I’ve been quietly digging Eugene McDaniels for several years now, and it has recently exploded into full-blown obsession. Only the best music creeps up on me like that. When the roots are there and suddenly the flower blooms and fills my soul with colors, that’s when I know it is real love.
Eugene McDaniels has a voice that is clear, mesmerizing and completely without trickery, which is the rarest, most wonderful musical talent that can be bestowed upon a human being. Look for it sometime. It’s a lot more difficult to find than you might think. That he gels with deceptively gentle funk and biting, hilarious, intelligent lyrics that are classically timeless and timelessly profound is just a happy coincidence. The magic tumbles out of him and into me, closing a 38-year gap in time like it’s nothing extraordinary and he just happens to be standing right behind me with his finger on my spine. Mostly, though, it just makes me so butt-shakingly happy I could kiss my iPod.
Quintessential “Cherrystones” below. I recommend it loud, and with adequate boogieing space.
Monday, 7 April 2008
Thursday, 3 April 2008
Monday, 17 March 2008
Italians do it better...usually.
I've been a hatin', non-updatin', procrastinatin' gutter wench. Consider your forgiveness begged. And just to prove how much I still love you, please enjoy this...how do you say...hilarious monstrosity.
Also, please know that my 'draft' posts are too numerous to count. And, unlike Alberto Camerini after making this video, they will be coming soon and often.
Also, please know that my 'draft' posts are too numerous to count. And, unlike Alberto Camerini after making this video, they will be coming soon and often.
Thursday, 28 February 2008
Friday, 8 February 2008
King Yellowman
When I moved to Naples at the age of fifteen, my intake of American pop culture was virtually severed at the carotid artery. Every once in a while something would trickle through but, for the most part, my perception of what was legitimately cool and cutting-edge trailed off somewhere around Sam Kinison. I know.
At the time, I felt like my human rights were being sadistically violated, but you make do. And, for the most part, I’ve found that my complete and utter lack of cultural reference points between 1990-1997 seems to disturb others more than it does me. I've made it this far without collapsing under the weight of cruel deprivation brought on by never owning a Pearl Jam album, so I doubt it had any lasting ill effects. I'd even go so far as to say that can only thank my lucky stars, musically speaking, because Italian pop was strictly of the Eros Ramazzotti School of Metaphysical Crap, but there were two pretty good vinyl stores in downtown Naples—this was a couple of years before CDs really took off, and southern Italy seemed to have mysteriously bypassed the whole cassette revolution completely—and I spent many, many productive hours clopping through the cobbelstones, sniffing around for something new.
My strategy for finding a record to buy consisted of flipping through the stacks until something stood out, either because the band name was so stupid (The Dentists—Heads and How To Read Them), the album cover was cool (Death In June—The World That Summer) or it just sounded titillatingly evil (Bad Religion—Suffer). This method was pretty hit or miss, as one can imagine, but when it worked, it worked like crazy and oh, how my mind dipped and swayed! By far the most awesome of these sound-unheard purchases was Yellowman & Fathead—Bad Boy Skanking. Everything about the album--the title, the cover photo, the names of the songs--radiated awesome. There was NO WAY this wasn't going to be good. I remember sitting on the train as Mergellina and Montesanto whizzed past, gazing happily at my 11,000-lire purchase and dying to just get home so I could listen to it.
Having just digitally re-visited the album fifteen years later, I'm struck by the debt to late '70's, early '80's Jamaican dance-hall music. Yellowman's first major, 1982 release sounds like it could have come out last week and won a Grammy. Innocent, simple, uncomplicated. What a lot of hip-hop would be if it learned to let go and stop being so self-conscious. But twenty-odd years before hip-hop charged its way to the foreground and started making wealthy, Western youth overcompensate for their lack of street cred, Yellowman was turning his own gravely disadvantaged youth and outcast status into a profound artistic statement. I didn't know any of that at the time, though. I just remember sitting in front of my parents' rickety turntable, transfixed, amazed, delighted, head-bobbing myself into whiplash, wondering where Yellowman had been all my life, and how ignorant I really was about heaven and all of its treasures.
