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June 23, 2005

Gang Gang Dance

Here are a couple of blurry camera-phone snapshots from tonight's mesmerizingly great Gang Gang Dance show at Local 506.

Rototom-rock rules!

Posted by Tim at 01:35 AM | Comments (6)

June 18, 2005

M.I.A. Remixed

So as I briefly alluded to when posting my M.I.A./N.W.A. mix last week, M.I.A.'s record label XL Recordings made a few M.I.A. acappellas available on their website back in April. Their goal was to kickstart "Online Piracy Funds Terrorism", an "anyone can participate"-type project that invited folks to create and upload their own M.I.A. remixes and collectively build some sort of collaborative online sequel to the Diplo mixtape that did so much to amplify M.I.A.'s buzz late last year.

It's sort of fascinating to watch big record companies and other large corporations attempt to embrace the mash-up craze and other ideas from "remix culture". Because of potential liabilities and other legal concerns, these businesses wind up having to be very careful and calculated...so that they can simultaneously advance their own promotional goals without exposing themselves to any lawsuits. Last spring, DavidBowie.com partnered with Sony and Audi to give away a TT Coupe and a bunch of other prizes to the people who created the best mashups of one old David Bowie song and one new Bowie song from his 2003 album Reality. The mashups couldn't contain copyrighted music from any other artists, though they were allowed to contain various loops and beats from the loop libraries included with ACID, Sony's popular loop-based music production software.

This "Online Piracy Funds Terrorism" project also shows a few signs of having been meticulously cleared by record company lawyers. On the web page where one might upload one's mix, there's a clause that says the remixer confirms that "all rights in and to the remixed versions of the recordings" belong to both Zomba Publishing and XL Recordings. I haven't consulted my lawyer friends on exactly what those various prepositions mean, but I'm 99% sure that this clause nixes the possible use of, say, an N.W.A. track. And unless I finish up a Jacuzzi Brothers/"Bucky Done Gun" remix that I started playing around with, I probably won't be uploading any rights-ceding mp3s to the XL site.

Of course, I'm sure that Diplo never signed off on a similar clause after finishing the original Piracy Funds Terrorism Vol. 1 mixtape. And I doubt that the people at XL/Beggars really care much about the clause anyway, it's probably just a cover-your-ass maneuver while they look the other way. One of the guys behind mashup clearinghouse site boomselection.info humorously described the "Online Piracy Funds Terrorism" project as "a direct invitation to bootleggers everywhere to do the marketing people at Beggar's Banquet a favour".

If that's accurate, I guess that makes me just another remixing cog in the industry's promotional machine. But I don't really mind, 'cause Arular is a really dope album and I think it's pretty cool when any corporation actually seems to want me to rethink or transform its product in some way instead of merely consuming it as-is.

Plus, it's been a ton of fun trying to come up with new ideas for M.I.A. blends. My newest one uses the instrumental track from one of the freshest old-school hip-hop tracks ever: "On The Radio" from legendary harmonizing rappers Crash Crew. You can download it here:

Beats That Made The Crash Crew Bang

When I first tried out this mix, I liked how completely natural the "Pull Up The People" chorus sounded over that funky keyboard line. Those grimy-ass Arular beats are great and all, but I'm finding that M.I.A. rocks equally hard over synth-y 80s-ish funk tracks. Beats that make ya bang bang bang...

Posted by Tim at 04:43 PM | Comments (4)

June 14, 2005

It's Dark And Hell Is Hot

It's been over two months since the Hell 8th Anniversary shindig, and during these last couple of weeks I started to feel like we were waiting a bit too long to have another big dance party down in Chapel Hill's best basement bar. Luckily, the fiesta's finally going to go off this Saturday, June the 18th. The Bueno Love Baller Soundsystem will be cranking back up and playing over 5 straight hours of non-stop party music - some older hip-hop, some newer dance jamz, even some classic cuts from that guy who was just acquitted of molesting pretty young things.

Doors open at 9pm and the dancing keeps going for a solid 30 minutes after the last call for alcohol. So come on out and don't be scared off by the title of this post. While Hell will definitely be hot, the air conditioning system will hopefully be cranked like my PA speakers.

Admission to the party is free for anyone with a ticket stub from Saturday night's Lil Jon show at the RBC Center in Raleigh. And of course it's also completely free for everybody else...'cause we're nice like that!

