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April 30, 2004
Thong Songs: A Brief Appreciation
Some friends of mine are having their 2nd annual "underwear party" this weekend and they asked me to be one of the DJs. I had the honor of DJing their first underwear party last July and it was a ton of fun, a really crazy good time. I won't delve into the whole psychology behind underwear parties and who attends them and what they decide to wear, because that might take the fun out of it and I'd rather concentrate on the topic of underwear-themed dance music, since that has been occupying my head all week. So...live from the home office in Carrboro, NC, here is my own personal "Top 10 Songs to Play at an Underwear Party":
10. Justin Timberlake - "Rock Your Body" - Maybe a little overexposed at this point, but this song was transformed into an underwear party must-play the second it became associated with that one infamous act in which clothing came off and people were shocked. Plus, the beat has that undeniable Neptunes bounce to it. "....have you nekkid by the end of this song"? Hmmm, how about "by the start of this song"?
9. Jay-Z - "Change Clothes" - Another hot Neptunes jam, this one an ode to high fashion. Features the undies-centric lyrics "No bra with that blouse, it's so necessary. No panties and jeans, that's so necessary." Too bad the chorus is not "Remove clothes and go".
8. Kool Keith - "Photo Session" - This unlisted hidden track at the end of Sex Style has the inquisitive chorus "Can I see your panties, girl?". Almost a tad too slow for a dancefloor, but Kool Keith gets a bonus point for having the guts to actually sport some oddly colored bikini briefs on his own album cover.
7. Cymande - "Bra" - OK, so there's not even a mention of "bra" in the lyrics, but this incredible early 70s jam just has to be included on the list. Cymande was a 8-piece funk band whose members hailed from various Caribbean islands and "Bra" is a percussive-funk masterpiece that was heavily sampled in De La Soul's "Change in Speak". "It's alright", indeed.
6. Trina - "No Panties" - One of the filthiest songs on this list, but what else would anyone expect from Miami raunch-rapper Trina? The troubling chorus seems to advocate prostitution: "No panties comin' off, my love is gonna cost. 'Cause ain't no way that you gonna get up in this for free." Um, I guess she deserves some sort of credit for full disclosure.
5. J-Kwon - "Underwear" - This jam was just released and it's surprisingly topical. The chorus has the line "I'm in my underwear" and the lyrics actually describe hanging out at an underwear party. I guess that's what 17-year-olds do in St. Louis when it gets really hot.
4. Morris Day - "Fishnet" - This 1988 homage to a type of black pantyhose may not have stood the test of time the way other Jimmy Jam/Terry Lewis productions have, but I'm starting to think it might be a slept-on classic. "Fishnet....black pantyhose! Pink lace....shoved through the holes!"
3. Jermaine Stewart - "We (Don't) Have To Take Our Clothes Off" - Sure, Jermaine Stewart's 1986 smash actually advocates taking things slow and drinking "cherry wine". But a quick and well-timed edit gets rid of that pesky "don't" and turns this into a pro-stripping anthem. Trust me, people at an underwear party love hearing a party-justifying chorus like "We....have to take our clothes off to have a good time."
2. Adina Howard - "T-Shirt & Panties" - One of the sexxxiest of slow jamz. Adina answers Jamie Foxx's what-are-you-wearing telephone query with a simple and sultry "I got my t-shirt and my panties on". Bonus points for the hot remix with Cam'Ron, who confusedly boasts, "I'm naked wit' my boxers on". And this brilliant tune even spawned a response/variation from Lil' Flip, whose cough-syrupy joint "Boxers" celebrates the uniting of condoms and underwear with a "Horses wit my boxers on" chorus.
1. Sisqo - "Thong Song" - With its unforgettable "Thong th-thong thong thong" chorus, this 2000 hit unabashedly sings the praises of a turn-of-the-century underwear fashion craze. Sisqo barely nudges out "T-Shirt & Panties" for the #1 spot, partially on the basis of the superior remix with Foxy Brown. When Foxy raps "Ass so phat that it look like I got long johns on", she slips in a different type of underwear reference, thus demonstrating that she has a total appreciation for undies - one that transcends mere exhibitionism!
