Brandon Burke

The Animal Collective record that comes out next month is going to cause some waves. You heard it here first...

I would recommend anything he's on that also features drummer Paal Nilssen-Love, as I find the latter to be one of the most exciting players around. This includes, among other things: * School Days - In Our Times (Okka) * School Days - Crossing Division (Okka) * Atomic / School Days - Nuclear Assembly Hall (Okka) Contact Chuck if you're interested...

A particularly alarming byproduct of modernity (read: capitalism) is the fact that we, as a society, respect otherwise dubious personalities on the basis that they have demonstrated an ability to manage funds and/or marketing trends. What the f*ck, man...

The only Pavement album anyone needs:

Only a couple pages left of Herzog on Herzog. Been really enjoying this series of late. Last one I read was Trier on Von Trier and next will likely be Cassavetes on Cassavetes. That is, once I plow through all the Herzog films I've been reading about...

of course Cymande is good. if you wouldn't have blown off that Chains & Black Exhaust comp i sent you, i'm sure you'd be talking about that too. what am i, chopped liver..?

Then maybe you can answer a question for me. I was listening to the OJC CD of "You Get More Bounce With Curtis Counce" on headphones the other day, and noticed on track 3 ("Too Close for Comfort") that the left channel disappears at 1:28-1:51. Do I have a defective CD, or do you hear it also? ← I balked on a nice LP copy of another Counce on Contemporary. Can't remembere the name right now but it too features Land and Butler. For those in the Bay Area, it's probably still in the new arrivals at the SF Amoeba. I'm leaving town tomorrow so I can't get it either way...

Fair opinions, both, but remember that lyrics in hop hop culture are as important as cadence is to poetry. Paying credence to one in favor of the other not only means you're missing out on half the content, you're also ignoring a crucial aspect of either culture. Rap MCs reverent to the culture understand that their role is equal parts post-scat singer and poet. I agree about 50 Cent but...guess what? He's a #1 selling pop star. That's kinda the way it works, man. I understand if your appreciation of rap culture is such that you only get glimpses here and there on television. That's how I absorb what little I know about new country music. Does this mean that all new country music is terrible? Certainly not. I'm not saying I particularly like it, but there's good stuff out there. Similarly, how informed would you find my opinion if I judged jazz music by what I saw on BET Jazz? Same thing. Back to the point though...50 Cent is for the birds. Eminem too. That stuff's awful... Allow me to present an example of some lyrics I find particularly good, both for their percussive qualities and the lyrical content. I tried to space them out into seperate lines so as to imply the cadences, assuming you don't know the song, which is "Triumph" by the Wu-Tang Clan (1997). The MC on this verse is Inspectah Deck. I bomb atomically. Socrates' philosophies and hypotheses can't define how I be droppin' these mockeries. Lyrically perform armed robbery. Flee with the lottery, possibly they spotted me. Battle-scarred shogun, explosion when my pen hits, tremendous. Ultra-violet shine blinds forensics. Fellow Wu-Tang member, GZA, who appears on this song later and is commonly understood to be the *deepest* of all Wu-Tang MCs, had this to say of Inspectah Deck's verse: "After I heard that I didn't even want to get on that song." Admittedly, that's some pretty obtuse stuff--but nowhere near as confusing as just about any song featuring Ghostface Killah, also from the Wu-Tang Clan. I've been typing this post for entirely too long to look another example up, but suffice it to say, Ghostface's lyrics are typically free association phrases that form neither cohesive sentences nor even phrases. Instead he combines images--often several nouns in a row without any "action"--in a way that takes the shape of both a mosaic of urban life and a scatter-shot, descostructionist, verbal, Jackson Pollock. (To say nothing, of course, for his particular use of vowel an consonant sounds.) In any case, I can't leave without giving you this particularly hilarious quote. This is Ghostface speaking about how no one understands his lyrics: "I don't give a f*ck if you don't know what I'm talking about--this is art. When you go see a painting on the wall and it looks all bugged out because he ain't got no benches, no trees there, it's just a splash. The nigga that did it know what the f*ck it is." I wrote a paper years ago about how metaphor fucntions in rap music. One of these days I'll dig it up and paste whatever seems appropriate to this conversation. Some of it is woefully out of date, but other parts are pretty good, I think. Anyway...

an amazing photograph from a Shepp/Moncur/Burrell/Silva/Delcloo BYG session.

agreed. those early Ride sides are the same way. one needs to keep in mind that the overall sound quality of a disc depends on not only the pressing (thickness of the vinyl, quality of the vinyl, etc) but also the way it was mixed before heading to the factory. some of those Creation sessions were pretty condensed, and you'll get that regardless of what format you buy. brings up the same old question: why shell out $20 for a 150gm LP when it's source is a digital master? doesn't make sense...

always a good idea...