I couldn't convert Mark D's flyer for this party into a post-able JPEG, so above right is the text-free version: an image of Elaine Benes in the middle of her "full-body dry heave set to music". In the spirit of Hell's favorite Thursday night pasttime, here's a trivia question about this particular Seinfeld episode ("The Little Kicks"), one of my favorite ones ever.

Q: What song is Elaine dancing to in this picture?

Hint: It's not Foghat's "Slow Ride", Elaine danced to that song a few episodes later.

Answer after the jump...

A: "Shining Star" by Earth Wind & Fire.

Hmm, since that image is on the flyer, maybe we should play that song on Saturday...

Posted by Tim at 11:02 PM | Comments (0)

June 13, 2005

Jugar Por La Playa

Disco Rodeo is a slightly more abysmal place to see a rock show than even The Ritz was. But when the Pixies finally played "Vamos" towards the end of their set tonight, I looked at the Tecate can in my hand and the "Bienvenidos" sign on the balcony ledge and had to smile at the fact that I was hearing all of that Spanglish in a space that normally functions as a cavernous Latino dance club.

Other random setlist-inspired observations:

During the year that my friend Dave and I rode around in his station wagon listening to Surfer Rosa over and over, I'm pretty sure we would have totally mocked the idea of old fogeys paying big bucks to see has-been rock bands play WRDU-sponsored shows at Carter Finley Stadium. Of course, I now realize that by going to see Slint, Pixies, and Dinosaur reunion tours in 2005, I am becoming my generation's underground rock equivalent of that late 80s Stones/Who concert attendee. But I don't really care, tonight was a fun time and a good trip down memory lane.

Even so, death to the Pixies. I'm not going again in 2021...

Posted by Tim at 12:32 AM | Comments (2)

June 10, 2005

The Four-Minute Mile

It's been a little over a year since I spent a whole two weeks hanging out in Oxford. The so-called "City of Dreaming Spires" has a ton of centuries-old University-related sights to see, a lot of very impressive architecture, and some really fun pubs. But while I was in town, I also made it a point to venture out to the Eastern edge of Oxford in order to see the site of one of the great sports moments of the 20th Century.

This is a picture of the Iffley Road track on which Roger Bannister became the first person in the world to run a mile in less than 4 minutes. Bannister ran his milestone time of 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds on May 6th, 1954. As athletic accomplishments go, it was more than just a new world record. Prior to Bannister's run, many people thought that the four-minute-mile barrier would be impossible for humans to ever break. After Bannister's run, some compared his accomplishment to Lindbergh's groundbreaking trans-Atlantic flight.

What's kinda cool about the Iffley Road track fifty years later is that, like a lot of other things in Oxford, it's not just a mere historical site - it's actually being used in the same sort of way that it's probably always been used. University students have free privileges there, and anyone else can actually go and pay a small fee to run the track and/or use the attached gym. I went a couple of times to run the track and measure my own mile time. There was some Bannister-related memorabilia near the locker rooms, but for the most part, the place seemed just like any other university track facility. Well, except for the fact that this one dude was running around the track in a shirt and tie:

Perhaps this an Oxford-only phenomenon that I don't quite understand.

Over the last few weeks, I've been doing a lot of stopwatch-timed jogging of my own in preparation for tomorrow morning's Race for The Cure. If anyone feels like sponsoring me with a last-minute donation towards breast-cancer research, please do so here. I won't be getting anywhere near a four-minute mile, of course, but I think I can definitely average a seven-minute mile. Or maybe just a few milliseconds under...

Posted by Tim at 07:19 PM | Comments (0)

June 08, 2005

Straight Outta Sri Lanka

I've long thought it was kinda hilarious that N.W.A.'s revolutionary Straight Outta Compton album ends not with one final statement-type track in the blistering vein of "Fuck Da Police" or "Gangsta Gangsta", but rather a totally good-natured party jam. I bet I probably hated "Something 2 Dance 2" the very first time I heard it...or I don't know, maybe it was actually the only song on the album that didn't scare the crap out of my suburban teenage self. I can't really remember. In any case, the upbeat dance tune is actually a pretty amazing slab of electro-funk, one that gives a big tip of the Raiders cap to Dre's background as a producer for The World Class Wreckin' Cru. It's not just the beat that makes the track, though. I always crack a smile and give a mental salute to self-awareness when I hear those naughty-word fake-outs ("Man, I don't give a.....") or the funny back-and-forth exchanges where the group members discuss in real time how the song's instrumentation ought to be tweaked ("What the hell, you think we need some bells?" "Yeah, homeboy, might as well.").

