Internet Vibes

I HATE BLOGGING

2006-05-05T16:04:00.000-04:00

Let's not even talk about the inactivity of Internet Vibes. WHO CARES?

I did my first bit of investigative journalism for this website.

There is an "urban wear" store on 125th St. near Lexington called "Hip Hop." They sell the usual assortment of Roc-a-wear, Girbaud, Akademiks, Enyce, etc. In addition, they also sell a complete line of Ivy League varsity-style jackets. Now, wearing jackets with the logos of sports teams or sports-inclined colleges is nothing new to hip-hop fashion, but I have never been to a store with a complete line of Ivy League jackets before.

It almost makes sense that this store would have Columbia jackets since the campus is so close, but Dartmouth? Cornell?

What's going on here? Is this Bill Cosby's dream come true? Academic snobbery supplanting "bling" culture as the pinnacle of prestige for the young hip-hop listener?

I truly have no idea. I asked the store manager where this idea to sell Ivy League clothes came from, but he didn't speak English too well. He just tried to sell me a Columbia jacket, pointing out how nicely it would match a pair of baby blue Nike Airs.

I asked the guy where all the Brown jackets were. He said they sold out immediately.

I'd like to leave this as a sort of "trend-spotting" post, but why not throw out a few instigating ideas?

- Most academic analysis of hip-hop feels kind of hollow to me; partly because it feels like such a one-sided dialogue. An extreme observer/subject situation.

- Have you ever seen that VH1 show about hip-hop where Vincent Gallo talks about the early 90's, Tommy Hilfiger-era of hip-hop fashion, and he says something like, "There was such a funny irony about these kids who would never go skiing wearing ski goggles and stuff"? I'd hate to apply that logic to this situation, but maybe it's analagous. What do you think? Maybe the people buying these jackets don't think about their purchases in these terms at all.

- "The Martha Stewart that's far from Jewish/ Far from a Harvard student." - Jay-Z

New Age Family Vacation Alert

2006-04-11T12:55:00.000-04:00

In what may or may not be the first NY Times article with the word "vibe" in the title, senior Book Review editor Dwight Garner takes us on a textual trip to the New Age mecca of Sedona, Arizona in "In Search of the Vortex Vibe in Sedona."

A few years ago, USA Today called Sedona the most beautiful place in America. At sundown, that doesn't begin to cover it. And it's not just the views. There's a vibe in the air, something not quite audible, a kind of metaphysical dog whistle that calls people out to have a look around and to try to feel something that, if you're not a committed New-Age pilgrim, is hard to put into words.

Hmmm, vibes ARE hard to put into words. Maybe that's the whole point. Anyway, I'm glad that such an elusive concept is considered LEGIT enough for inclusion in THE PAPER OF RECORD.

Here's another choice quotation:

This isn't Aspen. There's a tasteful, turquoise-arched McDonald's on the main street here but no Louis Vuitton outlets in sight.

It was surprisingly easy to find a picture of this McDonald's on Google:

Speaking of tasteful McDonald's, check out this one in OLD SAN JUAN:

See more here.

Now I'm going to enjoy one of those painfully rare spring days when NYC, or at least Columbia, develops it's own Sedonatic vibe. Don't forget that Morningside Heights sits atop a giant GEODE.

HEART OF DARKNESS

2006-03-31T21:26:00.000-05:00

As some of you may know I have a new band with ROSTAM, CHRIS and CHRIS called VAMPIRE WEEKEND (yes it has the same name as the forthcoming film). We played our second ever show last Saturday at the Columbia RELAY 4 LIFE. It was a very positive experience.

We don't have any finished recordings as a full band but Rostam did a sweet techo remix of our first song "Walcott." He also made a nice website for it:

CHECK IT OUT

The song basically recapitulates the plot of the film but also contains trace elements of poetry.

St. Patrick's Day Massacre

2006-03-20T20:34:00.000-05:00

After returning from five days in sunny San Juan I was greeted by both the harsh cold of winter in New York AND a seriously devastating population fact:

the population of Ireland is 4,015,676.

I realize that not everyone is as into population facts as me, but let me try and put this in perspective.

-The population of the USA (!) is 295,734,134

-The population of New York City is 8,168,338

-The population of the UK is 60,441,457

-The population of London is 7.5 million

-The population of Italy is 58,103,033

-The population of Finland is 5,223,442

-The population of Luxembourg is 468,571

This seriously blows my mind. I've tried to convey this mind-blowingness to other people, but NO ONE'S FEELING MY VIBE. Can you believe that Ireland is closer in size to Luxembourg (both in real terms and proportionally) than to the UK?

I have a bad tendency to equate population size with coolness and I have a serious soft spot for Ireland and its peoplez so this is NOT adding up for me. When the Wes Man and I realized that Columbus, Ohio had a bigger population than Boston we started planning imaginary road trips there.

The population of Puerto Rico is 3,916,632. The area of that island is 9,104 sq km.

Ireland has almost the same population but its area is 70,280 sq km.

I know there must be tons of good reasons (potato famine, this etc.) why Ireland has such a WEAK population, but STILL!

If anyone out there is as surprised by this as I am, CAN WE PLEASE TALK ABOUT IT?
Maybe I should try to go here.

There were 1/4 as many people at the NY St. Patrick's Day parade as there are ON THE WHOLE ISLAND OF EIRE (1/6 if you count Northern Ireland).

Anyway, HOW ABOUT SOME GOOD NEWS?

GET READY AND GET PSYCHED FOR SOME INDIAN MANGOS.

All you AMERICA-HATERS better write George W. an apology letter because on his recent trip to INDIA he finagled a SWEET DEAL which is gonna give us DELICIOUS INDIAN MANGOS at our supermarkets. I'm not sure what India got in return. Maybe some uranium hot dogs or something...

This is from a transcript of Bush and Singh's press conference:

PRESIDENT BUSH: And, oh, by the way, Mr. Prime Minister, the United States is looking forward to eating Indian mangos. Part of liberalizing trade is to open up markets. And as a result of your leadership, and our hard work, we are opening up markets.

You know Bush doesn't actually like mangos. He only eats BBQ. He's trying to make peace with all the blue-state food snobs.

Peeps with TIMES SELECT can learn more here.

Also props to Alec for putting out some positive vibes over on prosebeforehos.

THE DOCTOR IS IN

2006-03-11T17:24:00.000-05:00

DROUGHT IN PHOENIX! THIS PICTURE WAS TAKEN IN 2006! BELIEVE IT OR NOT!

KITES BANNED IN PAKISTAN! THIS OTHER-WORLDLY PICTURE TAKEN IN AFGHANISTAN!

"People are dying, and we are celebrating!" said Khawaja Izhar, 75, the chairman of Anti-Kite Flying Democratic Front. "Why allow kite flying for even a brief period?"

AND ME? I'M GOING ON VACATION. SPRING BREAK '0666!

WEEKEND NEWS ROUND-UP

2006-02-25T13:57:00.000-05:00

I was struck by two pictures published in the NY Times this past week. Coincidentally, both were taken in Africa.

The first shows some school kids on a class trip to see a hot-spring in Kenya. Here's the article.

The second shows Macon Hawkins of Kosciusko, Texas, currently a hostage of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta. Again, here is the article.

The contrast between the beautiful pink shirts of the first picture and the insane threat of ultraviolence in the second (rocket-launcher to the head?!?!?) reminds me of this song (piece?) by Terre Thaemlitz. In it he convolutes the melody from "Lovin' You" by Minnie Riperton with an actual speech from Radio Freedom, the voice of the African National Congress.

The speaker starts out with general talk of freedom and inequality but then gets down to business with some super-specific and practical suggestions:

"The lone policeman must be made a target. He must be destroyed so that we can get his weapon."

Thaemlitz serves it up smooth. Try putting this on next time you've got your girl (or boy) over.

Terre Thaemlitz - Between Empathy and Sympathy is Time (Apartheid)

I heard this track a lot over the summer thanks to Joe Grimm, the Wind-Up Bird.

Nota Bene: New Balance = Nuclear Brightness

2006-02-20T22:47:00.000-05:00

It's time to update the "ghost shoez" repository. Internet Vibes is now the official place to witness and talk about the New Balance ghost shoez phenomenon.

This first one was submitted by an anonymous internet user in the comments section of an old post. I present it here for your convenience:

This next one is another random facebook find:

Finally, here is one that was living on my very own computer. The ghost shoez-wearer here is the one and only Jake Longstreth, bro of Dave and oscillationist with the Dirty Projectors on the epic summer tour which I also took part in.

I placed the pics in order of ghostliness (descending). There's also something ghostly about the similarity between the big guy in the red jacket and Jake in his red shirt, no?

hello, it's me

2006-02-16T16:57:00.000-05:00

The previous post has inspired some lively (and mostly good-natured) dialogue both on and off the court. There are definitely some things I'd like to clarify and expand on, but I don't have time right now.

In the mean time, I would direct you to John Atkinson's blog in which he weighs in on preppiness by posting a new and truly great Three-Six Mafia song about poppin' one's collar. The VIBE circle is now complete!

PREP-osterous

2006-02-11T11:14:00.000-05:00

My life has been both supremely mellow and intensely hectic this semester. I'm not even talking about a bi-polar kind of oscillation either. I'm talking BOTH at the SAME TIME. Anyone familiar with the Buddhist concept of NON-DUALITY? Me neither...

Anyway, I apologize to all my friends who came to enjoy Internet Vibes. I enjoyed writing posts and corresponding with you all. Maybe just check it once a week. Who knows? You might find something!

Today I want to talk about something very personal to me: PREPPY CLOTHES.

Some time in high school I started having strong feelings about Lacoste shirts. My friends and I used to go to the rummage sale at the Congregational Church and find great old Izod/Lacoste stuff probably last worn at the Glen Ridge Country Club's '87 Fourth of July Gala.

I mostly liked Lacoste shirts because of the alligator; an image at once quirkily powerful and powerfully quirky (NON-DUALITY). I soon realized that the quirkiness was lost on most people. A substitute teacher saw me wearing a turquoise Lacoste shirt with a popped collar and said "You look like the bad guy from a John Hughes movie." He was probably right, although I'm not blonde.

The ICONICITY of the Lacoste alligator is both appealing and repelling. On one hand it is beautifully simple and weird. On the other hand, it lends itself to CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION (which is a state of mind and NOT an absolute action). In recent years, Lacoste has made sweaters and t-shirts in which the alligator is monstrously enlarged to cover one's entire chest. This amounts to a crass FETISHIZATION.

Unsurprisingly, RALPH LAUREN (ne Lipschitz) has done the same thing with his POLO LOGO. I've always been kind of out with Polo although I've recently come around to it. There is something MASTERFULLY SUBVERSIVE about a Jew from the Bronx starting THE preppy clothes company and picking a logo as over-the-top as a polo player on a horse. Ralphie must have been smiling as he designed it.

MAN, I HAVE SO MUCH MORE TO SAY! This is the problem with Internet Vibes, everything turns into a novel. Let me just wrap up with some quick bullet points:

- PREPPINESS & AUTHENTICITY - "Do not pop your collar if you don't sail."

What is authentic for a guy like me? Fourth-generation Ivy League, deracinated, American Jew born on the UWS, raised in NJ to middle-class post-hippie parents with semi-Anglophilic tendencies AND propensity to put on Eastern European accents and use obscure Yiddish phrases. The obvious answer is that I, like all of us, should be a truly post-modern consumer, taking the bits and pieces I like from various traditions and cultures, letting my aesthetic instincts be my only guide. In fact, all of my friends (even the children of immigrants) seem to be in the same boat. We are BOTH disconnected from AND connected to EVERYTHING. Now we've transcended mere clothes.

A few weeks ago, a girl at a party was giving me a hard time for wearing my very-beautiful Sean John jacket with fur collar. I could probably write a novel about that. I'll let you fill in the blanks to relate this anecdote to the rest of the post.

-PREPPINESS AND COLONIALISM

While walking around Shimla, a mountain town in India which was formerly the Summer Capital of the British Empire, I came to a Pringle store. Pringle is a super-nice Scottish sweater company. This was right on the main drag in Shimla; a town where the honeymoon suite at a hotel costs $10 a night. This story has no point.

MADRAS, perhaps the most conspicously preppy fabric because of its bold ugliness, is of course from INDIA. In an effort to thoroughly de-preppify the nation, the city of MADRAS is now known as CHENNAI.

Let's not forget that there are NO ALLIGATORS in FRANCE. ALLIGATORS live in the swamps of FLORIDA or CHINA. Also, don't forget their brothers, the CROCODILES, who chill out in the "HEART OF DARKNESS" itself.

CONCLUSIONS:

THERE ARE NONE.

Wait, take a look at these pictures. They might help you to FEEL MY VIBE.

Scottish Taliban? Best of Both Worlds? In this L'Homme Run promotional photograph, my ideal alter-ego takes form.

