This Is Book’s Music

It didn’t air live, but the folks behind the @AOTS account at Twitter were looking to utilize their Twitter wall on air for the G4 show, Attack Of The Show, and asked for people to send in a few messages before they went to air. Any messages that were used, they’d take a photo and use it. Mine made it.

This footage of Bob Marley & The Wailers was filmed on June 17, 1980 in Stockholm, Sweden by a man who was able to bring his 8mm silent (i.e. no audio) film camera and bring it into shows. He did this apparently from 1976-1980 and has had these reels of film in his possession for years. He decided to give it to a friend so that he could convert it to digital. This is one of those clips. Keep in mind that this was shot by a fan with an 8mm camera, so it’s a bit shakey as many “home films” were. Not much film has been seen of Marley’s last year, especially performance footage.

I found out about this through a post on the Steve Hoffman music board. If you’d like to see some of the other films, click the user name aneurhythms on the right side of the YouTube screen. They’re of the hard rock variety, but back then Marley did have a following with rock audiences.

The Never Better album by P.O.S. has pushed him to the forefront of something created by a publicist to make it sound effective. But you don’t want that, right? What you want to know is “WHY IN THE WORLD ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT MY FAVORITE RAPPER, P.O.S.?” I’ll tell you.

Because of the album, P.O.S. is about to hit the road with 40-dates on what he’s calling the Every Never Is Now Tour For the first half of the tour, Grieves will join him while the second half will feature Astronautalis. Meanwhile, Dessa will be with P.O.S. for the entire tour. She will be touring in support of her album, A Badly Broken Code, due out January 19th on Doomtree RecordsD. Here are the confirmed dates:

w/ Dessa and Grieves
January 29th First Avenue Minneapolis, Minnesota
February 2nd Jackpot Saloon Lawrence, Kansas
February 4th Black Sheep Colorado Springs, Colorado
Febraury 5th The Marquis Theatre Denver, Colorado
February 6th Kilby Court Salt Lake City, Utah
February 7th Urban Lounge Salk Lake City, Utah
Febraury 8th Neurolux Boise, Idaho
Febraury 9th Badlander Missoula, Montana
February 11th The Biltmore Cabaret Vancouver, Canada
February 12th Nectar Lounge Seattle, Washington
February 13th Berbati’s Pan Portland, Oregon
February 14th The WOW Hall Eugene, Oregon
February 16th Tonic Lounge Reno, Nevada
February 18th Bottom Of The Hill San Francisco, California
February 19th Troubadour Los Angeles, California
February 20th The Loft San Diego, California
February 21st Glass House Pomona, California
February 22nd Chasers Nightclub Scottsdale, Arizona
February 23rd Club Congress Tucson, Arizona
February 24th The Launchpad Albuquerque, New Mexico
February 26th Red 7 Austin, Texas
February 27th Hailey’s Denton, Texas

w/ Dessa and Astronautalis
February 28th The Parish Room New Orleans, Louisiana
March 2nd Club Downunder Tallahassee, Florida
March 3rd Backbooth Orlando, Florida
March 4th Masquerade Atlanta, Georgia
March 5th Local 506 Chapel Hill, North Carolina
March 6th DC9 Washington DC
March 7th First Unitarian Church Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
March 9th Bowery Ballroom New York, New York
March 10th Middle East Cambridge, Massachusetts
March 11th Space Portland, Maine
March 12th Higher Ground Burlington, Vermont
March 13th Il Motore Montreal, Quebec
March 14th Sneaky Dee’s Toronto, Ontario
March 16th The Crofoot Pontiac, Michigan
March 17th The Grog Shop Cleveland Heights, Ohio
March 18th The Bottom Lounge Chicago, Illinois
March 19th High Noon Saloon Madison, Wisconsin
March 20th Turner Hall Ballroom Milwaukee, Wisconsin
March 21st Pizza Luce Duluth, Minnesota

Last night, you may have had a chance to see Clipse perform with The Roots as their back-up band on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. If not, here’s the performance.

On Fallon, whenever possible, a musical artists will perform an extra song that is recorded exclusively for online audiences. Here’s that performance, with the song that put Clipse on the map.

You may know of Athletic Mic League, and you may know the song “RU???” but did you know they made a video for it? The video had remained unreleased for years, but now it’s being presented for all to see. The song is from their 2004 album Jungle Gym Jungle.