For the last several months, N.W.A.'s "Something 2 Dance 2" has been popping up pretty frequently in my DJ sets. Probably a little too often, to be completely honest. But sometimes I can't help myself, it's just such a great electro/hip-hop track and lately it's seemed pretty ideal for keeping a really uptempo dance-y set alive.

Anyway, in hopes of keeping "Something 2 Dance 2" kinda (wikki wikki) fresh (er, at least fresh to my ears), I decided I would attempt to change it up by trying to mix in some acapellas from M.I.A., a much more recent artist but one who also seems to enjoy landing her feet on both sides of that dance/revolution divide. M.I.A.'s "Bucky Done Gun" is basically an electro/"funk carioca" track anyway, so her vocals from that song seemed like they'd be a pretty logical match for the N.W.A. electro-funk. In the spirit of M.I.A.'s city-silencing cries at the beginning of "Bucky Done Gun", I'm calling this one "Compton, Quieten Down". You can download the MP3 here:

Compton, Quieten Down (6.61 MB)

Coming right out of the "Quad City Baile Funk" blend, this track keeps my mixtape zipping along at a surprisingly brisk 130+ beats per minute. I definitely can't keep that pace up for too much longer, so for the next round I think I'll slow things down and stay on the M.I.A. tip. After all, her record label is making it really easy to do so.

Big ups to Pat at The Merch for creating the visual M.I.A./N.W.A. mash-up for me. I've always loved that N.W.A. font. Incidentally, The Merch's online shop has been open for business for a little while now, so go buy some dope limited edition T-shirts before they all run out, making way for the next round of Merch designs.

Posted by Tim at 01:12 AM | Comments (2)

June 01, 2005

The News and Observer and Blogs

Last month The News and Observer started up Tar Heel Blogwatch, a local-oriented meta-blog that, in The N&O's words, "spotlights notable posts by bloggers in the Triangle and Eastern North Carolina". Last night, my fellow blogger and former Independent music editor Karen Mann was kind enough to post a link to my recent bout of Pyewacket nostalgia. Now I happen to like where The N&O is going with their new online content and I definitely appreciate the hyperlink (thanks Karen!). But there's actually a bit of irony in the fact that The N&O website is now linking to that specific post of mine.

See, when I started writing my Pyewacket post a couple of days ago, I was hoping to include links to a couple of pretty detailed Chapel Hill News articles that came out a few days before and a few days after Pyewacket closed on 5/30/2002. Kirk Ross wrote a 5/26/2002 story about owner David Bacon's decision to close Pyewacket, and Dave Hart penned a 6/2/2002 obituary that went into way more detail about Pyewacket's last night than my own brief personal account did. But the old links to those two stories must've stopped working when The News and Observer took over the online Chapel Hill News site, and I had to use my N&O subscription number to log into the paper's text-only archives simply to be able to read those articles again. If you're not a 7-day N&O subscriber like I am, you can't even read these particular articles without paying $1.95 for a single article or $4.95 for a one-day pass. And of course the possibility of anyone hyperlinking to the stories is out of the question if the full text is walled off behind a login screen and/or credit card form.

I understand that maintaining newspaper archives isn't necessarily cheap and that charging a small fee for older articles is often a pretty reasonable business model. But in this case, The N&O lost an admittedly very minor opportunity to gain a few extra eyeballs - eyeballs that could've at least viewed some ads or maybe even clicked through to some other parts of the online paper. If The News and Observer is pretty serious about its new interest in local blogging, maybe they would be willing to create or enable some sort of N&O version of The New York Times Link Generator, which generates persistent weblog-safe links to articles for which regular NYTimes.com readers eventually have to pay. Ideally, subscribers could have the ability to hyperlink to N&O articles that few casual blog-readers without N&O subscriptions would ever discover in the first place, much less pay money for.

Of course, maybe The N&O could just liberate those old Chapel Hill News articles entirely and restore the free CHN website to its former user-friendly state. I mean, after all, we are talking about a twice-weekly paper that shows up for free in people's driveways...

Posted by Tim at 09:43 PM | Comments (0)