My latest post at The Post & Email news site.   Please click on the image below to be redirected to the full article.

Solitary 3.0’s #5 checks in with us here at I’m Not Here To Make Friends.

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FULL CIRCLE invites women to come together in a warm, supportive and fun space to spend a few hours learning, practicing and sharing. Take charge of your own wellbeing. Take home what you learn and help your family.
You will learn the physiology and psychology of women and stress; how stress affects your nervous system; the role of hormones in your stress reactions; the connection between emotions, food and stress; how to restore your equilibrium and heal the damage.
You will practice yoga, breathing techniques, meditation and ways to restore equilibrium “in the moment” and build your stress resistance.
You will share challenges and successes with each other, exchange ideas that expand your “library of options”

Are big shoulders over? Did anyone wear them again before they were ‘over’? Does it really matter?

I don’t care. This top, from Full Circle, looks good and I’d wear it. That’s what counts.

A

Grumpy Grandpa was lurking in the shadows. Grumpy Grandpa wields Walking Cane of Grumpiness. Grumpy Grandpa attacks with grumpiness and hits for 27 points of grumpy damage! You flee. Walking on Manicured Lawn bonus fades…

So. Would you rather be attacked by a grumpy grandpa or a grue? I know. It’s a tough choice that could go either way.

Ooops. I just let that cat out of the bag. Yeah, I’m a grandpa. If you are super clever, you can now safely deduce I’m at least 18 years of age or older. Approximately. Yeah, I like to be mysterious that way and keep folks guessing.

Today is also my birthday. Yawn. So the fuck what? Some people think that is a day worthy of celebration. First of all, I’m not so sure I was birthed. I have a strong suspicion I was hatched. Secondly, what’s the big deal about the number of circuits of a planetoid around a big ball of gas being an integer. How many circuits you got, Bob? Oh, about 3.14. Ha! Such a real number. It’s 4.9999 for me! I’m much closer to an integer than you. Loser.

Also, because it’s my birthday I have to make a special trip to the DMV. I’d rather have hot needles stuck in my eyeballs. So I have to write a check to renew my license, get my photo taken, and take time off work to deal with that bullshit which costs me even more money. Lovely.

Two nights ago a package from Amazon.com arrived. The ceremonial exchanging of consumer goods in honor of those circuits around the sun courtesy of Mrs. Abyss. The package sat there on the dinner table as we ate. She looked at me and asked, “Would you like to open that now?”

“Sure,” I answered. “What the hell. That’s two more days we can enjoy whatever is in there before we die. If we wait, that’s two days we’ll never get back.” I was rather pleased with myself for that one.

Inside the package were three items. A new Creed CD entitled Full Circle. I didn’t even know those chaps had a new CD out. That was quite a nice surprise. Yes, I’m an atheist who likes Creed and even though he’s an ass, I like Scott Stapp. Also in the package was a Steve Martin CD featuring banjo songs. Cool. Lastly, a hardcover edition of Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. I recently read another book by Gladwell entitled Blink and he’s my current favorite author.

Okay, that’s enough of that crap. You kids keep off of my damn lawn or you’ll get a blast of buckshot in your ass, ya hear?!?

More Full Circle goodness on the way!

When they set me free and I walked out of the prison grounds, the first thing I did was eat a Falafel sandwich with lots of tartar sauce. It’s the one thing I loved before jail and the one thing I missed during jail. No mother, no father, no sister, not brother, no friends, no wife, no girlfriend. No one. I’ve always lived unaccompanied like the spirit of the wind. I was not intending on breaking that habit and departing from my nature in jail. I kept to myself. I barely survived but what matters is that I did.

The tartar sauce dripped from the sandwich, splattered on my cheek. I was wiping the off-white creamy tartar sauce when a veiled woman opened a window in the opposite building, saw me and hid herself quickly. It was the woman who planted the memory in my brain, that scornful woman.

I don’t know how I started stealing cars; it just started being the vocation of my life, and slowly my whole reality. It’s not such a respectable vocation in prison, but I didn’t care. The only time people highlighted my mode of living is when a victim of mine saw me in there. He was in prison for killing his wife and father, who he caught in bed together. It’s a fucked up world we live in. He smirked my way and threatened me with gestures. I did not care.

I kept watching the window, that veiled woman I had seen before, the probable taste of my vengeance.

They do not offer therapy in prison. Who needs it? We’re not crazy after all. We’re just society’s rejects, denied for our violent indulgences. We are a different communal society, having a different stratification. The worst murderers occupy the highest rank. Murder your wife and father is top rank. Stealing cars is not. Murdering your wife and father makes you noble. Stealing cars makes you a slave, a bitch, a prag, a fagot, a homo.

