I want to do. I never had to fight or defend my own mind as I did when I became a resident of the contintental United States, and it was as if I was “different” just because that’s what others thought of me. I think I had to work four times as much as the next man, and I then became a part of the fabric of a country where there were millions of others just like me. The different is that I did not come from a different country, I am from the Aloha State. I am Hawaiian/Chinese/Portuguese/Filipino/German/Austrian, and I represent those who came before me. I never forget those who paved the way, and yet I read countless articles, seen many movies and documentaries about a country that continues to forget the old and pave way for the new, because new is better.
Welcome President Barack Obama.
A lot of people are taking to him because it feels that he is “one of us”. He is the common man who wants to help the people, and everyone wants to find something in him that we can take to heart. People put avatars on online forums or wear My President Is Black T-shirts with pride. Some will joke and make up shirts that say My President Is Also White, and yet that concept, of someone being of two different ethnicities, two different worlds, scares people. Obama has been a people person, but people are quick to talk about all of his flaws, even though as I write this he has been president for two hours and nine minutes. People look at his middle name and think “oh, he is the ultimate anti-Christ and he will force all Americans to believe in Allah?” or “will he open us up to terrorists?” You know there’s someone out there right now going “will Burger King now be called Burger Kaing, will McDonald’s be changed to Micky D’s?”, people will reach to the lowest levels of their capacity and dig up crap in order to smell their own richness.
Obama represents all of the United States, but as a man he represents his black side. He represents his white heritage. Yet I read somewhere that people are irked because while he calls himself black, he is “not black enough” because he was born and raised in Hawai’i, had a different mentality and upbringing, and according to a recent newspiece on The Today Show, does not have the same credibility as rapper 50 Cent. It’s almost as if one has to fit the established stereotypes in order to be considered what you think you are, and when you’re not, you’re forever an outsider.
But you know what? We now have an outsider not only looking in, but working within. He brings his knowledge, expertise, and hard work ethic into The White House, and that truly scares people. People like to talk shit about Hawai’i since it has been reduced lately to nothing more than a tourist resort, but it’s a place that is much more than that. It is a place rich in history, rich in its customs, rich in its people. It is the place that shaped President Obama in some form, a man that doesn’t mind talking about his love of Spam musubi, Zippy’s or Rainbow Drive-Inn, and may introduce people in his cabinet to the wonders of manapua, pork hash, and malasadas with his love of churros, BBQ, and coffee. Yes my friends, we have a president that loves good food.
A part of what I grew up with, a part of what my parents passed on to me with their hanabata days stories, I clearly see and feel with our new president. He has a charm, a smile, and a sense of determination and confidence which says “I’d rather work together with you than against you’, which goes back to playing Wall To Wall in the playground when you knew of yourself, knew of your friends, and simply stated “the more the merrier”. Maybe Hawaiians still have the small town mentality, where things are more intimate, more about family and friends, more about being together, wanting more when you don’t have as much as you think you want (or deserve). You spread that out to the rest of the world, and it’s almost revolutionary. There’s a bit of that in what Obama wants to achieve, and those who have never experienced it have no idea what it is, that “Obama Magic” people seem to love. Hawai’i had a part in molding the man he is today.
As someone who has been in support of alternative energy, I hope he will be able to move people to think, live, and work differently. One doesn’t have to be a part of the assembly line, a part of the template, or come from a cookie cutter to live and exist. You can be an individual and be who you are because this is who you are. I feel he is giving a lot of people hope again, and I hope that he will be effective enough for another four years come 2012. Will the country change? It has to change in some way, and I think the actions of the previous regime had led the people to want to seek and advocate change, we’re on that path. Now we move one step forward.
I say all of these things after hearing President Obama’s incredible speech, I was moved almost to tears to see someone who is ready to work for the people. He has a lot ahead of him, but I hope all of us in the United States will be moved to work towards a better country, and a better world.