In this picture, I am melancholically pondering issues of identity and authenticity. Note the popped collar.

FINAL THOUGHT:

I've never felt super connected to JUDAISM, but I did go to HEBREW SCHOOL and I had a BAR MITZVAH. Growing up Jewish, you are presented with three images of your people:

- DESERT NOMADS BUILDING PYRAMIDS

- EASTERN-EUROPEAN SHTETL-DWELLERS WITH BIG BEARDS

- AMERICAN LIBERALS WHO EAT CHINESE FOOD ALL THE TIME

Now do you see where I'm coming from? Interestingly, Christianity teaches us that THREE can be ONE. I guess you would call that a theory of NON-TRILOGICITY??!?!?

INDIG(o)NATION

2006-01-14T19:19:00.000-05:00

OK, I'm back from WINTER BREAK and ready to rock out on Internet Vibes. Hopefully, you were all so busy doing WINTER BREAK stuff that you didn't realize that I stopped writing on this piece. Anyway, what's done is done.

Let me share some pictures from the past few months:

Remember when I told you I went to Syracuse, NY? This is what I did there. Windfarms are super-weird because they combine a chilled-out rural setting with giant, white , alien towers.

This is from Syracuse as well. I can count at least three layers of meaning and 79 triangles in this picture. How about you?

This is an egg pizza we cooked up at Rostam's on New Year's Eve. Yes, it was delicious.

Speaking of giant white things, this is the Washington Monument; probably my all-time favorite monument. It's so powerful and bizarre. Did you know that one of the original designs for the Lincoln Monument was a giant pyramid (presumably to complement the Washington Monument's obelisk-nature)? Wouldn't that have been insane?

NEXT POST:

We're going to talk about the SCARY and PROVOCATIVE Indigo Children phenomenon!

HELP ME

2005-12-19T11:22:00.000-05:00

I heard this song the other day at J. Crew and I'm going nutz trying to figure out what it is. It has a kind of early 80's, blue-eyed soul vibe. At first, I thought it was Dexys Midnight Runners but my research leads me to believe it's not. The part that sticks in my head is this little string riff. Totally British New Wave Motown kind of stuff.

I made an mp3 of what I can remember of the string part. It may be wildly inaccurate but please listen to it and see if you can help me.

HELP ME MP3

Maybe a question to ask yourself is: what songs do I know that sound a little bit like C'mon Eileen? Any???

WEEKEND Round-upzzz

2005-12-18T12:17:00.000-05:00

BIG UPS to the man Steve Schroeder for finding another ghost shoes pic. I wanted to post it but for some reason I couldn't save it. (WTF?!?!?!) Anyway, check the comments for the link. In it, we have another space-croucher ready to do a moon-jump.

ALI G AND SHIT

You might remember our brief exploration of message boards from a few weeks back. In it, we learned about the amazing love/hate relationships high school lacrosse players have developed with Mike Jones. Tormented by what they regard as Jones' blatant homosexuality, they nonetheless cannot stop themselves from singing his name over and over again.

I thought message board soul-searching couldn't get any better than that...BUT IT HAS. I came across this message board while searching for info about the Borat movie.

It is the official message board of the "Stormfront White Nationalist Community." The thread kicks off with "England's Hammer" asking:

Did anyone see him doing his anti-Jewish country song on C4 earlier? It cracked me up.
And yes I know he's Jewish.

The ensuing conversation proves both how RETARDED white supremacists are and how COMPLEX the comedy of Sascha Baron-Cohen is. Despite Baron-Cohen's Jew-ness, these clowns CAN'T HELP but find his show funny. They are especially amused by the classic scene of Borat playing "Throw the Jew Down the Well" in Tuscon, Arizona.

This raises some interesting questions:

Why do people like us (college-educated, liberal, Internet Vibes-readers) find it funny? Is it for a different reason than the White Supremacists?

My immediate reply is the same as Steve Zissou's: "Well, it's got to be."

OK, we like Borat's anti-semitism because it shows the inherent RETARDANZA of all racism by grafting it on to a backwoods Kazakh, right?? When he sings that song, we are cracking up because the song is OVER-THE-TOP and because Borat is JUST PLAIN FUNNY. Also, the fact that the audience starts singing along is FUNNY in a kind of WEIRD and SICK way.

So, why do these boneheads like it? Yes, Borat is JUST PLAIN FUNNY. We can all agree on that. Is that it though? Do they also recognize the OVER-THE-TOP funniness of the song? Maybe in a different way?

"Yes, I hate Jews, but the idea of throwing them down a well is both an inefficient means of extermination and a playful jab at the anachronisms of Central Asian village life."

Is that what's going on here???

"Legion" sees through the layers of irony, but STILL FINDS IT FUNNY:

I did find this funny last night however I'm not a fan of Borat or Ali G, at the end of the day he's just a Jew who's having a good laugh at us white people.

Later in the thread, some of the more "intellectual" white power internet nerds show up to let everyone know that Ali G/Borat is NOT FUNNY.

ANYWAY, what do you think? Does looking at White Supremacists looking at a Jew playing a Muslim pretending to be Black give you any new insights into life?

Also, is the idea of Vice Magazine style "post-racism" even possible?

FInAL

2005-12-16T02:36:00.000-05:00

NB: INTERT VIBZ IS GOING TO SLOWLY COME BACK TO LIFE AS MY BRAIN REGENERATS.
Thanks to Steve for doing some detective work and finding 3 ghost-shoe pixx!

The pic above is my favorite. That kid is just chilling in the back but he's about to take off on an intergalactic voyage or something.

Internet Vibes is now the world's largest archive of ghost-shoe pixx! Everyone should follow Steve's example and help the collection grow. Maybe even try making your own pixx if you have NB's.

VIBES SCIENCE:
I just watched Quadrophenia, the 1979 film loosely based on a Who concept album about Mods. Mod culture is a vibe so near yet so far.

yes, that is sting

I think I have a decent understanding of the Mod phenomenon but it's hard to fully grasp it as an American since there was no parallel movement in the good old USA (thus I cannot subconsciously receive latent vibe transmissions from my immediate environment). In fact, a lot of Mod culture has to do with British perceptions and interpretations of American culture. How can I look at myself as "The Other"? Again, I need to decolonize my mind, will try to do it over winter break.

Recently, the idea of "Mod" has been semi-transformed into a sort of cosmopolitan hippie vibe (ie Austin Powers). In fact, there's a bar called Mod in the 80's on Amsterdam that's all hippie-dippie, psych-chic. As far as I can tell this is all wrong.

OG Mods were late 50's/60's, R&B-obsessed, sharp-dressers. In fact, Quadrophenia takes place in 1964 way before any of that Swingin' London stuff.

The central event of Quadrophenia is the infamous Mods vs. Rockers Riot in Brighton. The rockers are a group "primarily defined in opposition to Mods." They are seen as a British version of "greasers."

I have a hard time completely wrapping my brain around the whole Mods vs. Rockers conflict. Aesthetically, their differences are clear: Mods wear suits and keep it clean, Rockers wear leather and keep it dirty. The philosophical and cultural differences are harder to grasp. Both groups seem working-class, anti-authoritarian, prone to violence, into partying and being crazy.

There's a scene where a Mod and a Rocker are taking baths in adjacent stalls at some sort of public bathroom. The Rocker starts singing Gene Vincent and the Mod gets really pissed off. The Rocker won't shut up, so the Mod starts singing "You Really Got Me" by the Kinks. This is the conflict??? Early 60's Kinks vs. late 50's rock n' roll??

Don't get me wrong, I can see the difference between Ray Davies and Gene Vincent. It just doesn't seem like a big difference. I think this may be an instance of post-vibe conflation in which the trivial differences so important to one generation fade away in the next generation's historical perception.

If I met a dude today who was really into early Kinks, I'd probably assume he also liked Gene Vincent. The same would not hold true for a Village Green Preservation Society kind of dude.

Anyway, I love Fred Perry.

RAY WINSTONE:

Quadrophenia features a young Ray Winstone as a Rocker. Winstone would go on to be known for his roles as bad-ass British gangsters (see "Sexy Beast"). Anyway, I imdb'd him and was amazed to see his upcoming roles:

He's going to play BEOWULF in a big-budget version of BEOWULF directed by Robert Zemeckis. Crispin Glover is playing Grendel. WTFF????? THIS IS GONNA BE AWESOME.

As if that wasn't enough, Winstone is signed up to play WILLIAM BLAKE in "JERUSALEM."

English majors are gonna SOOTE their SHOURES when they hear about this.

what's the frequency, kenneth?

2005-12-15T01:18:00.000-05:00

Almost done with finals. Writing all these papers really paralyzes my brain. We've all been to that dark place in the heart of December, right?

I've been going deep on the internet during my "study breaks." especially on thefacebook.com which now lets you post pictures; this shit is really next level.

anyway, i came across these pictures while browsing. one picture is of my cousin Asher. I have no idea who the other people are ("RANDOM") although I did some Blade Runner photo-analysis and determined that they are dancing in the Lerner Party Space.

You can imagine how I felt to see these pictures almost back2back. I was already struck by the picture with asher and then, to see the same NB-effect in some crazy columbia picturez...are you there god, it's me ezra??

i kept browsing facebook pictures looking for at least one more picture of ghostly New Balances but couldn't find any.

please contact me if you have any pictures with this effect. i'm going to limit it to grey new balances, but maybe i'll open it up later.

looking at those pictures at the same time really gives me a strange feeling in my gut. is this what the davinci code is about???

WORLD PREMIERE

2005-12-01T20:08:00.000-05:00

CHECK OUT THE VAMPIRE WEEKEND TRAILER!

This picture is from the earliest version of Vampire Weekend which was essentially a photoshoot with toothpicks.

Is this an effective trailer? Does it make you want to see the film?

EARLY BRYAN ADAMS

2005-11-30T10:17:00.000-05:00

LIFE UPDATES:
-Trying to stay positive and finish out the semester strong

-Setting up "CREATION STATION" in room where Rhodes used to be. Vampire Weekend trailer will be online VERY SOON.

-Still loving population facts: The other day Jeff Sachs told me that there are at least 45 (i don't remember the exact figure) cities in China with populations of over 1 Million. He didn't have a list on him but he assured the class that we wouldn't have heard of most of them.

America has 9 cities with populations over 1 million.

MUSIC UPDATE:

This weekend I was chilling out at home listening to WKTU, New York's Dance Station. It was great. I have to do that more often. They were playing a mix of early 80's/late 70's club bangers. Right after Madonna's "Borderline", an amazing song came on. I tried to remember the lyrics so I could look it up later. The voice sounded like Michael Jackson.

Turns out the song ("Let Me Take you Dancing") is Bryan Adams' first single from 1978. The reason he sounds like MJ is because the producer decided to speed up the track after he'd recorded the vocals. Apparently, Adams is embarrassed by the song and has refused to put it on any comps despite its status as an all-time classic disco song. The only way to get your hands on it is by finding a used 12".

Luckily, the BLOGOSPHERE has not forgotten "Let Me Take You Dancing". You can DL an mp3 of the track here at a cool dude named Bruce's livejournal.

I strongly recommend checking this track out. Aside from the Bryan Adams factor, it's a brilliant synthesis of Motown and disco, kind of predicting the mid-80's British Soul/New Wave genre.

VAMPIRE WEEKEND

2005-11-24T18:23:00.000-05:00

Hope everyone is living the high life this Thanksgiving. Shout out to Rostam who is spending this Thanksgiving in the beautiful Hollywood Hills for the animated gif from the last post. SPEAKING OF HOLLYWOOD...

It's been almost two and half years since production began on VAMPIRE WEEKEND. I am happy to say that the bulk of the footage (once thought to be lost by KING DARVES) is now in my custody and the EDITING has begun.

The film was made by Wes, Andrei, Dan, Steve and me. I play the protagonist Walcott, a young man whose country is invaded by vampires. The film opens with the death of Walcott's father at the hands of a sunglasses-wearing werewolf vampire. His dad's last words are:

Walcott, you must go to Cape Cod. Tell the Mayor that vampires are taking over your country. You must kill as many of them as...possible.

The rest of the film is Walcott's bloody march to the Cape!

Here are some stills to whet your appetite:

THANKSGIVING

2005-11-22T23:20:00.000-05:00

LIVING THE HIGH LIFE

RIDDIMS UPDATE

2005-11-18T18:59:00.000-05:00

This week in CARRIBEAN MUSIC:

1. Last weekend, Hawaiian skateboarder/Columbia student/super-musician Anton Glamb hipped me to some dope dancehall/soca videos on a website called MUZIK MEDIA, based in NJ!

The one that really blew my mind was the "Escape 2 Soca Megamix". You can find the video at the bottom of this page. It's really long and features at least 10 different rappers/singers. I think it's kind of like a year-end wrap-up mix which takes all the different versions of a Soca Riddim (is that the proper terminology?) and stiches them up into one song. It kind of has a "Do They Know It's Christmas?"-feel with all these different voices cutting in for a verse or two.