I'm sure there are some ghetto-tech or booty bass anthems that might be a little more topical than the Neptuneage at the beginning of the list, but such songs tend to be more about booty/ass, and DJ Assault's "Drop Dem Panties" is just all-out lame in my opinion. Other suggestions are highly welcome!
Posted by Tim at 09:15 PM | Comments (10)
April 28, 2004
Live on Stage
Despite what my last two posts might imply, I don't always leave live shows wishing that I had been watching the performer 9 or 20 years earlier. Last Wednesday I actually saw not 1 but 2 hot shows featuring artists who are making their musical mark right now. I'm starting to realize that for me, that sort of currency ("current-ness") carries more weight than I thought it did. I meant to write about these 2 shows last week but I got caught up in other deadlines...damn, I guess I'm already starting to have backblog!
Duke had their annual outdoor "Last Day of Classes" concert last Wednesday, and this year they lined up the chart-topping "College Dropout" himself, Kanye West. I was already in a great mood before I even got to campus, but man....throw in some perfect weather, a lax alcohol policy, and Durham's 9th Wonder DJ-ing a set of great hip-hop (including some of his own Jay-Z remixes), and the stage was set. UNC baller Rashad McCants made a foray into enemy territory and my pal John blogged some good anecdotes about Rashad and the other b-ballers who came to see the show. Dilated Peoples didn't play for some reason, so Kanye came on earlier than expected, maybe around 9pm or so? The sound wasn't very good (though it wasn't nearly as bad as Prince), but it didn't seem to really matter. Kanye performed most of his album, of course, but he also threw in many fragments of the hits that he's produced (Ludacris - "Stand Up", Talib Kweli - "Get By", that Alicia Keys song, Jay-Z - "Encore", etc.). That really helped pump the crowd and it got me thinking about how hip-hop producers are pretty much the chart-dominating rock stars of today. In addition to his DJ, Kanye also had some live musicians accompanying him...one of them was this really talented singer/keyboardist named John Legend. Man, what a soulful dude. I looked in the Black Album credits and found out that Legend is the one playing on "Encore". He's apparently got his own full-length coming out this fall...if that album has its share of Kanye beats and hip-hop guest stars on it, I wouldn't be surprised if Legend blows up and becomes the D'Angelo of 2004....uh, or something like that. One of my favorite parts of the show was when Kanye got John Legend to play instrumentals of hip-hop hits for the crowd to try and sing along to. After singalongs of both the Fugees' "Ready or Not" and Lauryn Hill's "Doo Wop", Kanye got in a sarcastic jab about Lauryn Hill! It was pretty humorous payback for Hill not allowing him to sample her song for "All Falls Down".
As the concert started coming to a close, my friends and I high-tailed it back to Carrboro to catch Four Tet at Go! Studios. I got inside just as the big-afroed genius behind Four Tet was building up a swell of noise on his multiple laptops. This went perfectly into this awesome song off Rounds (track 2?) where it sounds like a distorted guitar keeps cutting in and out because of some cable malfunction. From there on out Mr. Four Tet kept rocking the beats pretty hard and the whole set was a lot harder and crunchier than I would've expected based on the pleasant folkiness of much of the albums. One of those beats was so sinister and forceful that I swear it sounded like it could've fit in on a Wu-Tang record! The whole set was fantastic and Mr. Four Tet (OK, his real name is Kieran Hebden) wasn't able to escape without doing an encore, even though he had already closed those laptops. There was apparently a live Four Tet CD-R for sale earlier in the tour....before the show I wouldn't have thought that such a thing was necessary, but I'd really love to hear it now.
Posted by Tim at 11:53 PM | Comments (4)
April 27, 2004
Movin' Like a Tortoise
I've been on a rare show-going streak of late....on Sunday I finished up 90% of my last remaining assignment for school this semester, so I decided to go check out Tortoise and Beans at the Cat's Cradle. There was a time in my life when I would actually travel to far-away metropolises to see Tortoise, but I must confess that I've only heard a couple of tracks off their new CD and neither of those really grabbed me that much. But since it's not every day that one gets the chance to see one's former "favorite band" play a mile away from one's house, I suppressed any hints of "Tortoise-is-so-mid-90s" cynicism and entered the Cradle for what might've been the first time in....several months? Long enough to forget about the fact that it became a smoke-free club last fall....that was a nice surprise all over again.
