http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTEgI-virsY
This year, these are things that won't be memories or articles or song associations for some time — not until I can ruminate will they become important life-building events. Still, this song might be a theme song for the first improv shows I did here at college in front of an audience, just a semester ago. I know I'll have more to say in a few years; I'll be able to attribute more to this song, to say what it got me though, to, away from; here, it's just an association, no context. Memories need fermenting before they can be strung up like negatives and inspected.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Monday, April 29, 2013
Soul Flower (Remix) — The Pharcyde
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Oo2XO_ub18
Compare this to the original, another similar, good, but very, very different song. Stil, the vibe here is amazing, a sunny day and a smile and a swing in your step all in one, complete and self-sure and brilliant, carefree. It's ambitious rap, and it's totally justified in how amazing it is.
Talking about hip-hop with a friend of mine, it becomes apparent that one of the reasons it's often inaccessible is that it's incohesive. Each line of poetry is tonally and rhythmically related to each other, but often they don't form a strict story, the way songs often do. It's free-form, live-as-thought, clever and cheeky and relevant as hell.
Compare this to the original, another similar, good, but very, very different song. Stil, the vibe here is amazing, a sunny day and a smile and a swing in your step all in one, complete and self-sure and brilliant, carefree. It's ambitious rap, and it's totally justified in how amazing it is.
Talking about hip-hop with a friend of mine, it becomes apparent that one of the reasons it's often inaccessible is that it's incohesive. Each line of poetry is tonally and rhythmically related to each other, but often they don't form a strict story, the way songs often do. It's free-form, live-as-thought, clever and cheeky and relevant as hell.
Twistin' the Night Away — Sam Cooke
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSoPeZMHMf4
This song, as the boundary between jazz/swing/bop to rock'n'roll. Not rock, but not big band; there's a showmanship that befits real rock'n'roll, Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry and maybe the Temptations. Maybe more R&B.
This song, tied to my parents' joint 50th birthday parties; there was a playlist, full of decades of music, from the old to the new; a retrospective through their lives. I got a copy of the playlist, and this song stuck. It's so modern in its sensibilities; it starts with a tag, it balances equal time of vocals and not, even within verses; there's a horn callback; it's swung but steady; it's dance music, endlessly danceable, soulful and happy and charmed and perfectly befitting of my parents' great big party, full of dance and food and alcohol. I went to bed at ten.
This song, as the boundary between jazz/swing/bop to rock'n'roll. Not rock, but not big band; there's a showmanship that befits real rock'n'roll, Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry and maybe the Temptations. Maybe more R&B.
This song, tied to my parents' joint 50th birthday parties; there was a playlist, full of decades of music, from the old to the new; a retrospective through their lives. I got a copy of the playlist, and this song stuck. It's so modern in its sensibilities; it starts with a tag, it balances equal time of vocals and not, even within verses; there's a horn callback; it's swung but steady; it's dance music, endlessly danceable, soulful and happy and charmed and perfectly befitting of my parents' great big party, full of dance and food and alcohol. I went to bed at ten.
Sunday, April 28, 2013
ILLYTAL — The ILLZ (Portishead Remix)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHjcaBvJVqQ
I thought The ILLZ was a big, famous old rapper that Portishead got a hold of and remixed; some research shows the opposite; Portishead is the bigger of the two groups, and Delgis Mustafa, a brilliant young rapper, got a hold of it and chopped it up for his own use. As such, it's brilliant, not a sample but a complete remaster, new content, context and meaning; clever and sharp and lyrically impressive, but gets more credit for fooling me, sounding like an old master whose vocals had been stolen and set to other backgrounds. Phenomenal.
I thought The ILLZ was a big, famous old rapper that Portishead got a hold of and remixed; some research shows the opposite; Portishead is the bigger of the two groups, and Delgis Mustafa, a brilliant young rapper, got a hold of it and chopped it up for his own use. As such, it's brilliant, not a sample but a complete remaster, new content, context and meaning; clever and sharp and lyrically impressive, but gets more credit for fooling me, sounding like an old master whose vocals had been stolen and set to other backgrounds. Phenomenal.
Can't Keep It In — Cat Stevens
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zT2YU6-cB0
Tied again and again to travel; this, I showed to a friend who wanted music, asked for something with dynamics, that grew from simplicity into exquisite complexity; this, I showed my mother, driving south along the Henry Hudson parkway, passing 168th and Fairway, rediscovering old Cat Stevens from her youth; this, I listened to on the bus up to Bear Mountain, psyching myself up for my last Spirit Day; this, on the plane high over Pennsylvania coming home to New York for the first time; this, driving in the car to Illinois for the first time. Activity releases emotion; transportation is activity without the visceral, cathartic motion of exercise When we move, our souls are jetlagged behind us; the way to keep up is with music, to feel at such heights as you would if you had to walk the whole way.
Tied again and again to travel; this, I showed to a friend who wanted music, asked for something with dynamics, that grew from simplicity into exquisite complexity; this, I showed my mother, driving south along the Henry Hudson parkway, passing 168th and Fairway, rediscovering old Cat Stevens from her youth; this, I listened to on the bus up to Bear Mountain, psyching myself up for my last Spirit Day; this, on the plane high over Pennsylvania coming home to New York for the first time; this, driving in the car to Illinois for the first time. Activity releases emotion; transportation is activity without the visceral, cathartic motion of exercise When we move, our souls are jetlagged behind us; the way to keep up is with music, to feel at such heights as you would if you had to walk the whole way.
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Lover's Lane — Squirrel Nut Zippers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4ssP8Uy0QI
Senior year, midtown, 34th street and eighth avenue, maybe — industrial area, near the bus terminal and the subway junctions, old shipping docks and new porn stores, there's a little swing dance place two flights up with a view over the nighttime Hudson. I'd just begun to do swing dance in public, coerced and convinced and encouraged and finally broken through the fear and apprehension into social dance, thrilled, walking to the subway, riding home with a joy in my heart, listening to SNZ, dancing all along the street, a thursday night with school the next day, it's 1am, but I didn't care — I'd found it.
Senior year, midtown, 34th street and eighth avenue, maybe — industrial area, near the bus terminal and the subway junctions, old shipping docks and new porn stores, there's a little swing dance place two flights up with a view over the nighttime Hudson. I'd just begun to do swing dance in public, coerced and convinced and encouraged and finally broken through the fear and apprehension into social dance, thrilled, walking to the subway, riding home with a joy in my heart, listening to SNZ, dancing all along the street, a thursday night with school the next day, it's 1am, but I didn't care — I'd found it.
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