A bunch of videos on MUZIK MEDIA feature dudes riding in cars which made me realize that they DRIVE ON THE LEFT SIDE OF THE ROAD in JAMAICA. Jamaica wasn't independent until 1962 so it makes sense that they would drive British-style. Still, I imagined that Jamaica's proximity to the huge automobile-plants of the US and Mexico might sway them over the right side.

BOB MARLEY

This lead to me to a totally DOPE Wikipedia article called "Rules of da Road".

There are so many interesting driving facts in there.

-Did you know that in left-driving Japan it's considered really classy to have an imported car with the steering wheel on the left side? Some rich dudes are so into this conspicuous consumption that they will pay extra to buy AMERICAN-versions of BRITISH CARS!

-A lot of countries have switched driving sides. Former British colony Nigeria went to the right side (probably b/c they hated the British so much). Sweden made the switch in 1963 in an ineffective attempt to make driving safer:

The changeover took place at 5am on Sunday, September 3, 1967, which was known in Swedish as Dagen H (H-Day), the 'H' being for Högertrafik or right-hand traffic.

Check out this awesome picture from Stockholm on H-Day:

That must have been a CRAZY DAY!

-About 1/3 of the world's population drives on the left-side of the road, but as this map shows driving on the right side clearly dominates in terms of area:

Red = Right, Blue =WRONG

India accounts for almost half of all left-side drivers.

2. I also received a Wayne Smith cd "Sleng Teng & Prince Jammy's Computerised Dub" in the mail this week. Wayne Smiths's 1986 song Sleng Teng is widely regarded as the first reggae/dancehall song to use a drum machine.
You know that MIA song where she goes "Slang Tang, that's my MIA thang" or something? Well, clearly she is familiar with Wayne Smith. Do you think his album cover inspired hers?

I'm sorry I couldn't find a bigger version of the Wayne Smith cover. These have a very similar vibe yet lack any explicit similarities. I don't know...

Anyway check out "Sleng Teng":

Wayne Smith - Sleng Teng

3. I found this great Reggae Riddims database: www.reggae-riddims.com

It's helping me to understand it all a little better (see: Diwali Riddim discussion).

Did you know that the Sean Paul song "Like Glue" (probably my ALL-TIME favorite Sean Paul song) originally appeared on a Riddim Compilation in 2001? "Like Glue" uses the Buy-Out Riddim. It's pretty amazing how much better "Like Glue" is than any of the other Buy-Out Riddim tracks.

Compare "Like Glue" with this:

Bud- Tonight

All of this Riddims Research is getting me pumped for an English class I'm taking next semester called "Parody, Plagiarism and Postcolonialism":

This course examines historical, cultural, and theoretical notions of authorship, originality, singularity, and copyright as they intersect with colonialism, postcolonialism, and globalization as processes of cultural reproduction, replication, and theft.

I wonder if we'll talk about Simple Plan at all. Canada is a postcolonial nation...

How Could This Happen to ME?

2005-11-15T23:27:00.000-05:00

When I was driving up to Syracuse two weekends ago with Andrei P in his mom's SCION (which is funny because Andrei is also his mom's scion), we listened to a bunch of radio. A few times I heard a song that really jarred my sensibilities. It had "punk"/emo vocals (of the whiny, auto-tuned variety) over SUPER-CHEEZY, TV MOVIE SOUNDTRACK pianos, strings and timpani swells.

I recently found out the song was "Untitled (How Could This Happen to Me?)" by Simple Plan. You might remember Simple Plan from hits like "Welcome to My Life" and "Perfect". The video for "Perfect" features the band performing on the roof of a suburban house. Check it out here. It's really funny when everyone jumps at the same time.

Try as I might to avoid HATERIZM, I find the recent crop of MTV Pop-Punk bands (Good Charlotte, Simple Plan, New Found Glory, etc.) VERY PROBLEMATIC . I don't want to say it but...THEY SUCK!! See? I'm no better than Christgau dissing BJ. OK, let me chill out for a second...

Look, I kind of like Blink-182 and Sum-41 and in middle school I was totally into a Fat Wreck Chords compilation but there's something really fucked up about this new Simple Plan song. Other pop-punk/emo bands will at least dress up their schlocky sentiments and melodies with a little bit of "edge". Simple Plan fans can't even pretend they're punk or edgy anymore. "Untitled" is basically a Barbara Streisand song.

Here, you listen to it:

Simple Plan -Untitled (How Could This Happen to Me?)

I find it helpful to think of this in terms of a Jon Spayde article I read for a class. The Spayde article is about authenticity aka "THE REAL". Spayde formulates a 4-stage progression from REAL to HYPERFAKE:

1. REAL (not bogus)

2. REAL FAKE (classically bogus)

3. FAKE (merely bogus)

4. HYPERFAKE (so bogus it threatens the idea of the real)

He gives a bunch of bad examples. The best one is probably "LATIN DANCE CRAZES":

1. REAL- SAMBA

2. REAL FAKE - CHA CHA

3. FAKE - LAMBADA

4. HYPERFAKE - MACARENA

Does this make sense to anyone? Let me try and place Simple Plan in this hierarchy. This will be sticky because defining PUNK can be very difficult and controversial. Rather than split hairs about what REAL PUNK is let's just talk about POP-PUNK which, in and of itself, is probably HYPERFAKE to some nerds.

1. REAL - The Ramones

2. REAL FAKE - Green Day

3. FAKE - Sum-41

4. HYPERFAKE - Simple Plan, especially "Untitled"

I'm not to attached to this, but I should probably try and defend it.:

The Ramones are OG punk. No one would deny this, right??? Well, Morrissey wrote a letter to NME as a teenager extolling the virtues of the New York Dolls and proclaiming "The Ramones are rubbish!" but we all know that dude is weird.

I picked Green Day as REAL FAKE because they came out of a legit punk scene but were still thought of as pop-punk KNOCKOFFS and thus not REAL. They are "classically bogus" in the sense that they were one of the first pop-punk bands to become mainstream and thus not punk. Therefore they are ORIGINAL FAKES.

Sum-41 clearly grew out of Green Day's success. They dress punky and play in a punk-style but are so far removed from the Ramones sphere that there's almost no debate as to whether or not they deserve any true punk props. They are "merely bogus"; a cutesy, silly caricature.

Now, Simple Plan is very similar to Sum-41 but boldy went where their peers hadn't gone. With "Untitled" they take Sum-41's FAKE into the HYPER REALM! They essentially turn pop-punk into the kind of CHEEZY MELODRAMATIC CRAP that the Ramones (and maybe even Green Day) stood in opposition to. I'm not defining "Untitled" as cheezy and melodramatic by my own standards (although it certainly is). It is cheezy and melodramatic in the context of any notion of "cool", "hip" or "edgy" from the past 40 years.

For Simple Plan to fly under the punk or pop-punk banner AT ALL threatens the entire notion of punk, pop-punk.

Why should I care that Simple Plan is wack? I can always listen to the Ramones or the Clash and feel like "I GET IT". Well, I'm just scared for the kids growing up listening to this. I feel like they're being bamboozled! They are being tricked and soon their entire worldview will collapse in on itself. This strikes me as perverse and subversive!!! OMG, SIMPLE PLAN IS PUNK!

post-hippie domesticity

2005-11-11T14:28:00.000-05:00

NOTE: I started working on this post last week. It almost turned into a novel, so I had to reel it in a little...

Have you seen The Squid and the Whale, Noah Baumbach's semi-autographical film about his parents' divorce? I saw it last weekend at the Lincoln Center Plaza Theater at 62nd and Broadway. There were lots of old Jewish ladies sitting behind me. We could easily vibe-out on the Upper West Side old Jewish ladies but the movie is more about the generation after them: our parents!

This vibe is not explicitly Jewish, so when I say "our" I really mean "our" - assuming your parents grew up in America and didn't have crewcuts and go to Pro-War rallies in 1968. However, the vibe is tinged with Judaism in my vibe-consciousness because it has been framed by, duh!, my Jewish parents and some of their Jewish friends. If we want to take it beyond that we'll have to start bringing in that jerk David Brooks:

(From his recent review of "The Chosen" in the NYTimes Book Review)

A few years ago, I wrote a book about the rise of a new educated class, the people with 60's values and 90's money who go to Starbucks, shop at Whole Foods and drive Volvos. A woman came up to me after one of my book talks and said, "You realize what you're talking about is the Jews taking over America."

Let's save that can of worms for another day...

So, the Squid and the Whale takes place in Park Slope, 1986. Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney play the parents. Noah Baumbach's real parents are Village Voice film critic Georgia Brown and Brooklyn College MFA Professor and author Jonathan Baumbach. Blah, blah, blah - go see the movie for more on plot; we're here to know and understand the vibes.

Before I even saw the film, I could sense certain vibes. Take a look at Jeff Daniels:

He's got a great look in the movie. Very reminiscent of the dad from "Family Ties".

Know what I mean? Bearded, eighties, semi-crunchy - what should this vibe be called? For now I think the umbrella term for the vibe I'm searching out should be called "post-hippie domesticity".

It's easy to imagine a chronology in which each and every hippie sold out and turned into a yuppie in the 80's (or earlier). Hippie Johnny got a job with "the man", had kids and was eating Haagen-Dasz for breakfast by 1985, right?

Well wait a damn second! Michael J. Fox (as Alex P. Keaton) was the "yuppie" of the Family Ties family. Mom and Dad were post-hippie domestics! Alex's Reaganomics-yuppie-Gordon Gekko vibe was constantly at odds with his laidback parents. This is not to say that they were still hippies. On the contrary, they ran a successful and happy household. They weren't hitting the bong or dumpster-diving to feed their children but they weren't managing hedge funds or lusting after Japanese stereo systems either.

DAD = OPEN COLLAR, MICHAEL J. FOX = TIE

Sometimes this group gets lost in the shuffle. Maybe they all eventually succumbed to yuppie-values. Can you think of a living specimen in your own life?

I think I can, but it's hard to be sure. Having met lots of middle-aged people in my day, I think I can safely make a distinction between the different kinds of households - therapists, academics, people with media-related jobs tend to have earthier households whereas bankers and lawyers tend to have more glistening formica in the kitchen. Is this fair to say? After all, they're all sipping on soy milk from Whole Foods...

Hmmmm, maybe the post-hippie domesticity vibe is more pervasive than I first thought. Have you ever met a total middle-aged hippie? Still driving the VW bus, still wearing tie-dye, probably doesn't have any kids, never got a "real" job. Try to imagine one...

Now imagine the most tight-ass, corporate dad you've ever met. He wouldn't even wear sandals on the weekends. He's kind of racist. He listens to CD 101.9 and may not know who Jerry Garcia is.

OK, now imagine the adult/parent in between these two extremes: it's most of them!

VIBE PATROL:

All that Carnaby Street/Swinging 60's/If yer going ta San Francsico stuff is very youth-oriented. Live in the now! Do drugs! Free love! All of these values are at odds with the traditional notion of a family...

Does the cultural shift from wild and crazy hippie to post-hippie domestic parallel the musical shift from late 60's psych rock to the singer-songwriter movment?

Well, it would take a lot of time to sufficiently look into that. However, I can say that a lot of my post-hippie domestic musical touchstones involve singer-songwriters:

-Cat Stevens - He's always singing about children and stuff. This song has always been special to me. Mostly because Cat Stevens drops some seriously twisted grammar in the chorus:

"Give me all the love you've got...to me."

I've tried to put myself in Cat's shoes and imagine what he was thinking when he wrote that line. I guess the "to me" at the end is for emphasis, but c'mon! It does not work! Whatever, this is still a goddamn gem of a song! All about the pleasures of post-hippie domesticity - washing dogs, shifting logs, etc.

Cat Stevens - C'mon Baby (Shift that Log)

NOTE THE DOG!

- The mother of all post-hippie domesticity songs is "Our House" by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. This probably should have been the theme song for "Family Ties". This song immediately conjures images of a crunchy, earthy, deep brown wooden dining table kind of family.

I remember two summers ago I was subletting a Columbia professor's apartment with some buddies. For some reason, I was jonesin' really badly to hear "Our House". I was bumming because the internet wasn't working but then I went over to his relatively small record collection and found Deja Vu. Everyone that age has this album!

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young - Our House

Can you imagine a hit song about the pleasures of home life today???

OTHER VIBE ELEMENTS:

-70's Cookbooks
I'm not sure if my parents ever used any recipes from these, but the aesthetics of their 70's cookbooks really left an imprint on my mind.

The Vegetarian Epicure Book Two by Anna Thomas emanates some seriously post-hippie domestic vibrations; from the colors to the fonts.

The Moosewood Cookbook also has that earthy yet clean vibe.

- We could probably also throw "This Old House" into the mix; sensitive craftsmen working hard for the sake of domestic life.