I missed Ex-Models, but Beans (formerly of Anti-Pop Consortium) was pretty entertaining for a one-man hip-hop show. It finally hit me during one of his odder songs that his whole nonlinear poetry-slam rap style has an almost cartoonish Fat Albert/Mushmouth element to it that kinda saves it in some places while also making it wear thin over the course of a whole set. I tried to remember when I've seen another single solo hip-hop artist manage both the mic and the beats onstage for an entire set....I remember J-Live did it (quite spectacularly) for a single song ("Braggin' Writes"), but an entire set? Hmmm. As he did last summer when he opened up for Prefuse 73, Beans proved that the best way to deal with potential on-stage loneliness while completely entertaining your audience is to do your fusty old-man dance! The merch booth had free copies of the "Mutescreamer" video, which features Beans doing variations of this same dance in a snowy forest.
Tortoise started really strong with "Seneca", that perfect opener from Standards that starts with a blaze of guitar noise and free drumming and ends with a syncopated handclap jam. McEntire, Herndon, and Bitney all took turns behind the two drum kits and there was plenty of the double-drum action that I enjoy so much. Throughout the show, the background digital images/patterns were really great. But as far as song selection goes...almost everything Tortoise played was from TNT or after, and presumably much of it was from the new disc since I didn't recognize it. The one exception was a cool and significant reworking of "Magnet Pulls Through" (or so it sounded)...and then once all of the jam-band kids raucously demanded an encore, Tortoise came back and did the classic epic "Djed". I normally don't love Jeff Parker's guitar stylings, but he added some nice King Crimson-y touches to the early krautrock section of "Djed"....and then later in the song, a hot beatbox rhythm segued nicely into the closing mallet section.
All in all, the show was a bit unsatisfying....the rest of the encores (two!) seemed a bit lackluster, as if Tortoise really just wanted to quit and get back on the bus. I left thinking that as much as I had tried to be open-minded about newer material, I couldn't really get past the overwhelming obstacle that Tortoise and their new stuff just aren't very exciting to me right now, especially in comparison with how completely fresh and exciting and "now" they used to be in my eyes. I'm actually glad that the jam-band kids discovered them, because musicians that are that talented deserve an enthusiastic audience. And I don't begrudge them that one bit. Next time, though, I'll probably just keep myself at home and throw on "Gamera"....
Posted by Tim at 01:54 AM | Comments (6)
April 24, 2004
Me and My Friends vs. Prince & the NPG
The man in the picture above is performing in Raleigh on Sunday and Monday. The man he is caricaturing performed in Raleigh last night. Yeah, I plunked down $58.75 to see Prince at the RBC Center but now I kinda wish I could've had the chance to spend that same cash on a dinner/ticket package combo for one of the Chapelle shows at Charlie Goodnight's instead. But, alas, those were all completely sold out very soon after they went on sale.
Everyone I know who went to see Prince in 1997 talked about it like it was a religious experience...and the reviews of shows on this current Musicology tour have been pretty gushing for the most part. But from where I sat up in section 317 of the upper deck of the RBC Center, last night's show had a fatal flaw - the sound was absolutely terrible, really muddy and muffled and far-away sounding. Rawls tells me that the sound on the floor was pretty good and that some of these new basketball arenas are intentionally designed to trap the noise down in the bottom half. I would've figured they might've been acoustically designed so that "there's not a bad seat in the house" a la new movie theaters and the whole "stadium-seating" idea. Anyway, I probably shouldn't whine too much about this since I didn't exactly rush to buy tickets on the on-sale date.
As widely reported, Prince does trot out a lot of his old hits on this tour (which is supposedly the last time he'll play them). Unfortunately, many of them tended to be strung together in a megamix style....which I might not have minded so much if said megamix wasn't being played by the New Power Generation and its surplus of unnecessary horn players. Sure, it was kinda cool that one of the guys playing saxophone was legendary James Brown sideman (and NC native!) Maceo Parker....but to me, Prince's 80s hits just don't sound nearly as good when they're rendered as a continuous stream of horn-funk. The band would shift from song to song while the drummer kept on playing the same fixed backbeat....and to me it sounded like what a "Hooked On Prince" album might sound like if it was recorded by a very competent JBs-like funk band.