He kept his eyes on me, like a hawk for two days, his inmate bitches pushing and shoving me. Finally, in a place I don’t want to be in, in a place I don’t want to be seen in, they create a gap and the noble murderer pushes me in it.

The veiled lady, young and tender and pink gave me the power to climb out of the gap, to cover it, to put her in it.

His bitches followed me, he followed his bitches. They turned on the hot water in the showering room and steam made everything seem Romantic and ideal.

I threw the falafel sandwich in the garbage, wiped the tartar sauce off my cheek and went inside the building. Third floor. I didn’t even have to knock. I only had to wait. She thinks I’m gone. I’m never gone. He thought he ended me, I ended her!

When the steam fogged every spec of my vision, when I started to feel like I was in a black and white movie, I knew that my punishment was due and that somehow I would be released. They pinned me, stomach first, to the wall and started punching me all over my body: the waist, the back, the arms.

Three hours I waited; my veins and stomach hungry for the carnal dose of vengeance. The door opened, a garbage bag in hand being put along the staircase, and she saw me, my whole body glowing in the darkness, aiming at her. I walked silently with a raging desire, my silence forcing her voice to be choked upon. I caught her neck and choked her voice more. I closed the door after we enter.

The fists seemed to enter me, widening holes in my body and then he came. I was powerless, the steam blurring my vision, surrounding me with water dew. Him, somehow so stiff. Me, somehow so tender. He released in sodomy. I can still smell his body and feel his hair on me. I can still feel the thrusts. First thrust. Second thrust. By the third thrust you start to find some sanity in it, some order. This is the way the world spins and it’ll never spin the other way. By the fourth thrust you know you are always going to be the shit of the earth. Fifth thrust…..twentieth thrust and you find sanity in the feces beneath your feet, the dripping blood of your anal hole, and the sticky cum on your butt cheeks.

Any notion of goodness, of the capability of man to change, to straighten life, to get back on the road again is thwarted. Justice is dead. Fear, recrimination, innocence, sympathy, guilt, waste, failure, grief, are things, emotions, that no one really feels anymore. Reflection is useless, the world is senseless. Evil is its only permanence. God is not alive. Love cannot be trusted. Holes and surface is all that anyone finds meaning in. No one is safe. Nothing is redeemed.

We entered the bedroom, my hand still on her neck, her face in front of mine, but her eyes closed. Her cheeks became red. I grazed them, soft and tender. On the bed, I fed her all of my pain, as I smelt her breath, her hair, her eyes. I devoured her first through my nose, then through my eyes, then through my vengeance. I twisted her as she whimpered beneath me, begging for someone to come back home, but I know that he won’t. Her mother is dead, her father is in jail. As I possessed her with my vengeance, my eyes were fixated on the picture frames on the walls, the noble murderer smiling, smirking next to his dead wife and his now-violated daughter.

I can still smell her body and her hair. I can still feel the thrusts. First thrust, second thrust. By the third thrust you start to find some pacifying sanity. This is the way the world spins and it will never spin the other way. Twentieth thrust and you find pleasure in the blood on your skin, the explosion of cum and smell of shit in the room. You zip-up, leaving the victim on the bed, still like a cold candle-stick, a monument of your perfect holy act, the performance art museum of your own artistic vision, and you know deep inside that you have reached full circle now.

There is no love in this.

After five years, Creed finally decided to put a decent album called Full Circle. I hated their earlier material because there was no originality to it at all, and it just got annoying after hearing Stapp’s whining voice over and over and over… But this time, it seems like they’ve decided to man up and get a kick ass album out there and not sell out to mainstream rock with shitty music.

Some of my favorite songs from the new album are “Rain”, “Overcome”, “Full Circle”, and “The Song You Sing.” Each song seems like it actually has a song in it unlike previous ones like “With Arms Wide Open” or “My Sacrifice,” which just sounds like there’s only a guitar, some drums, maybe a bass, and a dude singing… which is not exactly what you want the final result of a song to be. There needs to be more to the music than just words and a riff because it’s not music if that’s what it is. A song like “Rain” actually invokes emotion from the listener, which is exactly what you want to get from a song. If there’s no emotion, then it sucks.

Creed also has gone from a Top 100 band to a band just finding their roots again. You don’t see that often these days, and it does give hope that rock is not dying (rock meaning hard rock, not metal). Bands like Linkin Park, Papa Roach, Breaking Benjamin, and Three Days Grace used to be true hard rock, but now they’re just sellouts. I can’t even listen to their new material because it’s so bubble gummish like Papa Roach’s “Lifeline” or Linkin Park’s “New Divide.” Slipknot is almost there, but they still are so fierce that no one but their followers will listen to them. I hate most of their new album,  All Hope is Gone, but songs like the title track and “Gematria (The Killing Name)” still sounds like the old Slipknot from Iowa. 