Conclusionz:

As I said before, it would take a novel to fully explore this vibe. Let me know if you can think of other vibe elements from your own life or from the collective consciousness of AMERICA.

-The parents in "the Squid and the Whale" represent the post-hippie domestic vibe gone wrong! They are selfish and bitter. However, they retain enough of the vibe to raise some smart, sensitive kids.

- Remember my post about that lame issue of Vice? Well in that very-same issue, they interview Michael Gross aka THE DAD FROM FAMILY TIES. In the interview they call his character from the show a "boomer pussy".

Later in the issue, the "Vice Staff" writes:
Everything about this generation comes back to what Paul Begalacalled “the most self-centered, self-seeking, self-interested, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing generation in American history.” They are the "Me Generation”...

What a load of horse-shit! Sensitive, intellectual parents (aka post-hippie domestics) like the Keatons are not self-obsessed. The children of such parents who, in an effort to rebel against the positivity they grew up with, turn into rampant haterz are the "ME GENERATION".

FINAL THOUGHT:

Can post-hippie domesticity make a come back? I'm a little too young to have any married-with-kidz peers, but I can imagine some play-your-love-songs-all-night-long households springing up in the next 10 or so years.

Here's some hope from the NYTIMES:

Dr. Pennebaker, the University of Texas psychologist, has shown from an analysis of writing samples from 3,000 people taken at various ages that even the number of positive words people use rises significantly over time. The rate at which people refer to themselves, a measure of rumination or self-absorption, falls off dramatically.

People become more positive and less all-about-me as they grow older!

chilling with the ORANGEMEN

2005-11-05T12:02:00.001-05:00

Yo, I'm "BLOGGING" from Syracuse, NY where I'm visiting the famous Wes Man of Tennisman's Wharf fame. He's pretty cool in person although I didn't think he would like apples so much...JK, we go way back...

Some fun facts about Syracuse:

-Robocop is a professor here.
-The house from the Addams Family movies is here.
-It is very hilly, some might say the San Francisco of Upstate New York.

Peep this scary website:

Occult Reading

LAFFY TAFFY

2005-11-04T10:00:00.000-05:00

SO BUSY RIGHT NOW, BUT PLEASE ENJOY THIS OFFERING FROM MY TRICK-OR-TREAING BACK:

A TASTE OF LAFFY TAFFY

D4L - Shake That Laffy Taffy

This song is Halloween-y for many reasons:

-First, it's all about candy. Although, I heard it might not REALLY be about candy. My question: if "laffy taffy" is supposed to represent a "sexy" body part what part is it? Normally, when you tell a girl to shake something it's her ass. Maybe "laffy taffy" is about long, taffy-ish labia?? I'm not trying to gross anyone out. That's just the first thing I thought of.

-Second, the production is eerie as hell! It evokes vibe memories of i-don't-even-know-what. Maybe some really scary level in an NES game?????

Yo, while I'm at it I might as well post the all-time eeriest NES track. The theme from Friday the 13th...The Game!

Friday the 13th Theme

This game sucked, but I think that made it even scarier.

Shout out to Camp Nobebosco - 11 Sand Pond Road, Blairstown, New Jersey, USA where the first Friday the 13th was filmed.

MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS CELEBRITY SPOTTING 2!!!

2005-10-29T16:38:00.000-04:00

Last night I was walking to Dinosaur BBQ (which we should talk about later) with a bunch of dudes. At 116th and Riverside, we saw some bright lights and a gathering of people. When we got closer, we realized it was a movie-set.

"Yo man, what kind of movies are they making here?" I asked a security guard type guy.

"Some Indian movie."

We went up by the camera to see what they were filming and guess who I see? Abishek Bachan, son of most-famous-actor-in-da-world Amitabh Bachan, and Rani Mukherjee. I realize these are not household names in America but these two are SUPERSTARZZZ on the Sub-Continent. Even if you don't know them by name maybe you'll remember that Bollywood mp3 I posted a few weeks ago. It was from the film "Bunty Aur Babli" which stars, you guessed it, ABISHEK BACHAN and RANI MUKHERJEE!

IMDB tells me the movie must be Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna (can anyone translate that?) and Amitabh is in it too!

Unfortunately, after last night's BOLLYWOOD DREAMZ, I woke up to news of bombings in Delhi. Let's all hope for peace and positivity this Halloween/Diwali/Id al-Fitr.

On a lighter note, I found the video (which is really just a scene from the film) for aforementioned Bollywood song "Kajra Re" online.

This clip features Amitabh and Abishek Bachan. The main female performer is Aishwarya Rai, L'Oreal model and, some say, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN DA WORLD.

shocktober!

2005-10-27T15:48:00.000-04:00

NOTE: I started this post yesterday so there are some BACK2DAFUTURE moments. It might be helpful to draw some sort of diagram to keep it all straight.

Man, this homepage has really gone to shit! Some of you probably even thought I was dead! LESS-THAN-LIKELY...

Today is the THURSDAY before Halloween which means that in a few hours most American universities will be crawling with GHOULS, GOBLINS and SEXY NURSES!

I don't have a costume yet. For the past two years, I've been a RABBIT in a PINK SHIRT. I think I left my rabbit ears at home...

(I ENDED UP BEING A CRICKET PLAYER/SEBASTIAN FROM BRIDESHEAD REVISITED. ONE GIRL AT THE PARTY SAW ME AND WAS LIKE 'Y'ALL STRAIGHT OUTTA BRIDESHEAD REVISITED', SO I GUESS I DID A DECENT JOB...)

Halloween's not the only holiday this week. Did you know that Ramadan's been poppin' off since October 4th? Don't worry. It's not over yet. You've got until November 3rd to celebrate.

Don't go trick-or-treating at Muslim households until AFTER SUNSET! Would you want some little punk-ass in a Spiderman mask waving a bag of candy in your face when you hadn't eaten all day??

If you're too old and sophisticated for AMERICAN CANDY, you can say "FUCK HALLOWEEN" (to yourself or out loud) and wait ONE DAY later for DIWALI and chow down on some burfee.

That's right, the Hindu festival of lights is Nov. 1st this year, one day after Halloween.

In celebration of DIWALI, let's talk/think about the DIWALI riddim.

Diwali is the name of the annual Hindu festival of lights, observed through the rituals of lighting small oil lamps and candles and displays of fireworks, each symbolizing a renewal of life and spirit at the start of the Hindu New Year. Diwali is also the name of one of the most popular Dancehall Reggae rhythms of all time and in musical terms it too represents a new beginning.

You may not know this riddim by name but if you've ever listened to the radio or been to a Dirty Projectors concert you've heard it.

The first big US hit (or at least the first one I heard) to use the DIWALI RIDDIM was Lumidee's "Never Leave You". There was a remix with Busta Rhymes and Fabolous. You remember it right? It was real minimalist with those slightly off-key "uh ohhh"s.

LUMIDEE

Then that same rhythm (riddim) started popping up everywhere; Sean Paul's "Get Busy", that Wayne Wonder song with the awesome keyboard part, etc.

Hearing this rhythm all over the place made it seem very MYSTERIOUS to me. Who made it? Was the Lumidee song the original?

These questions are very easily answered in rock music:

- "Jump" is a Van Halen song. It is on "1984".
-Van Halen is/was a band composed of these four dudes.
- Van Halen covered "Pretty Woman". The original was by Roy Orbison.
-BAM! You're done.

I think this is the reason electronic music/dancehall/rap has always mystified me. There are all sorts of different versions of songs (remixes, extended 12" versions, dub versions, the same beat with a different rapper). It takes some serious detective work to really get to the bottom of the CREATION ladder in rap. Because of the dominance of the ALBUM in ROCKNROLL, there are DEFINITIVE versions of songs. If you wanna go seek out the demo's and alternate takes YOU CAN, but you're not gonna hear those tracks on the radio. Rap also has ALBUMS and thus ALBUM VERSIONS, but there is way more FLUIDITY in regard to issues of AUTHENTICITY, ORIGINALITY and DEFINITIVE-NESS.

Say you hear a RAP/DANCEHALL song on Hot 97:

-The on-air DJ may be manipulating it.
-The version you're hearing could be a remix or some sort of throw-away Jay-Z freestyle on top of the original beat.
-The dude who "produced" the song may not have MADE the beat.
-The dude who MADE the beat may not have COMPOSED all of its elements.

Have you ever checked out the credits of a rap song? There are usually four or five names there and you won't recognize MOST OF THEM. Quick: what's Snoop Dogg's real name? Dr. Dre's? OK, kind of going on a tangent, but do you see what I'm saying? There is more mystery in this music. Maybe it's just because I'm an outsider to these scenes...

EITHER WAY, I LIKE THE MYSTERY.

Anyway, the Lumidee song was NOT the first song to use the DIWALI RIDDIM. In fact, the DIWALI RIDDIM does not originate in ANY ONE SONG. It was birthed as a riddim. It was created by Steven "Lenky" Marsden, a Jamaican producer. In Jamaica, a dude like Lenky doesn't just make the beat and go looking for one rapper/singer to COMPLETE the SONG. The beat/riddim has a life of its own.

...because the rhythm sounded unlike anything coming out of Jamaica at that time, Lenky couldn't get any artists to "voice" on it. "Voicing", as related to Jamaican music, is the process of adding an artist's vocal tracks to a prerecorded rhythm; upcoming producers must persuade leading reggae deejays (the Jamaican equivalent of rappers) and singers to voice on their rhythm tracks. "Basically, the Jamaican artists didn't understand it so they weren't willing to voice on it" Lenky continues. "At the time it sounded so different, they wondered what I was doing. I got frustrated so I started voicing little (lesser known) artists like Zumjay and Assassin and I gave it to radio people to play. Then the big names heard it and decided to voice on it."

Greensleeves Records is the big boss when it comes to RIDDIM COMPILATIONS. I think Greensleeves may even own the rights to the Diwali Riddim. Lenky definitely has some sort of formal connection to the label. A lot of the rhythms are credited to specific production companies though. Here's a question: Do these compilations merely reflect the popularity of a certain riddim or do these compilations introduce the riddim and make it popular? I assume both statements are somewhat true...

These albums are compilations of different dancehall stars chanting/rapping/singing over a certain beat. DIWALI was #27 in the Greensleeves Rhythm Album Series. There are currently 76 titles. You'll probably recognize some of them. SIREN uses that weird synth sound from KILL BILL. BOLLYWOOD also known as THE INDIAN uses the same Lata Mangeshkar sample as that Truth Hurts song, "Contagious".

Where do we go from here? Maybe you already knew all this stuff, but if you're like me and find the non-rock world daunting, beautiful and mysterious you might enjoy ISHKUR'S GUIDE TO ELECTRONIC MUSIC.

So, in case you don't remember the DIWALI riddim here are TWO of Beenie Man's takes on it. Both are from the Greensleeves comp.
I don't find either of these to be particularly great. I would say go download Wayne Wonder or Lumidee, but still it's interesting to see how differently Beenie Man interpreted the track on different occasions.

Beenie Man - That's Right

Beenie Man - War is Over

NOW, why is a Jamaican dancehall track named after a Hindu holiday? Go "DECOLONIZE YR MIND" to find out.

MORE VIBE SCIENCE TO COME. LOTS OF REVELATIONS TO REPORT in FUTURE:
-W.B. YEATS was a VIBE-OLOGIST
-ANDREW WK is a VIBE-BUDDHIST with KEROUAC-IAN tendencies.
- THE LIFE AQUATIC 2-DISC CRITERION COLLECTION SET is SUPER CHEAP on EBAY.

Late-BREAKING News

2005-10-18T23:48:00.000-04:00

Bad news! I broke my left elbow this weekend. Examine this PRIMARY SOURCE DOCUMENT [an excerpt from an e-mail I wrote to Wes Man] to learn more:

"i broke my arm on saturday night. andrei and i were riding back from brooklyn. we were on the west side bike path and my gears kept slipping. my foot got caught in something and i flipped over. i hit my head (was wearing helmet) and all four limbs. i went to the hospital the next morning and they said my left elbow was fractured but not too badly. i probably won't need a cast. right now it's in a sling. i have to go see an orthapedist next week. it doesn't hurt too bad but sometimes it spazzes out and tightens and that kills."

Anyway, typing isn't as fun as it used to be, but there are still so many important VIBES to explore...

At a party this weekend I was talking to Carrie "rock the" Babcock, an ambiguously ethnic college student whose ancestors CAME OVER ON DA MAYFLOWER. We were talking about her dark features and how when she visited Morocco she was told she looked like a genuine Fez-Lady.

This conversation piqued my interest for a variety of reasons. First of all, did you know that Spain and Morocco share a border??? I was reading an article about Moroccans sneaking over the border into Spain last week and thought to myself, "WTF!?!?? I knew the Strait of Gibraltar was narrow but..."