Overall, it definitely wasn't what I had hoped for, but I'm not completely sorry I went...some great moments included a seated acoustic interlude (featuring "Raspberry Beret" and "Little Red Corvette") and the encore with its sparser hornless ballads ("Nothing Compares 2 U", "Purple Rain"). And at least I finally saw the man, even if he was about a quarter mile away. Bonus points for the fact that immediately after Prince said farewell to a screaming audience, he seemed to be removed from the arena floor in a box a la Harry Houdini! Game, blouses...
Posted by Tim at 06:59 PM | Comments (3)
April 21, 2004
WXYC Won on Jeopardy!
....as seen on Jeopardy!, 04/20/2004
And the cold hard facts behind this "belief"...
Posted by Tim at 12:13 AM | Comments (5)
April 20, 2004
Slinged and Blinged
Yeah, the Grey Album media frenzy probably poured a little too much kerosene onto the already blazing Jay-Z Black Album remix craze. I'm all about sampling and amusing mashups and willful copyright violation and even just gimmicky ideas with overly clever titles. But The Double Black Album is just kind of monotonous and The Black and Blue Album is worth a few good novelty laughs until you realize how badly off-time some of the mixes/mashups are. So I thought I'd reached my saturation point with all of these Black Album offspring, but then I was skimming through Royal Magazine, which pointed me to a brilliant idea that actually seems to be implemented pretty damn well: The Slack Album!
From what I can tell, this DJ N-Wee guy actually knows how to make hip-hop beats and it's great to hear him chop up unlikely candidates like "Zurich is Stained" and "Here" and give them a clipped almost-Prefuse-73-ish bounce. And the one straighter mashup that I heard ("Encore"/"In The Mouth a Desert") is just genius with the way the "HO-VA" chant comes on top of those high squealing Pavement-y guitar bits.
While I was thinking about Slanted and Enchanted, I remembered that it actually came out about this time of year...so I did some quick research and found out that today (4/20) is the 12th anniversary of its release! In tribute, I listened to Luxe and Reduxe a couple of times today....and enjoyed every minute of it.
Posted by Tim at 06:56 PM | Comments (5)
After the Chill It's The After Chill
So, following up on my Sunday post, here's some After Chill post-mortem for those who are interested...the unsanctioned cruising festivities were a little different this year, because the town and the 5-0 adopted a clever "co-opt-but-weaken" strategy designed to prevent the all-out cruising. The organizers extended the actual festival to a much later 8pm and closed off West Franklin Street from the get-go....a sanctioned "motorcycle and car show" was scheduled for 6 to 8pm, but all I saw was a bunch of confused cruisers trying to figure out where to go. I was worried that things might not take off, but eventually people seemed to figure out that the entire length of Rosemary Street and most of the roads through campus would work just fine for cruising, cops be damned. By the time it got dark, the After Chill was in full effect, and I got on the bike for some cruising-in-circles of my own.
Before I reveal the jamz findings, some other interesting observations....first, TONS of people ridin' spinners (they don't stop!), much moreso than in past years. And a car without shiny rims was obviously just passing through. Also, once it got dark it became clear that a majority of those Escalades, Navigators, and Hummers had built-in DVD players....some with a TV screen per each seat. I even biked by one driver who was watching porn. That can't be good for one's on-road attentiveness!
As predicted, the song I heard the most was Usher/Lil Jon's "Yeah!" - clearly the jam of the moment if not necessarily the summer. "Yeah!" wasn't an overwhelming landslide winner, but when you add in several "Saltshaker" plays and the fact that I overheard multiple people actually imitating Dave Chapelle's imitation of Lil Jon ("WHATTTT??!? O-KAAAY!!")....well, Lil Jon clearly takes the prize. Especially since a lot of the unrecognizable/indistinguishable crunk sounds that I heard emanating from cars had that trademark Lil Jon & the Eastside Boyz beats/production. Perhaps one of these songs was actually the future "Jam of the Summer" that just hasn't been released yet? Who knows. J-Kwon's hot and poundingly sparse "Tipsy" (Track Boyz indeed, yes!!) was another very popular selection, probably not that far behind "Yeah!". But I'm starting to worry that "The After Chill Method" might be becoming more of a trailing indicator than a leading indicator. Maybe next year I'll lobby the town in order to have the festival moved to late May or early June when it can more authoritatively crown a song "Jam of the Summer".