Recently Art Sleuth was invited along to the grand opening of a permanent site specific work called Full Circle for Art on the Underground created for the new Piccadilly line concourse as part of the extension to the King Cross St Pancras Underground station. The excitement built as we walked through the open barriers and travelled down two long and shiny new elevators. Eventually we came to the piece itself.
It was a grey wall – with a semi-circular grey panel arranged on top of it.

In fact it was such a similar colour grey to the rest of the station and situated exactly where you might find a wall that if there had not been a crowd of people around it you could have been mistaken in thinking that it was the work of an over-zealous architect using up the few remaining grey panels with a bit of flair. Or perhaps more likely you could walk past it, being cut up by a slow moving tourist cursing the tube you just missed without giving it a second glance. The most excellently named Knut Henrik Henriksen has created an artwork which according to the leaflet is “incognito, yet elegantly obvious”. It will be less elegant in a few years when the heartless general public have stuck bits on chewing gum down the sides of it.

The leaflet also has an example of a previous work by Knut Henrik Henriksen. The aptly named Architectural Doubts is a partition in a hall making one room into two. Surely this is what you would employ a builder to do if you wished to divide a room? You too would be having ‘architectural doubts’ if it was divided by a wall of what looks like laminate flooring. With no door. A case of The Emperors’ New Clothes or work by a genius?

… but in a good way.

Candace (of Musings of a Daydreamer fame) has permitted a story of mine to take over a small portion of her blog.  I have written a vignette for her story, An Illogical Woman, hijacking her characters and bending them to my will.  The chapter titled The More Things Change was authored by yours truly.

And before anyone asks, yes, Full Circle was made to suffer this last week for that very reason.  But consider, readers of FTLOJ have been made angry by the existence of SPAT, so there’s enough story abandonment by me to go around for all.

OK, OK, I will work on Full Circle today and try to have it ready to go tomorrow (emphasis on the word “try”)  However, I must confess, I do feel a wave of food gorging induced laziness coming on.

BTW:  The story is password protected on my blog (for now).  Since it is truly Candace’s story, you should read it there first.

Ador piesa asta, am descoperit-o de curand pe un blog “prieten” si de atunci o ascult incontinuu. Versurile nu inceteaza sa ma uimeasca.

“Life Is Wonderful”

It takes a crane to build a crane
It takes two floors to make a story
It takes an egg to make a hen
It takes a hen to make an egg
There is no end to what I’m saying

It takes a thought to make a word
And it takes some words to make an action
It takes some work to make it work
It takes some good to make it hurt
It takes some bad for satisfaction

La la la la la la la life is wonderful
Ah la la la la la la life goes full circle
Ah la la la la la la life is wonderful
Al la la la la

It takes a night to make it dawn
And it takes a day to make you yawn brother
And it takes some old to make you young
It takes some cold to know the sun
It takes the one to have the other

And it takes no time to fall in love
But it takes you years to know what love is
It takes some fears to make you trust
It takes those tears to make it rust
It takes the dust to have it polished

Ha la la la la la la life is wonderful
Ah la la la la la la life goes full circle
Ah la la la la la la life is so full of
Ah la la la la la la life is so rough
Ah la la la la la la life is wonderful
Ah la la la la la la life goes full circle
Ah la la la la la la life is our love
Ah la la la la la

It takes some silence to make sound
It takes a loss before you found it
And it takes a road to go nowhere
It takes a toll to make you care
It takes a hole to make a mountain

Ah la la la la la la life is wonderful
Ah la la la la la la life goes full circle
Ha la la la la la life is wonderful
Ha la la la la la life is meaningful
Ha la la la la la life is wonderful
Ha la la la la la life it is…so… wonderful
It is so meaningful
It is so wonderful
It is meaningful
It is wonderful
It is meaningful
It goes full circle
Wonderful
Meaningful
Full circle
Wonderful

Have leftover jars of opened fruit and veggie baby food in the fridge? Not sure what to do with them? Make a smoothie for yourself! Jarred baby food with fruits and veggies has only fruit and veggies and water in them. They are perfectly safe for adults to eat (in fact you should…if your baby sees that you eat it, than he/she might be more willing to try it).

This morning I made a smoothie with:

1 banana, a container of plain Oikos Organic Greek Yogurt, 1/2 c. of milk, honey, and 1/2 jar of Earth’s Best Organic Carrots and 1/2 jar of Full Circle Apples and Apricots.