Turns out Spain still holds some small territories on Morroco's Northern Coast. My mind was further blown when I learned that Spain doesn't even own the European side of the Strait of Gibraltar. THE UK DOES!

BTW, I hope they make this. Then we could roadtrip from France to Senegal quick-fast.

Earlier this month I also realized that Singapore is actually a City-State/Island with a population of only 3 Million. I'm not sure what I used to think it was but this still surprised me.

I used to love geography when I was a kid. What happened?

ANYWAY...

my conversation with Carrie made me think of something Bono said when he interviewed Bob Dylan in 1984:

Bono: There's another group called De Dannan. The name De Dannan has something to do with with the lost tribes of Dan. You heard of the disappearing tribe of Dan? They say they came from Ireland.

Dylan: Yeah, I've heard that, I've heard that.

Bono: I'm not a musicologist or expert in this area, but it would appear that this is true. Also, you know they say the Irish musical scale has no roots in Europe whatsoever, rather it comes from Africa and India. The Cartesian people, the Egyptian people, what gave them supremacy in the Middle East was the sail they developed. I forget what they call it, I forget the name of the sail, but this sail allowed them to become successful sea farers and traders and they dominated as a result of their reading, and that same sail which was used on those boats, is used on the West of Ireland.

Dylan: Is that right?

Bono: Bob Quinn made a film called Atlanteans in which this theory was elaborated. He suggests that the book of Kells, which is a manuscript, part of it has it's roots in Coptic script, not in Europe. It's not a European thing at all - it's linked from Africa, Spain, Brittany and Ireland, because that was a sea route. I'm not an expert. I shouldn't be talking about it really. But it's of interest when you think of it.

Dylan: Sure it is.

First of all, isn't it funny how Bono overtalks Dylan even though Dylan is the subject of the interview?

Second of all, Irish/Asian vibes!

I've always felt a strong affinity with the Irish. I vividly remember going to see "The Secret of Roan Inish" at the Angelika when I was 10. My family went with the Connolly-Sheehans who probably also had an impact on my predisposition towards the Irish. Once Noreen Connolly, the mom of the clan who has curly red hair, baked some Irish Easter Bread which was the best thing I'd ever tasted. Also, when their family came back from a trip to Ireland, Matt Sheehan gave me a very beautiful and mysterious letter opener inscribed with my name in Celtic or something.

I also remember finishing Leon Uris' Trinity in the Hoboken Train Station. The novel ends with some really deep and sentimental line about the sad history of the Irish. Right as I closed the book, an Irish dude came up to me and was like "Great book, huh?" Dude read my mind!

MUSIC TIME:

I can't verify Bono's claims about the Irish musical scale, but I have been struck by the Irish-ness of a record I bought at a yard sale in Montclair called "FOLK MUSIC OF AFGHANISTAN: Vol. 2". I have to limit my comparison to two mp3's, but maybe I'll post more in the future:

If you close your eyes when you click on these links, you can guess which recording is Irish and which is Afghan. Maybe it will be obvious, but still, aren't they more similar than you expected?

MP3 #1

MP3#2

I don't want to get into amateur genetics/ethnograpy here so let's not push this Irish/Afghanistan connection too far. However, I would like to note that Afghanistan occupies a certain place in the Western mind which complements the notion of Ireland's "Asian-ness".

In Rudyard Kipling's "The Man Who Would Be King", a pair of English jokers try to take over an Afghan tribe. One of them says:

"These men aren't niggers; they're English! Look at their eyes--look at their mouths. Look at the way they stand up. They sit on chairs in their own houses. They're the Lost Tribes, or something like it, and they've grown to be English."

Certainly, much has been made of the whiteness of Afghans. For example, the National Geographic cover featuring the "haunted eyes of an Afghan refugee's fears" has just been picked as the 1oth best magazine cover of the last 40 years by the American Society of Magazine Editors.

People have always been obsessed with this cover. Sure her eyes seem haunted but I think a major component of the fascination is the "That's what Afghans look like???"-factor.

Does any of this Lost Tribes stuff mean anything? Who knows? Maybe the musical connection has more to do with the ARABIC SINGING DIASPORA. Check the MELISMATIC STYLEZ on the Irish MP3.

I saw this in an exhibit at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford this summer. A bunch of British intellectual heavyweights were asked to make a chalkboard diagram explaining a concept of their choice. This was Brian Eno's.

SO MUCH INFORMATION TO PROCESS. WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF IT ALL?

cornflakes without the milk!

2005-10-14T13:18:00.001-04:00

PHOTO COURTESY OF ANDREI PADLOWSKI

SO RAINY RIGHT NOW and I don't have proper foul weather gear. I've got my dad's old Barbour jacket, but the sleeves are kind of short and the shoulders droop. Maybe I'd be more into this weather if I imagined I was in FOGGY OL' LONDON TOWN or, better yet, OUT ON THE WILD AND WINDY MOORS (HEATHCLIFF, IT'S ME...).

BRITISH/RAIN/GREY VIBES-

I think these vibes are very special to many people especially young American men of a certain style. Rather than elaborate on my perception of this broad and beautiful vibe, I'll VIBE-OUT impressionistically. If this starts to sound like a 14 year-old girl's CRUSH LIST instead of a SUBTLE EXPLORATION OF MIND-FEELINGS, then you have NEXT-LEVEL POWERS and should E-MAIL me: chadkroeger1@aol.com

I. Clothes

A. Barbour - expensive but handsome, originally made for British Country Gentlemen.

John Barbour was born and raised on a farm in Galloway, south west Scotland, second son of a family whose links through Scottish history can be traced back to the 14th century.
No one could know better than he what was needed to protect a person from the extremes of weather that he faced tending sheep in the bleak landscape of his home country.

Last weekend, before the rain started, I was walking around with Monica. We ended up on the Upper East Side right by the Barbour store. I looked in there while she went to a girlier store (Betsey Johnson?). Then we went to the Whitney and saw some avant-garde shorts by Robert Beavers. They totally had that mystical rainy-day feel. Bottom line, last Friday predicted this Friday and its RAIN/GRAY CULTURE.

B. Wellingtons - Should I drop $439 on a pair of Hunter Crown Waterproofed Leather Wellingtons? Do fine things produce fine feelings or would this send me to DIAMOND HELL?

I like these Argyll Full Knee Farming Boots better anyway. These are $80. I bet you can get a good pair of rubber boots at an Army and Navy store for way cheaper. Do I even want such boots? Rubber boots like these, although with colorful stripes and designs, are mostly worn by ladies in NYC. VIBEZ CONFUSED...

Still, picture me with blunderbuss and loyal dog tramping through Central Park in Wellingtons on a rainy day and you will forget all about Sarah Jessica Parker...

C. IRISH SWEATERS - I actually have one of these but the sleeves are way too baggy. I wear it anyway.

FUN FACT YOU MIGHT ALREADY KNOW: Every Irish family knit a different pattern into their sweaters so that they could identify the bodies of drowned fishermen.

Am I conflating Eire and Angleterre? I think so, but these things happen...

II. Derek Jarman's Jubilee

-This movie is mostly URBAN, but still fits in with my BRITISH/GREY/RAIN vibe. It may never actually rain in Jubilee.
- Jubilee is WEIRD and ARTY. Queen Elizabeth asks a wizard to show her a vision of the future and he shows her this crazy, punk, Communist, post-apocalyptic-looking London filled with violence.

LISTEN TO SOME AWESOME MUSIC FROM THE SOUNDTRACK:

Brian Eno - Dover Beach

This song is really great for a rainy day. This MP3 has some nice record fuzz too. Totally ambient and weird.

Suzi Pinns - Jerusalem

This is a sort of glam/punk version of the unofficial British national anthem "Jerusalem". The lyrics are from a William Blake poem which references the myth of Jesus' coming to England in his childhood.

III. CHARIOTS OF FIRE (the name comes from Blake's Jerusalem!)
-Remember those dudes running on the beach with that kind of faded early 80's film stock...

There's an eerie verion of Jerusalem on the Chariots of Fire soundtrack too. I almost put that up but instead decided to go with Vangelis' HAUNTING theme music.

You already know this song. It might be on a Pure Moods compilation. It's been used in many SPORTS SATIRES. Try to disengage your perception of this song from THOSE vibes and RE-CALIBRATE your mind to the BRITISH/RAINY VIBE of your dreams. See what happens. Nothing? That's OK. Maybe next time.

Vangelis - Titles (from Chariots of Fire)

I can recognize how CHEESY this song may sound. When I was a freshman I lived next door to some TRACK RUNNERS who would play this song in the morning before their warm-ups. At first I found it CHEESY too, but later I was JONESIN' for it. FEEL THE POWER, THE GRANDEUR.

Next time you're running ask yourself:
FOR WHOM AM I RUNNING???????????????????

I'd recommend seeing the movie. It contains VIBE-WISDOM that you may be unaware of.

CONCLUSION:

THERE ARE many places to go from here:

- The BBC's version of "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe"
-modern architecture
-Boards of Canada
-70's eco-thrillers
-late 90's Radiohead/global anxiety/airports/bleak technological future
-Kate Bush (already mentioned)
-New Jersey
-Brideshead Revisited (BBC mini-series and soundtrack)

Do you feel my vibes? I realize that this has been my most personal post yet and from an outside perspective may lack cohesion, analysis, explanation, etc.

I THINK I SHOULD GO OUTSIDE AND EXPERIENCE THE VIBE FIRST-HAND, OTHERWISE I'LL REALLY END UP IN DIAMOND HELL.

CRITICAL BEATDOWN

2005-10-12T14:10:00.000-04:00

I was chilling with my buddy Andrei this weekend listening to Billy Joel's "Moving Out (Anthony's Song)". Andrei noted that BJ sounds really angry on that song as well as on many other songs like "Pressure", "Big Shot", "My Life", "Still Rock and Roll to Me", etc.

Andrei's RIGHT! It's pretty easy to write-off the Piano Man as a PUSSY, but a major component of his VIBE is his PUNK(ish) ANGER. In fact, BJ is basically the Long Island Elvis Costello. He is/was AN ANGRY YOUNG MAN.

BJ's ANGER was not confined to the narrative voice of his songs. CHECK this passage from a BJ biography:

Although he had become a genuine star, critics had not looked kindly to Joel's music, and the pianist became a vocal opponent of rock criticism in the late '70s; he was known to have denounced Village Voice pundit Robert Christgau on-stage and then, as a form of protest, had torn up Christgau's reviews.

Some might argue that BJ's Christgau-directed rage is VERY LAME. Shouldn't BJ have thicker skin? WELL...

Let's look at Christgau's homepage so we can judge this situation like WISE KING SOLOMON (this may be impossible).

-Right off the bat we see Christgau proclaiming himself "The Dean of American Rock Critics." Whether or not he made up this description, he is putting it centerstage on his KIND-OF-BOOTLEG homepage.

I'm sensing some EGO.

Is it even cool to be the DEAN of CRITICISM? Wouldn't you rather be the Headmaster of an Elite SWISS BOARDING SCHOOL? I digress...

-Christgau's homepage has a huge database of his reviews. We can view BJ's ENTIRE CAREER through the eyes of THE DEAN.
HERE ARE SOME KEY QUOTATIONS:

-Piano Man [Columbia, 1973] - "Here he poses as the Irving Berlin of narcissistic alienation, puffing up and condescending to the fantasies of fans who spend their lives by the stereo feeling sensitive."
GRADE: C

A rock critic dissing fans who live vicariously through MUSIC and/or are SENSITIVE???? CHRISTGAU probably spent his whole life by the stereo feeling sensitive.

-Turnstiles [Columbia, 1976] - " As Joel's craft improves--I can recall four of these songs merely by glancing at titles--he becomes more obnoxious..."

Grade: C+

This review oozes BAD VIBES. What is the reader to think?

"Ah, the supreme and holy DEAN of AMERICAN ROCK CRITICS can recall four of Joel's songs by MERELY glancing at the titles. Surely Joel is getting better. It's a shame he's SO OBNOXIOUS."

Speaking of OBNOXIOUS:
-52nd Street [Columbia, 1978]- "Billy makes as if he really wants people to believe the words. Yuck."

GRADE: B-

Yuck?????? GIVE ME A BREAK....

THEN, in 1985, OUT OF NOWHERE:

-Greatest Hits, Vols. 1 and 2 (1973-1985) [Columbia, 1985] - "I give up--it would be as perverse to resist his razzle-dazzle as to pretend Led Zep doesn't knock your socks off. Songpoetry, rock and roll, the showtunes to come--such categories just get in his way."

GRADE: A-

WTF??? So Christgau finally came around after dissing BJ for years. He couldn't listen to any of BJ's albums without looking down on him, but with the GREATEST HITS it started to make sense. CHRISTGAU is a 1ST-CLASS POSEUR.

"I just like the GREATEST HITS"????