Jamz concerns aside, this event was once again a fun and bizarre look at how a fairly laid-back college town can become utterly transformed into a totally different place for just a single day....I really wish someone would film a documentary about this whole phenomenon. Until that happens, below are some thumbnail pix of my favorite cars (click for larger versions):
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Posted by Tim at 12:36 AM | Comments (2)
April 19, 2004
Left of the Dial, Left of the Page
When Air America Radio launched a few weeks ago, there were reports that the liberal talk radio network had been unable to come to a deal with Chapel Hill's WCHL 1360 AM because Air America didn't want to syndicate some parts of their programming to stations that couldn't or didn't want to air all of it in its entirety. Thankfully, someone came to their senses and starting today, WCHL is airing The O'Franken Factor from noon to 2pm and The Majority Report from 7pm to 9pm. The station that brings you Woody Durham and Mick Mixon will now also bring you Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo!
In even more exciting news regarding local access to lefty media stars, NYTimes op-ed columnist and badass Princeton economist Paul Krugman is speaking at UNC's Carroll Hall tonight. It's worth noting that Krugman's 2001 and 2002 columns were consistently spotlighting just about everything wrong with the Bush administration and its economic policies, long before the recent crop of anti-Bush books started dominating the bestseller list. I'm skipping class for this one...
Posted by Tim at 12:32 PM | Comments (6)
April 18, 2004
That Summer Jam Screen
Finally, it's here - the day when a very important question will be answered. Yes, the day when we find out what the "Jam of the Summer" is going to be. Meteorologists and other weather-obsessed folks have their Groundhog Day ritual with Punxsutawney Phil, but for those of us who love the jamz and live in Chapel Hill/Carrboro, there is "After Chill", the massive bumper-to-bumper cruising spectacle/traffic jam that holds it down on West Franklin Street for a good 4 to 6 hours after the end of the officially sanctioned (and much tamer) Apple Chill festival/streetfair. Perhaps I shouldn't use the Groundhog Day analogy, as there is not a single revelatory "Here is the Jam of the Summer" moment, and of course there is no official ceremony with the mayor or anything. But what there is is this: hundreds and hundreds of cars from all over North Carolina, cruising up and down the street at 1 MPH, car stereos blaring with blazin' hip-hop and R&B, most of it precisely chosen to win the approval or attention of fellow drivers and the hundreds of spectators on the side of the street. Now imagine how easy it would be for a single pedestrian to sample hundreds of 5-to-10-second jamz fragments and start forming a good picture of what song was going to be the hottest, flyest, most popular and inescapable jam of the summer. It's almost like a "Caucus of the Jamz", a bacchanalia-cum-focus-group.
This listen-to-Apple-Chill method chose the Jam of the Summer with stunning accuracy for three years straight, even when I foolishly questioned its choice at the end of the day. Its dead-on predictions from 2000-2002:
2000 - Jay-Z's "Big Pimpin'"
2001 - Missy Elliott - "Get UR Freak On"
2002 - Nelly - "Hot in Herre"
Last year I went much later than normal and only caught the 9:30pm after-dark contingent....traffic was still bumper-to-bumper, and perhaps the musical mood had changed. As I biked by car after car, the song that I heard the most was 50 Cent's dour "Many Men". Not exactly the jam of summer 2003....and yet the first half of 2003 was clearly 50's time, so perhaps this was just a ratification of that fact. I think my methodology (the bicycle factor, the late hour) was a little off last year and I'm hoping for much better results today. My personal predictions? Well, I don't want to wind up being the weatherman who screwed up and called for an early spring, but I'm betting on either Usher/Lil' Jon - "Yeah!" or maybe some undeniable jam that hasn't graced my ears just yet...