At the time, I felt like my human rights were being sadistically violated, but you make do. And, for the most part, I’ve found that my complete and utter lack of cultural reference points between 1990-1997 seems to disturb others more than it does me. I've made it this far without collapsing under the weight of cruel deprivation brought on by never owning a Pearl Jam album, so I doubt it had any lasting ill effects. I'd even go so far as to say that can only thank my lucky stars, musically speaking, because Italian pop was strictly of the Eros Ramazzotti School of Metaphysical Crap, but there were two pretty good vinyl stores in downtown Naples—this was a couple of years before CDs really took off, and southern Italy seemed to have mysteriously bypassed the whole cassette revolution completely—and I spent many, many productive hours clopping through the cobbelstones, sniffing around for something new.
My strategy for finding a record to buy consisted of flipping through the stacks until something stood out, either because the band name was so stupid (The Dentists—Heads and How To Read Them), the album cover was cool (Death In June—The World That Summer) or it just sounded titillatingly evil (Bad Religion—Suffer). This method was pretty hit or miss, as one can imagine, but when it worked, it worked like crazy and oh, how my mind dipped and swayed! By far the most awesome of these sound-unheard purchases was Yellowman & Fathead—Bad Boy Skanking. Everything about the album--the title, the cover photo, the names of the songs--radiated awesome. There was NO WAY this wasn't going to be good. I remember sitting on the train as Mergellina and Montesanto whizzed past, gazing happily at my 11,000-lire purchase and dying to just get home so I could listen to it.
Having just digitally re-visited the album fifteen years later, I'm struck by the debt to late '70's, early '80's Jamaican dance-hall music. Yellowman's first major, 1982 release sounds like it could have come out last week and won a Grammy. Innocent, simple, uncomplicated. What a lot of hip-hop would be if it learned to let go and stop being so self-conscious. But twenty-odd years before hip-hop charged its way to the foreground and started making wealthy, Western youth overcompensate for their lack of street cred, Yellowman was turning his own gravely disadvantaged youth and outcast status into a profound artistic statement. I didn't know any of that at the time, though. I just remember sitting in front of my parents' rickety turntable, transfixed, amazed, delighted, head-bobbing myself into whiplash, wondering where Yellowman had been all my life, and how ignorant I really was about heaven and all of its treasures.
Wednesday, 9 January 2008
An opening.
This morning, I got an e-mail from a friend that started like this:
Ok. Am I such an idiot that I never responded to this? Probably. Lo siento. You can't begin to imagine what a mess I am.
Maybe it's the insomnia talking, but I just kept thinking, "Beautiful, man, beautiful."
Ok. Am I such an idiot that I never responded to this? Probably. Lo siento. You can't begin to imagine what a mess I am.
Maybe it's the insomnia talking, but I just kept thinking, "Beautiful, man, beautiful."
Sunday, 2 December 2007
Rocket Science
The other day, Karl and I were discussing million-dollar homes. Specifically, why in the name of all things good and proper would someone with a million dollars to spend on a home would choose a run-down, two-bedroom, terraced, rat-infested toilet just because it's in the middle of a large city. Specifically, London. London is a city that always seems like one discarded prophylactic away from Victorian times. Every time I go there, I feel as though I could have been wading knee-deep through feces and murdered prostitutes as recently as last Tuesday.
A few months ago, I was dispatched to the house of a well-known and beloved athiest to deliver a manuscript. Oxford is infinitely more pleasant than London, but it still blows my mind that people of means voluntarily sandwich themselves amongst the potholes and puke puddles of urban centers when they don't have to. When I think of million dollar homes, I think of space and green and circular driveways, not wobbling through gravel and cat shit to reach the door of a whatevery brick structure that stands approximately six inches from the next whatevery brick structure. Karl said, "His neighbors can probably hear him thinking." I mean, seriously.
For a rich genius, it seems awfully stupid.
A few months ago, I was dispatched to the house of a well-known and beloved athiest to deliver a manuscript. Oxford is infinitely more pleasant than London, but it still blows my mind that people of means voluntarily sandwich themselves amongst the potholes and puke puddles of urban centers when they don't have to. When I think of million dollar homes, I think of space and green and circular driveways, not wobbling through gravel and cat shit to reach the door of a whatevery brick structure that stands approximately six inches from the next whatevery brick structure. Karl said, "His neighbors can probably hear him thinking." I mean, seriously.
For a rich genius, it seems awfully stupid.
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