Compare this to Christgau's review of the Stones' 1971 Greatest Hits album, HOT ROCKS:

Hot Rocks 1964-1971 [London, 1971]
If you don't like the Stones, this might serve as a sampler--the only dubious cut is the live "Midnight Rambler." But if you don't like the Stones, why are you reading this book? Look, here's how it works. Except for Satanic Majesties, which isn't represented here, all of their '60s studio albums are musts. Couldn't even tell you where to start. Now!, maybe. Or Let It Bleed. Aftermath? Beggars Banquet? B-

Here Christgau is giving an album which he himself admits is FULL OF GREAT SONGS a B- because ONLY A DUMBASS would listen to SUCH a SUPREME and AWESOME band's GREATEST HITS. You should already be loving the Stones or else you don't know ANYTHING about ROCK 'N ROLL.

Christgau had to work backwards to appreciate Joel...

BOTTOM LINE(s):

- I'm inclined to side with Joel on this one. Christgau is a CLASSIC TYPE-A HATER.

- GRADING ALBUMS like HOMEWORK is LAME.

- I was watching Wall Street the other day. There's a scene where Charlie Sheen's working-class Dad chides him for working as a broker. "You're just feeding off of other people. You're not actually making anything."

Are critics the I-BANKERS of ART?

- HERE'S THE BIG QUESTION:

Is there any point in NEGATIVE CRITICISM?

I can see the point in POSITIVE CRITICISM. There is just TOO MUCH art out there. It is HELPFUL to hear about COOL, NEW art from someone you trust. It encourages you to CHECK IT OUT. Presumably, after checking it out, you will DECIDE FOR YOURSELF if you like it.

NEGATIVE CRITICISM will only PREVENT you from checking it out and THUS deciding for yourself.

OF COURSE, I'm basically just talking about NEGATIVE ROCK CRITICISM right now. If you need to criticize the government or your lover's handjob-techniques, GO FOR IT. That criticism could very well have a POSITIVE effect.

Yesterday, Pitchfork gave the new Kate Bush single two stars. I haven't heard the single yet, but as a KATE BUSH FAN, I want to. How does this NEGATIVE review do anything but CLOUD MY JUDGMENT? You can say it's my fault for letting it cloud my judgment. MAYBE YOU'RE RIGHT.

HOWEVER, the question still remains: HOW DOES PITCHFORK'S NEGATIVE REVIEW OF KATE BUSH BENEFIT ANYONE?

I don't think this question is easy to answer. We should all meditate on it....

Vacation Music

2005-10-09T13:32:00.000-04:00

We'll pick up on our Billy Joel meta-biography soon, for now I want to post an mp3.

NOTE: I have limited INTERNET space so everytime I post something new old stuff must come down. Since you are all my friends please feel free to e-mail me, come by my DORM ROOM, use TRADITIONAL MAIL aka SNAIL MAIL or stop me on the street to get an mp3 that you wished you had D/L'd. I also have a phone and access to a FAX MACHINE. ALSO, my favorite restaurant is Taco Bell at 125th and Broadway. I'm there at least once every two weeks so....

THIS IS THE MP3, IT'S A BIG ONE:

Bunty aur Babli - Kajra Re

This was my favorite AUGUST 2005 INDIA RADIO HIT SONG. You ever go on vacation and you keep hearing some song on the radio? Once I heard a story about a girl who went to the Dominican Republic and heard so much BACHATA on the radio that she STOPPED LIKING BACHATA.

One cool thing about India is that their own FILM and MUSIC industries are DOMINANT and SUPREME. That is to say that unlike visiting Europe or Japan or Australia (aka the 1st World, I'm not saying there is a connection, maybe there is? we'll talk about it later) where the song you hear the MOST on the radio could POSSIBLY be "BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMS" by Green Day, in India (and I imagine many other parts of the world) you will experience almost total MEDIA IMMERSION (could result in "culture shock").

For example, MTV INDIA plays almost NOTHING but Bollywood videos. MTV Japan probably has a 60/40 split between homegrown and imported music (EDITOR'S NOTE: I JUST MADE UP THAT STATISTIC. COULD BE WILDLY INACCURATE. PLEASE CORRECT ME IF YOU KNOW BETTER). MTV Europe is probably going to be 70-80% the same as MTV America. MTV IDAHO is going to be 100% the same as MTV NEW JERSEY.

See where I'm going with this? This summer I had some convo's with people from Connecticut and Georgia. We came to realize that the Classic Rock radio stations we had grown up listening to had VERY DIFFERENT PLAYLISTS.
On New York's Classic Q 104.3, we would hear a lot of BILLY JOEL. He is a HOMETOWN HERO. Not only were the BJ MEGA-HITS woven into the FABRIC OF MY LIFE, but also the FAN FAVORITES like "The Entertainer" and "Captain Jack".

Meanwhile, people growing up in Georgia would hear a lot more SOUTHERN ROCK. Now, we certainly had some Skynyrd on the Classic Q, but I am VERY UNFAMILIAR with the catalogues of ZZ Top, .38 Special, Charlie Daniels, etc.

MTV, the RADIO of OUR GENERATION, shows NO INTRA-USA REGIONAL VARIATION. PLUS, radio itself is being HOMOGENIZED by CLEAR CHANNEL, but you already knew that...

OK, back to the MP3. It's from a tape so the quality is NOT GREAT. Tapes are still pretty big in India and a brand-new, shrink-wrapped tape is going to run you about US $1. It comes from a film called "Bunty Aur Babli". The song title "Kajra Re" means "Your Charcoal'd Eyes". Indian Women use a type of Charcoal called KAJOL around their eyes to make them look DARK and SEXY.

I really love the descending melody in the chorus. It first comes around 1:40. This song is 8 minutes long, but you barely notice it. That's how it goes in Bollywood.; long movies, long songs.
I also like the song's percussion. Those fast tabla fills GLADDEN MY HEART. Even the cheeziest, wussiest 80's Bollywood song is still going to have some deep, hardcore tabla-playing. RHYTHM REIGNS SUPREME.

I have not seen "Bunty aur Babli" but I definitely want to. It stars Amitabh Bachan, Bollywood's #1 ACTOR.

THIS DUDE IS ALL OVER THE PLACE IN INDIA. In addition, to churning out 4-5 films a year, he endorses EVERYTHING. You could easily watch 3 of his commercials in a row, ALL FOR DIFFERENT PRODUCTS.

PLUS, Amitabh hosts the Indian version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" called "Kaun Banega Crorepati?". Guess what the top prize is?

2,000,000 Rupees or about $450,000. If we adjust for PURCHASING POWER PARITY, an Indian winning on "Kaun Banega Crorepati?" might be getting a sweeter deal than an American winning on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" I DON'T KNOW...

When Amitabh is locking in someone's answer he says "Computer-ji, lock in the answer!"

CONCLUSIONS:
-Bachata is one of the most popular musics in NYC. Amitabh Bachan is one of the most popular actors in the world. LET US CELEBRATE IT/HIM!

-I'd be interested to know how you like the song.

THE GREATEST MIRACLE OF ALL

2005-10-06T18:21:00.000-04:00

DID EVERYBODY GO REVIEW BILLY JOEL'S "THE LONGEST TIME"?

CHRIST, that song is good. I find the changes (and the lyrics) leading into the chorus to be especially moving; "What else could I do?/ I'm so inspired by you." Honestly, I should be singing those words to BJ, not him to me.

I was vibing so hard on this song that I felt connected to the Ur-Vibe. Some people call this cosmic consciousness. Can you imagine feeling so great about a song that so many people find lame? THIS must be how NOISE DUDEZ feel about 20-minute raucous, feedback jamz. I've been FASCINATED and EXCITED by noise music but it's never given me a heartwarming endorphin rush like POP MUZIK. However, I am CONFIDENT that it has had EXACTLY this effect on other people. Therein lies the Ur-Vibe, also known as the Uber-Vibe, the Over-Vibe, etc...

This Ur-Vibe doesn't mean that WE ARE ALL ONE. Our differences are clear. Like two drops of water in the ocean, we are seperate, but we are also both PARTS of the SAME thing: HUMANITY.

Woah, speaking of humanity, my friend Wes Man just sent me a pic of some sweet T-Shirts he's been making. I guess positivity isn't dead after all!

Isn't that awesome? It's based on a dream he had about an ASTRONAUT SLAMDUNKING. Travelling, indeed! E-mail Wes about getting your own shirt at: sirmiles [at] gmail.com
I'm sure he'll make you a shirt for dirt cheap...

OK, back to Billy Joel:

When I tapped in to the Ur-Vibe, I was compelled to GOOGLE "billy joel longest time best song ever." In the process, I started to understand the Internet more than ever before.

Quite a few of the hits came from NON-BILLY JOEL message boards:

ON THE LACROSSE FORUMS, the Internet's Finest Lacrosse Community, someone started a thread "What song are you addicted to right now?":

One user, the mysterious NRVLC, names "The Longest Time".

Other users express dismay/confusion at their own tastes:

LaXDaVe: "Mike jones is a huge fag who says his name over and over again like he cant remember it, but yet I still listen to his stuff...whats up with that?"

Sycamorelax concurs: "Back Then- Mike Jones... I listen to Mike Jones even tho hes gay."

mclax: "the piano man-billy joel.. i listen to it like crazy idk why"
EDITOR'S NOTE: idk means I DON'T KNOW for all you narcs

Over on the GovTeen forums (I'm not sure what GovTeens are but I'm pretty sure they are some kind of teens):

"Greatest song ever?"

sugardawg45328: "I have tons of favorites, but since I can only nominate one... I'm trying to decide between For the Longest Time by Billy Joel (though the best version is the one Rockapella sings) or Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) by Green Day. Hmm...

I think I'll have to go with Good Riddance because I like the guitar part a lot too."

searhorse gives "The Longest Time" a shout-out on the OFFICIAL BRUCE WILLIS FORUM.

WOAH, people really love Message Boards. These online communities have transcended their petty topics to become BONAFIDE FAMILIES.

More interesting: Why do lacrosse players think Mike Jones is gay?

LOOKS LIKE THE BILLY JOEL ANALYSIS IS GONNA HAVE TO BE A MULTI-PARTER.

Let's finish today with some biographical information on BJ:

-Billy Joel is from Levittown, Long Island, New York, a planned suburban community built between 1947-1951 by Joseph Levitt.

I think this quote sums up Levittown and, to some extent, Modern America:

"After the Cape Cod style was built out, Levitt began construction on the California Ranch style..."
- from WIKIPEDIA

FINAL THOUGHT:

In "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song), Billy Joel sings "Cadillac-ac-ac-ac-ac..." Does this predict Animal Collective and their rhythmic syllable experiments? Is A/C a synthesis of BJ and PW?

BAD VIBES IN VICELAND

2005-10-05T13:22:00.000-04:00

DO YOU EVER GET THE FEELING THAT YOU ARE SURROUNDED BY HATERS?

I think VICE MAGAZINE is often funny AND insightful. The latest issue, however, moves past ironic criticism to STRAIGHT-UP BRATTY HATERISM.

IS IT EVEN POSSIBLE TO CRITICIZE VICE MAGAZINE?
-If you call Vice racist, they will make themselves out to be SATIRISTS or perhaps POST-RACISTS.
-If you call Vice mean, they will call you a fag.
- If you call out a specific article, Vice will claim that as a collection of writing by different authors it has no responsibility for the opinions expressed therein.
-If I call VICE haterz right now, they can say that I'm missing the joke.

Maybe I am missing the joke. That cover looks pretty funny. Let's take a look at the introduction to the newest issue:

A LITTLE “F.Y.I.” TO OUR READERS
Vice isn’t American or Canadian or British or Black or White or Right or Left. With hundreds of employees all over the world, we’re a hodgepodge of a mishmash of a melting pot. The one thing that unites us is the same thing that unites our entire generation: a seething hatred of the generation that came before us. We hate the Baby Boomers. Your parents and our parents ruined everything and this whole issue is all about why.

Vice never never quite defines "Baby Boomers". Are they anyone born between 1945 and 1960? Are they Old Hippies? Are they liberals? Are they conservatives? NO ONE KNOWS! Vice goes after "Baby Boomers" however they can. THEY ARE HATERS FOR THE SAKE OF HATERISM! To me, this is worse than smoking weed and going to uneffective protests....

Here's a question from their interview with Steve Gillon, author of the book "Boomer Nation":

What about this war? It feels like they’re just trying to relive their parents’ past. “Mom and Dad had a war—we want one too!” The boomer generation is nothing but spoiled babies that never had any hardship.

WTF!! Don't baby boomers hate war?? They had the VIETNAM WAR anyway. I went to the Anti-War protest three years ago and it was FILLED with BABY BOOMERS. I guess they're talking about people like George Bush who by virtue of birth are baby boomers. This issue conflates Bush with old Hippies! VICE HATES BOTH OF THEM.