Athletic Mic League – RU??? from A-Side Worldwide on Vimeo.

If you love intense drawings and artwork, but aren’t familiar with Andrew Schoultz, get familiar. Schoultz recently worked on Scion‘s Installation 5 Art Tour, and how his origins in graffiti and underground comic got him to where he feel he’s at today, and where he hopes to be. Tattoos cannot hide a farmer tan, but the quality of his own art overshadows that small fact.

Andrew Schoultz Interview from Scion ART on Vimeo.

Brother Ali will be backed by The Roots tonight on NBC’s Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, so stay up tonight or set up your recorders, it should be very good.

BTW – if there’s a slight chance that Fallon’s people are reading this, in reference to your Nintendo NES products on the website, may I present to you a custom built NES guitar.

Something I enjoy about hearing certain albums by bands is being floored, or feeling like I’ve been brutally attacked by sound, wondering how could this be missing from my life for so long. I’ve never heard of them until now, but now I will become a devoted follower of a 1-man/1-woman powerhouse known as Lullabye Arkestra. When I first heard their music, I thought they were a four piece, and that their name was somewhat yin yang in nature. You know, a “lullabye” is soft and delicate, an “orchestra” is big, bold, and loud, although they spell it “Arkestra”, which brought to mind Sun Ra and his intergalactic adventures in Earth-bound sounds. That left me wondering what this could sound like.

I’m playing the album, and keep in mind I had no idea what they looked like or who made up this group. I heard a man and woman alternate vocals in each song, occasionally uniting in some tracks. What I hear are heavy, distorted bursts of metal and hardcore punk, I’m hearing shades of L7, Monster Magnet, Christ On A Crutch, and St. Vitus. The guitars are on the low-end, but as I move into the album a bit deeper, I realize “is this album just all bass guitar?”, with loud drums Some of these songs sound like ruthless battle cries, other sounds sound like having a kegger in hell. This isn’t Freedom Rock, this is more like extra-secluded rock not meant for outsiders, and everyone who is inside will have an incredible time. They go back and forth betweeen playing incredibly heavy, but aren’t around playing willy-nilly solos. Instead they prefer to do it punk rock style by playing a song, playing mindlessly, and then moving to the next track. One builds up a lot of energy during a song, only for the next one to start immediately so by the end of the album, you have to release that energy somehow.

It wasn’t until after listening to this album, when I was to look for an album cover scan, did I realize that Lullabye Arkestra are a duo, in this case vocalist/bassist Kat Taylor-Small and vocalist/drummer Justin Small. They are small but basic in the same sense that Jucifer are a 2-piece, but if you love Jucifer slothing around in their rich stoner metal gumbo, Lullabye Arkestra come off like the prankster sibling, the one with an itchy ass but there’s no wall corner to scratch out the relief. At the end of “This Is A Storm, Kat lets out one of the most wicked Roger Waters/Kelly Canary/Kim Shattuck screams I’ve heard in a long time, and the only thing one can say after that is “fuuuuuuuuuck”. In “Floating Graveyards” they turn the tempo down and grind in a sludgy fashion, with choir-like vocal harmonies that is a signal for LORD SATANA to enter the world. At the end, they completely switch to do a song that sounds like it could be done at a honky tonk. If you remember Best Kissers In The World‘s “Hungover Together”, it’s that type of song where you tell everyone “one last round” and head home, with vomit in your shirt or blouse.

Threats/Worship (Vice/TVT) is an album you put on, turn up very loud, and wait until you’re thrown out of your apartment or a cop pulls you over for violating city ordinances. It’s a spirit that I’ve always enjoyed, when punking it up doesn’t mean putting on sk8r boy clothes and going to the mall on Saturday to hang out at Old Navy. It’s ugly rock’n'roll the way it’s meant to be heard and played. A few of these songs have extra synth/keyboard elements that only helps to take songs to an elevated level, showing that they not only know how to have a good time, but they can be anthemic if they want.

Deto-22 and Sketch Tha Cataclysm decided they need to get together to brainstorm and come up with music that would not only represent what they do as individuals, but perhaps let people into what was going on in Connecticut. The end result is something called The Sharing Is Caring EP, and I like the fact that they came out with an EP, so that fans that didn’t like them can move on. Those that do find a liking, they can hold on and prepare for what will be a bigger dose.