Posted by Tim at 01:50 PM | Comments (0)
April 17, 2004
Caucusoid
This morning I went to cast my ballot in the first-ever North Carolina presidential caucus. NC normally has primaries, but just like in 2002, there are all sorts of ridiculous legal and political battles going on regarding redistricting....so the official primary won't be until sometime in late July. Right about the time that the Democratic Party will be tapping John Kerry as the official nominee at the convention in Boston. So, yeah, Kerry's got this thing in the bag and this "presidential preference" caucus is somewhat pointless (though no more pointless than an even later May primary). But I saw it as an opportunity to cast a symbolic vote. And given the likely ultra-low turnout, a symbolic vote could actually have significantly more weight than a normal primary vote would. I wholeheartedly supported Dean for over 6 months, I started pulling hard for John Edwards after the scream, and in November I'll gladly cast my ballot for Kerry (and hopefully Edwards). But today I took my 8 1/2 by 11 paper ballot and scrawled an 'X' next to the name of Dennis Kucinich. I am normally not a huge fan of "pure idealism" candidates, not because I don't agree with some of the things that they say....but simply because I'm too much of a math-guy pragmatist to give up a vote that could help steer the outcome a little closer to my set of preferred candidate preferences (which is why I need instant runoff voting!). Since that wasn't an issue today, I voted for the candidate who supports univeral single-payer not-for-profit health insurance, among other worthy causes. To be honest, I think some of Kucinich's adamant and almost isolationist stands on foreign policy and trade are a little unrealistic, but hey, so were his chances of becoming president. I'm really glad he's out there saying things that other more calculated politicians can't afford to say. Any support or delegates that Kucinich wins at this point in the game might go a little way towards keeping Kerry and the Democratic Party a little more honest and left-leaning this fall.
Of course the main reason that I voted for Kucinich is that on 04/04/04, he became the first-ever presidential candidate to visit Carrboro. I never thought I would see a Secret Service agent at the Carrboro Farmer's Market!
Results Update: Wow, caucus turnout was way lower than low...less than 1%. Almost 2.4 million registered Democrats in NC but only 17,809 votes cast today. Which I guess makes sense given how little an effect this thing has, how little it was publicized, and how there were only a bare minimum of polling places open for a brief few hours. Anyway, Orange County had a pretty decent turnout compared to most counties and Kucinich actually squeaked out a victory here in the OC. He also won Buncombe County (Asheville) and Watauga County (Boone/App. State). Edwards won the whole shebang with 51%, but Kucinich's third-place finish (12.2% overall) ain't too shabby and he'll probably get a delegate or two for strong performances in certain districts. Here's the official county-by-county results PDF and the N&O report.
Posted by Tim at 01:37 PM | Comments (0)
April 15, 2004
Something for the Radio
Some of my pals post the playlists from their radio shows on their blogs. I never thought I would wind up doing that, not because it's not a cool idea (it is), but because I never really do radio shows anymore. But tonight I filled in at the last minute....I think it was my first show in maybe 6 months?!? Anyway, here goes a rare radio playlist from me:
WXYC 89.3 FM
Wednesday, April 14th, 10pm - 12mid.
Trans Am - "Uninvited Guest" from Liberation (THRILL JOCKEY)
Magical Power Mako - Track # 12 from Cozmo Grosso (NOVEL SOUNDS)
N.E.R.D. - "She Wants To Move (DFA remix)" from 12" single (EMI/VIRGIN)
Hieroglyphics - "Love Flowin'" from "Make your Move" 12-inch (HIERO IMPERIUM)
Murs - "Freak These Tales" from Murs 3:16 - the 9th Edition (DEF JUX)
------ talk set ------
Anderson Moss & Group - "Zydeco Pas Sale" from V.A - Deep River of Song: Lousiana (ROUNDER)
Billy Childish & The Blackhands - "Chatham Jack" from The Original Chatham Jack (SUB-POP)
Arthur Russell - "The Platform on the Ocean" - from Calling Out of Context (AUDIKA)
Fennesz (feat. David Sylvian) - "Transit" from Venice (TOUCH)
Manitoba - "I've Lived On A Dirt Road All My Life" from Up In Flames (DOMINO)
Mikronytes - "Xeh" from live_src (CRANK AUTOMOTIVE) (by request!)