Maybe Vice is just reveling in RETARDISM here. Should I HATE them for that? NO, but it is unclear whether this issue is meant to be taken seriously. MAYBE ITS NEITHER TOTALLY SERIOUS OR TOTALLY RETARDED, IT'S INTENDED TO SPARK A DIALOGUE. Well, here is a dialogue!

THIS QUOTATION IS FROM "THE VICE GUIDE TO KILLING YOUR PARENTS":
THE NEW YORK TIMES
This “family paper” is just a bunch of sheltered, rich assholes living in the middle of nowhere and telling other sheltered, rich assholes what’s probably going on in the city.

WHERE DO THEY THINK NY TIMES FAT CATS LIVE? The really rich ones live in New York City. NYC is the capital of BABY BOOMERS! The statement above is probably just as applicable to Vice as it is to the NY TIMES. So what's REALLY going on in New York City? According to Vice it has been Andrew WK-mania, Electroclash and pictures of drunk white girls in their underwear at Terry Richardson's house. LET ME CHECK IN WITH THE PEOPLE OF THE STREETS TO MAKE SURE THAT'S WHAT'S REALLY GOING DOWN.

Say what you will about the Op-Ed section but the NY TIMES reports the mothafuckin' news. They even know what's going on in music! They've probably written about Cam'Ron and Dipset as much as Vice has. Vice is basically just the JUNIOR edition of the NY ELITIST/ART WORLD grown-ups division. WHO ARE THEY TRYING TO HATE ON?

SO, why did Vice write that? Is it to be funny? Just to piss people off? Be kind of ironic but still kind of mean it? I don't think they really want us to kill our parents. They just want to point out some problems with their generation. In doing so, they point out their own problem: SUPREME HATERISM. If there is in advantage in being a SUPREME HATER as opposed to being a deliverer of logical and pointed criticism, PLEASE TELL ME.

I could go on, but you should probably just read the issue for yourself. Here's one last thought:

There's an article in this issue called "ALL YOUR HEROES ARE DYING (THANK GOD)", in which Vice talks about the hypocrisies of John Lennon, Jerry Garcia, Susan Sontag, etc. THIS SEEMS VERY 20 YEARS AGO TO ME!

Here's what they have to say about Jack Kerouac:

More like Jackass Kerouac. Ten times more fag than either Ginsberg or Burroughs and only one-tenth the writer. His unbearably effusive “masterpiece” On the Road is the literary equivalent of the liquor-induced internal hemorrhage that cut him down at age 47

I'm no HUGE Kerouac fan, but he was a SMART dude. In fact, he knew Vice Magazine-types would be dissing him in the future. Read this quote from a letter he wrote his literary agent in 1965 about his ambivalence to publish a new novel:

...my "discouragement" stemmed from the fact that there seems to be a new distaste in the culture since 1960 for works of realistic sentimentality...a trend towards the Ian Fleming type of sadistic facetiousness and "sickjoke" grisliness about human affairs, a grotesque hatred for the humble and the suffering heart, an admiration for the mechanistic smoothy killer of sincerity...

GODDAMN, THAT IS PRESCIENT!!! I find it funny that he choose Ian Fleming, writer of James Bond novels, to typify this attitude, but STILL! Kerouac describes Vice Magazine to a T, 30 years in advance.

VICE MAGAZINE has built its empire by glorifying drugs and i-don't-give-a-fuck culture, but in this issue THEY dis the Baby Boomers for being drugged-out hippies and idealists. Is this fair or helpful?

Ironic or not, I'm starting to be distressed by Vice's CONSTANT HATERISM. AFTER ALL, HATERS ARE NOT CREATORS! Give me Paul Winter over a snide asshole ANY DAY!

MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS CELEBRITY SIGHTING!

2005-10-05T00:07:00.000-04:00

In my "NOW IT GETS SERIOUS" post from a couple of weeks ago, I referenced a record by Paul Winter called "Common Ground" that I'd been digging. I found it at the end of the Summer. I was first drawn to it by its dope cover featuring a Wolf, a Whale, an Eagle and a SWIRLY RAINBOW.

The music was pretty sweet too! Paul Winter is a jazz saxophonist who has been incorporating ANIMAL SOUNDS and WORLD MUSIC into his work for years. This album is from 1978. A lot of the tracks involve an instrument "dueting" with an animal; an African Fish Eagle goes up against Paul McCandless' unstoppable bebop oboe, Paul Winter duets with Ida, a Timber Wolf. I WAS VERY STRUCK BY THIS RECORD. It was an amalgamation of a lot things I'd been thinking about lately: conservation biology, New Age, smooth-ish Jazz, WORLD...

I was thanking my lucky stars when I found ANOTHER Paul Winter record at the Salvation Army a few weeks later. "Callings" has a cover very similar to "Common Ground". It is a DOUBLE-ALBUM from 1980 and features a CRAZY 20-page booklet. There's this giant map of North America (labeled with the Native American name "Turtle Island") that shows this mythical system of Animal communication; the Narwhal Messenger in Nova Scotia tells the Humpback Whale by the Arctic Circle who tells the Baby Seal in Alaska, etc.

This past Sunday, I was riding my bike down Amsterdam Avenue and I saw a crazy procession in front of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. There were tons of people in white robes plus a camel and some donkeys. I stopped to survey the scene and was about to leave when I started hearing some music. At first I could only hear some Brazilian percussion, but then as the musicians filed out of the Church I started hearing some smooth and beautiful SOPRANO SAXOPHONE LICKS!

The band walked down the steps and into the Church Gardens next door. A huge crowd was following them. I locked my bike up and went to get a closer look.
"Who's the dude playing sax?" I asked a reveler.
"Paul Winter", they replied!

UNBELIEVABLE!! The band played for a few more minutes. Paul Winter had two Parakeets on his shoulders. After they finished playing, I went up to Paul Winter and told him how I'd just gotten into his music. He was a VERY positive guy.
I told him that there is a band called Wolf Eyes (he has a song called "Wolf Eyes"). He said he'd check them out. He told me he'd be back at St. John's for a Winter Solstice concert in Decemeber. GOTTA GO TO THAT!

Here's an excerpt from his song Wolf Eyes:

Paul Winter - Wolf Eyes {excerpt}

It opens with a genuine Timber Wolf howling. Paul Winter responds with some Soprano Sax wailing. The writing credits say (Timber Wolf, Winter). The whole song is about 6 minutes long.

This is from the record sleeve:

This is dedicated to Jethro (1967-1973), the first wolf I came to know...

Here's another side of Paul Winter. This is a beautiful take on a Guinean folk song.

Paul Winter - Midnight (Minuit)

Both songs are from "Common Ground".

PARTING THOUGHTS:

1. That quote about Jethro reminds me of Timothy Treadwell from "Grizzly Man". Paul Winter, however, clearly has his shit together.

2. Animal Collective should be friends with Paul Winter. He was blending ANIMALZ, Brazilian music and hippie-ness since before they were born.

FOLLOW-UP QUESTION:
Is a New Age-jazz dude uncool because he SINCERELY believes in connecting with nature while a "PSYCH-FOLK" band going "MEOWWWWW" is cool because we assume they are IRONICALLY DETACHED? I don't know! You have to answer that for yourself.

I'M THAT VOICE UR HEARING IN DA NIGHT

2005-10-01T22:21:00.000-04:00

MADRE DE DIOS! I haven't expressed positivity on this website in almost a week! I had to write a paper on William Blake plus go to classes plus stay in shape and eat right plus watch the longest movie I've ever seen (4 HOURS!) plus see the Dalai Lama speak in beautiful Low Library. My friend Matty C saw that dude speak too. COINCIDENCE? I THINK NOT! People from New Jersey are naturally inclined to the spiritual. Let's discuss this:

1. NJ is almost the same size as Israel. NJ is 8722 Sq. Miles. Israel is 8463 Sq. Miles. The CIA World Factbook describes Israel as "slightly smaller than New Jersey". For Americans to think about Israel, they must first think of their own holy land: NJ.

2. Robert Thurman, father of Uma and Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University, first studied Buddhism at a monastery in NJ. His chance meeting with a Tibetan monk living in the Garden State led to a lifetime of devotion to the MIDDLE WAY. He was the first Westerner to become a Tibetan Monk. He is also buddies with HIS HOLINESS, the Dalai Lama.

3. My mom used to study Yoga at an ashram in Upstate New York. One of her YOGA-BUDDIES was an Indian dude named Roop. He firmly believed that he had lived in New Jersey in a previous life. THIS IS NO JOKE! HE'S PROBABLY RIGHT, BTW!

4. This summer in Haridwar (see VAY-KAY BLOG), Monica's grandfather kept telling us about how one of the other guys on the ashram used to live in New Jersey. He would crack up every time he mentioned it.
Some of you haters might think "NJ is a joke. This is why Grandpa laughed." You would be wrong to think that. The Buddha laughs because he has achieved SUPREME HAPPINESS. Grandpa laughs because NJ is an ENLIGHTENED STATE.

SPEAKING OF ENLIGHTENMENT:
I recently came to a new conclusion about Internet Vibes:
As the past fades into obscurity, our ability to discern between vibes is GREATLY COMPROMISED. Just as a 14th-Century Chinese Buddha statue and an 18th-Century Japanese Buddha statue compromise a single vibe to the average 20th-century non-scholar, so will Outkast, Lincoln Park, Animal Collective, Devendra Banhardt, Gorgot and Chopin all morph into a single vibe for the children of the future. I DON'T think this is a bad thing BUT I do believe that while we still can celebrate and understand the subtle differences between the vibes of our world, WE SHOULD.
All of this must be approached in the spirit of positivity. In the end, these divisions will help us to understand THE BIGGER PICTURE. They should not force us to CONFINE or DESTROY the bigger picture. We cannot be haters.

I can't think of an MP3 to go along with this post. However, to get ready for a future post on Billy Joel I recommend that you go out and listen to his song "The Longest Time." Think about the chord changes. Then think about Long Island. First think about your feelings about Long Island. Then think about a native Long Islander's feelings about LI. Then think about Billy Joel's feelings about LI.

I WILL CONCLUDE WITH A PICTURE:
This is a restaurant Monica and I saw in Delhi. It is indicative of a vibe that I may never understand.

Giant Squid CAUGHT ON TAPE

2005-09-28T13:52:00.000-04:00

The squid hunters themselves are agog. "Wow!" said Emory Kristof, a photographer for National Geographic who twice ventured to New Zealand in hopes of capturing giant squid on film.

TAKE THE TIME IN SCHOOL TO LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

2005-09-25T10:42:00.000-04:00

Last year, I started becoming fascinated by the AWESOME music I was hearing in stores around my hood; it had super clean guitars, catchy melodies and almost-robotic Latin percussion. I remember walking through the Morton Williams Supermarket on 115th St. and noting how the vibe of the music was almost as FRESH/CLEAN as Morton Williams itself, which had recently been renovated. Morton Williams is not the FRESHEST/CLEANEST supermarket in the world, but even kind of grimey supermarkets feel FRESH/CLEAN to me. Maybe it's the unlimited promise of foodshopping; "I could make ANYTHING with these bananas", "My pantry is gonna be SWEET", "DINNER PARTY TONITE!".

MONICA @ MORTON WILLIAMS, CHRISTMASTIME 2004

Most places with fluorescent lights are depressing, but NOT supermarkets. Man, I've got a lot of good supermarket/convenience store memories now that I think about it:

-@ a Hart's Grocery in London, 12/98: I was on vacation with my family and we hit up a Hart's to get some supplies. I remember: frozen Indian food, those diagonally-cut sandwiches in the plastic triangles, some U2 playing on the radio, Tango Apple Soda, hearty-ass British candy. It was CHRISTMASTIME.

-LAWSON in JAPAN:
Man, we really loved this place. We were hitting it up for ice cream after every meal. There was a touching tribute to Lawson written by an American expat living in Japan in the NY Times last spring.

-7/11 in Bloomfield, NJ: There was a time in my life where going here for a Slurpee was actually a special and exciting event. Tough guys hang out in the parking lot with their souped-up Hondas. You can make huge burritos in their industrial microwave. Come see it sometime. It's on Broad Street.

A few months ago, Vietnam celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon. There was a huge parade which included a SALUTE TO SUPERMARKETS:

Anyway, that awesome music is from the Dominican Republic and it's called Bachata. It was hard to find any information about it. I didn't even know what it was called until my creative writing professor told me. I wish I spoke Spanish. It reminds me of early Talking Heads. Please download these songs to your iPod and go to the supermarket. <----WHAT A CONSUMERIST/CAPITALIST THING TO SAY!

Anthony - Simplemente Te Amo

Vanessa - Ya No Te Creas

Both of these songs are from Bachata Hits 2005 and use variations on the chord progression of Pachebel's Canon.