This is not a dumb question at all. I think what you're expressing is a perfectly legitimate understanding of rap culture. But like everything else, however, there's more to it than that... As I see it, MCing is quite a bit like jazz in that it's not so much speed as it is *control*. Famed mid-80's New York MC, Rakim, admits that he modeled the cadences and melodies of his raps on bop and soul-jazz horn players. Give him a listen if you get the chance. If you neglect the words and pay attention instead only to the sounds, it's not at all unlike Lou Donaldson...only Rakim is a tremendously gifted lyricist as well. One of the chief tendencies in rap culture is the manipulation (read: deconstrucion) of other media. And these media manifest themselves in a number of ways: Anglo English, recorded sound, etc. Lyrically, this is often expressed by twisting originally intended (read: the canonical) meanings of words around by, for example, playing homnyms against one other. It is also paramount that one choose his/her verbage based on the percussive qualities of each word (the placement and selective use of harsh consonants, long vowels, etc). You can think of this as the "keys," "pads," or "amboucheure" of the hip hop MC. Musically, the guys who really appreciate the culture use only small portions of several completely different samples in a loop...a kick drum from a Dusty Springfield record here...a ride from a Grant Green record there...maybe the organ from a campy 60's psych horror film. (This says nothing, of course, for the fact that every sample has to be individualy EQed to work with the rest!) Add to this the necessary--and wildly ambiguous--element of *soul* and you've got yourself a pretty tall order, as creative and culturally loaded endeavors go. It ain't easy...

Kanye West is the Puff Daddy of the backpacker scene: an arrogant ass who honestly thinks he's revolutionizing music--not just hip hop, but music in general--by rehashing Golden Era production (Pete Rock, Diamond D, Lord Finesse, etc) for today's mega-huge rap stars...as though no one had ever sampled dusty soul records before. Sorry to be the old crumudgeon here, but c'mon...

I love that Colbeck record, and your quite right about the drumming...out of this world. (We've talked about this many times.) If I had that on LP i would have worn it out by now...

Mountain Music of Peru (Folkways FE 4539)

Drove to San Jose today to drop off/pick up some transcription discs we farmed out to an audio guy down there. Among the things heard on the radio was "Owner of a Lonely Heart" by Yes. Talk about not being "greazzzzy"...

every time it occurs to me to look for this, whatever shop i'm in at the time doesn't have any. O'Brien is fantastic!

me too.

I love that one too. Should also mention... * Mal Waldon on "Warm Canto" (The Quest) * Mary Lou Williams on "It Ain't Necessarily So" (Black Christ of the Andes) * Roland Kirk on "Moonray" (Out of the Afternoon)

This LP pretty much rules all the way through. As a sidenote, on the day that I brought it home (i.e. the first time I ever played it) my record player was still on 45rpm from the last thing I had listened to earlier in the day. Those of you who are already familiar with this record know that the title track is already a scorcher. Well... imagine it at half-again its original speed! I remember thinking to myself, "son of a b*tch, that's fast!" Then, of course, I went back into the other room, took a peek at the table, and went, "oh..". (I still play it at 45rpm every once in a while.)

sad news indeed. he will be missed.

I must admit that I understand hardly anything of what he's saying, just because of his writing style. My not being a native speaker might have something to do with it. ← Clem certainly does write in a specific and highly personalized style. That any one of us would not completely undetstand him is prefectly reasonable, I think. Those of us who do "get it" -- a qualification, it seems, based upon the books we've read -- understand that some concepts are best expressed in short, splatter-shot bursts of thought. I feel it's awfuly shortsighted of some posters to call out Clem's chosen manipulation of Anglo English as anything other than educated and purposeful. We all have our canvases...

Clem and I share, among other things, a Lawrence/Austin connection. He also sent me a list of 25-30 book recommendations over email once. Good ones, too. Flann O'Brien, David Mathews, etc. So any claims as to his "illiteracy" are...well, I don't even know what...