------ talk set ------
Otilio Portal - "A Romper El Coco" from V/A - Las Fabulosas Orquestas Cubanas De Los Anos 50 (ARTEX)
Ray Barretto - "Together" from V/A - Nu Yorica Roots! (SOUL JAZZ)
EPMD - "So What Cha Sayin'" from Unfinished Business (PRIORITY)
The Lafayette Afro Rock Band - "Darkest Light" from Malik (HI & FLY)
15.60.75 - "About The Eye Game" from Jimmy Bell's Still in Town (HEARTHAN/MORPHIUS)
Dead Moon - "Dawning of the Dead" from Dead Ahead (TOMBSTONE)
------ talk set ------
Battery Operated & Made - "Idrolyse Crac" from Aprotic (COCOSOLIDCITI)
Girl Talk - "Keeping The Beat" from Unstoppable (ILLEGAL ART)
Kenny Dope feat. Screechy Dan - "Boomin' In Ya Jeep" from V/A - Nice Up The Dance (SOUL JAZZ)
UK Apachie/Shy FX - "Original Nuttah" from V/A - Jungle Vibes (SSR)
Sixtoo - "Storm Clouds and Silver Linings" from "Boxcutter Emporium" 12-inch (NINJA TUNE)
Tortoise - "Five Too Many" from It's All Around You (THRILL JOCKEY)
Hot Butter - "Popcorn" from V/A - Super Hits of the 70s, Vol. 9 (RHINO)
------ talk set ------
Sufjan Stevens - "We Won't Need Legs to Stand" from Seven Swans (SOUNDS FAMILYRE)
Loren Connors, Neel Murgai, Andrew Burnes - "excerpt from Thomas Paine ("Where Are Your Bones?")" from V/A - No W... Now! (PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE) [this one's an anti-Bush comp so I'm giving it a hyperlink!]
Out of the new stuff I encountered, I was most amped by 15.60.75 (completely caught off guard by this one...an awesome Kent, OH band from 1975!), the always top-notch Fennesz, Girl Talk (which I've got on order for a mere 9 bucks from the fine folks at Illegal Art), and the late 80s Arthur Russell comp (which sounds like it'll make a nice complement to the excellent Soul Jazz reissue of earlier disco-y productions). The Magical Power Mako was pretty cool too. Last week I picked up the hot Murs/9th Wonder album...very solid. It's a little funny to see Durham's 9th Wonder riding the Kanye/Just Blaze "helium soul" production tip right after producing a Jay-Z track, but it all sounds great so props to a local guy who's really starting to make it big!
During-show transcription is kind of a pain....so by the time I do my next radio show, WXYC playlists will be live and direct on the WWW....I guarantee it.
Posted by Tim at 01:16 AM | Comments (5)
April 09, 2004
Dance Dance Revolution
After a much-needed two month break, the Bueno Love Baller Soundsystem is cranking up in preparation for another Hell dance party this weekend. The official reason for the party (not that a party needs a reason!) is to celebrate the 7th anniversary of Chapel Hill's coolest dive bar. But that anniversary is being celebrated on a macroscopic scale with a monthlong schedule of crazy events (karaoke, "Win a Date With Mike Ellis", Super-Trivia, Iron Bartender III, porn-e-oke, Malt Liquor Mondays, etc.). So Jeb came up with a special MC5-inspired dance party theme loosely based on The White Panther Party's 10-Point Program. And then the design gurus at The Merch came through with this flyer that goes along nicely with the "you'll twist to this as you raise your fist to the music" sentiment. I can't wait to play "Fight the Power" and show Condi a thing or two about how to testify...
Posted by Tim at 02:49 PM | Comments (0)
April 08, 2004
I got my domain back...
...you dudes is wack, face it, the Wu is back. After a couple of very frustrating days, this week's episode of "DNS Servers Gone Wild" appears to be coming to a close. I hope. Brought to you by the numbers 152, 2, 253, and 100....and the letters U, N, and C. Now what was it that I wanted to post again...
Posted by Tim at 05:38 PM | Comments (0)
April 01, 2004
Ain't That Swell
Too much going on in the Triangle this weekend....unfortunately, due to some previous obligations, I kinda doubt I'm going to be able to make a single frame of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. But I'm going to make sure and kick my weekend off at Swell, where there's another fun Friday night art opening featuring some work by my friend Maria. Swell is a cool secondhand clothing store and a fine addition to downtown Carrboro....plus, they're one of the few retail outlets where you can buy T-shirts by The Merch! Anyway, check the flier for the art show:
Posted by Tim at 11:45 PM | Comments (0)