2005-09-21T22:22:00.000-04:00

THIS NEW "SHOT HEARD ROUND DA WORLD" PROMO PIC JUST DROPPED. THE ONCE AND FUTURE BEARD ALEX FARRILL BRUSHED HIS TEETH WITH LUCKY CHARMS.
www.preyfortheprairie.com

The Shot Heard Round the World are kind of the opposite of Native American-based Pop but then you take a step back and start thinking about Reggaeton or some shit and then those supposed opposites seem like the exact same thing.
People who think Men and Women are opposites need to take a trip to the zoo.

NATIVE AMERICAN-BASED POP PART II: NATIVE AMERICAN BASED POP

2005-09-18T22:42:00.000-04:00

Coyote, the trickster, titled that last post!

Now, I will really talk about Native American-based pop!

In the New York Times Magazine last month, there was an article by Jack Hitt entitled "The Newest Indians" about the recent surge in the Native American population of the US. One source of this boost is the increasing number of white Americans discovering (legitimately or not) their Native American heritage. In a nutshell, it's becoming relatively cooler among middle-class white people to NOT be middle-class white people (BIG SURPRISE!). To gauge the harshness and/or fairness of the previous sentence, read the article for yourself here.

Anyway, this is not an entirely new phenomenon. Hippies have been wearing Native American jewelry and hanging dream-catchers in their VW buses since Jim Morrison took a walk in the desert. Probably even before that.

An important artifact in the long and complex history of Native American relations is the 1971 Paul Revere and the Raiders song, "Indian Reservation". This song is no obscure oddity. It hit NUMBER ONE on the US charts in the summer of '71.

In it, Paul Revere proclaims:

Though I wear a shirt or tie, I'm still part RED MAN deep inside.

This song, sung by a white man who spent most of his career dressing up as a famous COLONIST, looks like schlocky exploitative crap in 2005. However, it struck a chord with the Americans of 1971. Experience the tense and angry vibe of this song yourself:

Paul Revere and the Raiders - Indian Reservation

Two years later in 1973, another pop song about the Native American experience in America topped the US charts: Cher's "Half Breed". In the song, Cher, who is 1/16th Cherokee, conveys a sentiment that many of the "Newest Indians" could relate to:

I can't run from what I am

"Half Breed" has 70's-style string arrangements similar to "Indian Reservation", but ups the ante with a semi-tribal drum beat intro.

Cher- Half Breed

In 1986, Swedish pop-metal group Europe (famous for "The Final Countdown") took the Native American pop lament to an international level with their song "Cherokee". Songwriter/singer Joey Tempest lambastes the "White Man's greed" in the verses while solemnly evoking the tribe's forced relocation in the stark chorus:

Cherokee - marching on the Trail of Tears

There's a searing guitar solo that segues into a series of triumphant keyboard arpeggios, perhaps representing the possibility of the Cherokee Nation's return to glory.

Europe - Cherokee

CONCLUSION POINTS:

-Cherokees are THE tribe for a lot of people. 100% of the Native American-based pop I could think of was about Cherokees.

-Political songs are easy to dis, perhaps because the pop song is so low on the art forms-totem pole. Fuck that; these songs have heart.

-Don't waste your time studying Native American-based pop if you want to learn about Native Americans; this music is an entity unto itself.

NATIVE AMERICAN-BASED POP

2005-09-18T22:07:00.000-04:00

GREETINGS FROM THE ISLE OF THE MANHATTOES:
Today I rode my bike from the beautiful and mysterious Upper West Side of the Isle of the Manhattoes to the arguably less-beautiful and more-mysterious Minnehanonk aka Randall's Island, former home of the New York Cosmos.

It's a weird island (not as weird as Roosevelt Island, though, which we should talk about one day). Actually, it's an amalgamation of three islands artificially connected through paved-over landfills. It's a transportation hub as well, propitiously located between the Bronx, Manhattan and Queens. On this particular Sunday, I saw lots of barbecues, chill-out sessions and amateur league sports.

Moving between the islands of New York City on a bike, I was struck by the physical geography in a way I never feel when I take the subway from one hood to another hood; Manhattan is an island! Even when I stare at the New Jersey homeland from Riverside Park, I am so bound by cultural and personal geography that I forget that, like the Maharishi Yogi or Dave Longstreth's Don Henley, I simply live on a ridge overlooking a river.

This is not to say that like the oft-ridiculed cheerleader of Glen Ridge High School who was publicly amazed to learn that the Lincoln Tunnel is underneath water, I am a geography retard. I am talking about the multi-layered understanding of geography which I am exploring in my own mind. If this is not clear to you, it's probably because you are not me, but even this point is debatable.

DJ Shadow for High School Percussion Ensemble

2005-09-16T01:56:00.000-04:00

My buddy Steve Condo showed me this weird video. It's a couple of DJ Shadow songs performed by a high school percussion ensemble from Minnetonka, Minnesota. The man behind the arrangement is Brian Udelhofen.

This video is a great blend of awkwardness and dark mysticism; two essences which I imagine characterize the life of many a Minnesota high school percussionist.

MIA REMIX

2005-09-15T01:20:00.000-04:00

This is a remix of MIA's "Bucky Done Gun" that I did for XL's "Online Piracy Funds Terrorism".

I TOOK THIS DOWN BUT YOU CAN STILL DOWNLOAD IT FROM THE XL WEBSITE

Ezra Factory - MIA - Bucky Done Gun (Bachata Plantain Mash)

NOW IT GETS SERIOUS!

2005-09-14T22:06:00.000-04:00

YO! NOW IT GETS SERIOUS!
My name is Ezra and I'm back on the beautiful and mysterious Upper West Side. My senior year has officially started [SENIORS!!]. Anyway, I'm seriously going to start working on this blog because I think it's important to keep up with new technology and to organize thoughts. Plus I think I know how to put mp3's up and shit. Also, it's embarrassing that my blog is one of the least popular on the internet.
Enough soul-searching!!

Boy, I've been listening to such great records lately I barely know where to begin; stuff like the first Hiroshima LP, Paul Winter's groundbreaking animal sounds-smooth jazz fusion record Common Ground, Bachata Hits 2005! You gotta be kidding me! This is the best time to be alive and those three records prove it because this is the first time on earth that a guy could sit in a room on the beautiful and mysterious Upper West Side and listen to all three in a row. This is not to say that we live in a perfect world...

First things first though. I gotta get some shit off my chest:
I didn't have a lot of time to record this summer, but I did get started on a project that I'm very excited about. My good friend Andrei has been wanting to cut a solo album for a long time (he's a member of NJ noize dudez Gorgot). I helped him make the artwork a long time ago, but he never got around to recording some music to go with it.

This summer the stars finally aligned! While chilling at Wes Miles' house in beautiful Frenchtown, NJ, we finally got the creative juices flowing. In a short burst of creative lightning, we recorded two songs for Andrei's album. Wes, Andrei and I all contributed! GESTAMKUNSTWERK!

PLEASE listen to these mp3's and let me (us) know what you think! I could tell you more but the plot is clearly stated in the music. These mp3's are a little quiet, but don't worry about it.

RIGHT CLICK SAVE AS
SORRY, I HAD TO TAKE THESE SWEET MP3's DOWN. DL THEM FROM ANDREI'S MYSPACE PAGE

Andrei - It Ain't Easy

Andrei - Anthony

VAY-KAY BLOG

2005-08-20T02:12:00.000-04:00

Last week, Monica and I went to Haridwar to visit her Grandpa at his ashram. Haridwar is one of Hinduism's holiest cities because it is the point where the Ganges enters the plains from the Himalayan mountains. Some people also believe it's Vishnu's footprint or something (if you are interested in this please research it yourself). Millions of people come to bathe there at a spot called Har-ki-pauri. Monica and I both took dips there. It was cool!
Monica's grandfather is a Sanyasi. He lives a fairly ascetic life and wears only orange. He has reached a philosophical state of mind that is rare in the world of men.
His eyesight is in decline so it is difficult for him to read. Nowadays he listens to the radio and tapes a lot.
At one point he was chilling out and put on this tape he called "Water Sounds". It was some high-New Age, nature sounds music. I was like, Where'd you get this??!?
He said some American woman who came to Haridwar gave it to his wife. We asked him if he liked the tape. He said some tapes are quiet and when he feels like listening to quiet tapes he likes it.
Monica told me to explain New Age music to him. I tried:
"This music comes from California. It was invented in the 1970's by Americans interested in meditation and Eastern philosophy. It is meant to help your mind relax."
He wasn't too interested.
Later I told him that if he liked the tape, I could mail him some more New Age tapes. He said something to the effect of, "Whateva! I don't even like it!"
This story has two levels. On one level, there is the cultural loop of a Sanyasi at a genuine Indian Ashram listening to some weak-ass American New Age music and just being like whateva. That's just funny! Know what I mean? So much of New Age culture comes across as Hindu/Buddhist/Yoga/Zen-lite that by the time it gets back to it's supposed source (India, Hindus, etc) it seems so diluted that it's basically meaningless.
I think if you really went deep on the above paragraph in a convo with your friends you could discover so much more than I have. You might very well contradict me. Please share your discoveries with the internet community.
Man, that reminds me:
we also went to the holy city of Rishikesh which is near Haridwar and walked on the famous Lakshman Jhula. Rishikesh is such a mecca for Westerners seeking some of that "old wisdom" that there are all these "German Bakeries" and "Genuine Israeli Restaurants" with "Home-made Thuhini [sic]". Don't get me wrong; it's a cool town, but you see so many of these crunchy German hippies on motorcycles that you feel weird. Some places even sell hackeysacks! I felt kind of torn about that.
I saw this one hippie dude with bright, red hair and some tribal tattoos around his ankles. I think he was speaking French. He seemed like such a clown to me!
Rishikesh has so many Yoga centers and spirtual retreats; you know a fair percentage are probably bogus as hell!
Now, some of you (especially the sizeable German readership) may be wondering how I fit into the picture at a place like Rishikesh. You're right! I'm not being fair to those hippies. I'm just a tourist too. Maybe I see the bigger picture better than those hippies, but who knows!?? If they can back up that big hippie game they probably see the biggest picture of all and I'm just a squirrel in their world trying to get a nut. Those tribal tattoos looked pretty cool...
Also, Monica's mom warned us not to look and dress like hippies. She said that for Indians, hippie/backpacker types exude a dirty and perhaps offensive vibe. I can see where she's coming from.

The other and perhaps more important level of the "water sounds" story is that Monica's grandfather didn't really like or dislike the New Age music; he just experienced it. He refused to make an absolute statement about it. It is what is. Earlier in our visit he had the radio on and it was playing some truly shitty American pop-punk-pop.
Monica was like "Grandpa, you like this?"
He said, "I like what I have. I'm happy. If you worry and criticize everything you'll never be happy..."
I really respect his attitude about music. I can't imagine my Grandma vibing out to some pop-punk or New Age. Maybe I should ask her... The key point is that the man is still listening to music at the age of 80. Also, he is not a hater. I don't know if I can escape from the Wheel of Life at this stage in the game, but I can do my best to follow Balram's (that's his name) example and not be a hater.
I can try and be happy and find the life in all the music I think is crappy. See what a hippie I am? Me and Hippie Jonny are two sides of the same coin. We're the SAME SIDE, actually! Holy shit, I'm beyond Thunderdome right now! I guess I'm not really a hippie. I'm just a shitty old movie nerd.. : (
See where the WHEEL takes us? In a circle! Now i'm a hippie again...
OK, pizza's here so I gotta go. One last thing: I looked at the tape after our convo with Grandpa and it was from Bakersfield, CA! LOFL! I should have written down the other info about it.

get to know me through picx PART II

2005-07-20T22:19:00.000-04:00

Big thanks to Wes350 for pointing out my mistake in the previous post:
I am the man with the dawgs. Wes is on the RIGHT.
I was confused because I was thinking about when the picture was taken. Way back then, Wes was on my LEFT.

Here's some more pix to help you visualize my vibe. Soon we'll talk about other vibes (including one from AFRICA!).

This is me playing THE OCEAN by LED ZEPPELIN. Yes, this is a very challenging piece and I would NOT recommend it for beginners or intermediates.

This is my friend Rostam, Me and my gf Monica at a 4th of July BBQ and Swim City.

get to know me through picx

2005-07-20T21:22:00.000-04:00

ZONKER HARRIS DAY '03: I'm the man with the dawgs. On the left is my buddy Wes.

Welcome to my Homepage!

2005-07-20T21:11:00.000-04:00

Hey EVERYBODY!
Welcome to my homepage. My name is Ezra and I'm a 21 year-old college student. I grew up in Glen Ridge, NJ and went to Glen Ridge High School (the very high school of Tom Cruise!). Right now I'm finishing up school in New York City and anxiously awaiting graduation so I can move to Terre Haute, Indiana and live in the "REAL WORLD".
The name of my homepage is "Internet Vibes". Mostly this homepage will be about music vibes and Tom Cruise vibes. Please leave comments in which you discuss the vibes. My goal is to categorize as many vibes as I can.
My favorite kinds of music are rap and rock.