Sketch Tha Cataclysm is the man behind the rhymes, and outside of enjoying how he rhymes and what he has to say, it also sounds like he’s very much into the music created by Deto-22, known for his work with Phenetiks. To me, it doesn’t sound flown in, or “here, I’m a hot producer, just rhyme over it since you’re really using my name to sell product, not my beat.” It’s not empty or anonymous, and that’s what I think people will want to hear, some level of mental activity between these two. With Sketch, he’s able to write something that is a means to confront someone for hip-hop supremacy, but he’s also good at writing story rhymes and to get a bit cinematic when trying to write about personal hopes and fears in metaphor, as he does in “Inspired By A Conversation Last Night”

it keeps pulling back everytime i’m at the cusp
the lights are messing with me, this whole room is such
I keep moving, daps are plenty and I tremble at the touch
these people keep talking, I wish I didn’t feel them
this music’s overwhelming I continue with my reeling
breathing, choking, as their smoking hits my heels and
with contact that could have your tims pushing off the ceiling
time to swim in this water bottle
in hopes to stop my mind from sifting, drifting in its hallows
piling on the misery to forget it all tomorrow
I need to wipe the maps of these directions that i’ve followed
fuck the stresses, its time to face it
and put the stones through this glass box attempt to break it
clutch the amplified and vocalize my cages
standing naked, with these walls of pressure buried in the pavement

It might come off a bit like Buck 65, but by saying that, it means that I do hear someone who is willing to push himself forward and not reply on whatever hip-hop templates may exist. In “Things That Start With H” (which is coincidentally the 8th song, appropriate since H is the 8th letter of the alphabet) Sketch is doing some damage over a beat with a slight rock/metal edge, but it feels more like Mike Shinoda than Fred Durst, and again, he sounds comfortable. I like it when an MC is not only willing to rhyme over anything and everything, but because of his listening habits and adaptation of it through hip-hop, he knows how to fill the pockets.

Then there’s Deto-22, who is a perfect match for Sketch. As a producer, I know what it means to get your word across and express yourself through music, what I hear is much more than just an assemblage of beats, basslines, and carefully selected samples, it’s all of that. What he does with Sketch is, if we are to use a comic boon analogy, pencils around the edges and fills in the colors to make Sketch’s colorful lyrics more vivid. Sketch is also a producer too, and then you’ll also hear Deto-22 drop some nice rhymes. I would have loved to have heard more old school-style rhymes where they would trade off lines, but people would’ve said “oh wow, another group trying to copy the Beastie Boys” but that style existed long before the Beastie Boys switched over from hardcore to hip-hop.

The EP ends with a Deto-22 instrumental in the form of “Welt In 12″, which would fit in with everyone from Lady Gaga to Black Eyed Peas, and that’s not something to laugh it, because if there’s a chance he can work and collaborate with other artists, he’s going to go for it. On the plus side, he’s good at it too. Sketch shows a respect for writing and comprehension, he’s an MC that isn’t just there to be the lyrical hi-hat for anyone, he’s the full drum set and he’s laying anchor. What they’re trying to day with The Sharing Is Caring EP is that yes, open yourself and share, be it talent, ideas, and concepts, musical or otherwise, you may find more about yourself than you did at the starting line.

Perhaps they’ll continue doing EP’s in small doses, or we’ll be patient and wait for a full length, but I also think they’re of a generation that doesn’t want to hold themselves back due to the conventions of what came before. I see them as adventurists, and I hope they proceed with anxiety and fearlessness.

(The Sharing Is Caring EP is scheduled for release on November 3rd, and will be available through LittleAx.com.)

Even though it may be in a different language, or at least “non-English”, Latin music in the United States is American music as much of it comes from the American experience. Beginning tonight, October 12th, PBS is presenting a 4-part documentary called Latin Music USA, exploring the roots of the music as it goes through and mixes up with country, rock, jazz, gospel, and R&B, perhaps reflecting not only its creators but maybe a true look at the evolving fabric of a nation. If music opens the heart and spirit of a people, then people by default unite while retaining its core for all to see.

You can check out the schedule for the series by clicking here. The entire series will be released on DVD on November 24th, along with a soundtrack CD that is in truth a sampler of the vast world of music that is out there. You can pre-order the DVD, CD, or a combo of both by heading to ShopPBS.org.