It’s delicious! Note: if using greek yogurt in a smoothie, blend a little longer as it tends to take longer to break down into smoothie consistency.

Yummm!

When baby gets a little older and can have milk and yogurt, she can have some smoothie too. Smoothies are nutritious and can help alleviate sore gums because of the cold temperature. Here are some great recipes from Wholesome Baby.

Cloth diapering has made a comeback in the last few years, both for financial and ecological reasons. When I was pregnant, we decided to do cloth diapers and were lucky enough to have people around us that do cloth and could show us what we needed to do.

I also had a diaper shower, hosted by my mother’s friends, and received all the cloth diapers and covers that I needed (We also had some hand-me-downs from my sister and sister-in-law). I asked for diaper from Green Mountain Diapers, the best cloth diaper resource in my opinion! I love Green Mountain Diapers because there is a huge variety of options, it’s a user friendly website, and the baby models show you what the diaper actually look like on a human child. So great!

While we have a few fitted diapers, we mostly use the pre-fold or birdseye diapers. I can fit tons of them in Evangeline’s drawers, they are cheap and you can use them for many different sizes depending on the fold. We also use the blessed Snapis! No more diaper pins! These are great and we have a billion.

birdseye cloth diapers

Snappis!

Green Mountain Prefold Diapers

Cloth diapers are not only a very eco-friendly diaper option (especially if you hang dry them after washing them), they are also very cost effective. If you total the amount you spend on disposable diapers in two years vs. the amount you spend on buying cloth diapers, washing them and putting them away, the saving is in the thousands!! According to Niki’s Diapers, the estimate is about $300 for cloth diapering in one year (including buying the diapers) vs. $800 for disposable diapers in the first year. You save even more money if you reuse the diapers for additional babies!

Now, of course cloth diapering CAN have the potential to be very expensive if you buy only fitted diapers (like BumGenius) and wash more times than necessary. According to my Green Mountain pre-folds’ directions, the only washing necessary is a wash on cold with a small amount of detergent to get stains out (can wash with Oxi-clean if desired in this cycle), than a sanitizing cycle with a small amount of detergent on hot. Then, either hang dry or put in drier for about 40-45 minutes depending on how many diapers. Note: We also didn’t put any initial investment into the diapers because of the diaper shower. This was a great way to save extra money and I highly recommend this!

If you’re thinking that cloth diapers are too confusing, think again! With a little tutorial (and I mean very little), you too can be a diaper folding professional! Green Mountain has a great and easy to navigate tutorial page here. My favorite is the angel wing diaper wrap when I use plastic covers, and the no pins method when I use a wrap style cover.

We do use disposable diapers about 30-40% of the time (unless I’m being really lazy and not doing laundry, in which case we use only disposables). We use them at night because Evangeline wakes up from being wet once she pees. Disposables help prevent her feeling the wetness. We also use disposables most of the time when we’re out and about because cloth diapers can be bulky to carry around in the diaper bag. My favorite disposable brands are Huggies Pure and Natural and Full Circle. Seventh Generation also has a great diaper, but they tend to be more expensive than the two previously mentioned brands. All of these sites also offer coupons and samples!

You know that proverbial feather that flattens you without warning? Well, you could have knocked me down with it the day I realized I’d written four novels. Add to these, two stubborn characters who – like moving targets – refuse to interface with me long enough to give me a handle on their personalities and complete stories.

I never lose the drive to showcase what I do with words. I’ve never written for self-satisfaction – to stash my work away, hidden from criticism and praise. I write to be read. I write because at this point, I have a boatload of ideas and characters who have stories they want to share. Every so often, they move into my headspace and start talking: You know you want to write my story, so here’s what’s happening with me…

One of the best decisions I made was to enroll in a writing workshop early in 2008. My tutor was frank to the point of rudeness, but countered his facetious remarks with good advice and excellent feedback. As a writer, he understood the fragility of the egos involved. Early on in our sessions, he asked me why I’d stopped writing. I didn’t give him a real answer, but knew I’d made the right choice to attend his workshop when he remarked that I should have been writing years ago.

Under his tutelage, I learned to simplify my writing. Forget what you know about writing reports and taking minutes, this is fiction! It’s far different! he said. Easier said than done, but I’m learning to choose the five dollar word over the ten dollar one, which is something else he hammered in my head. Regrettably, I didn’t get to tell him before he died that I’ll be published.

Late in 2004, I joined a blogging network and penned a handful of short stories. Members encouraged me with comments that some of the stories could be extended into novels. I thought about it for a bit, but didn’t follow up on those suggestions. By then, I’d grown bored with blogging and started searching for genuine writing networks.

Enter The Next Big Writer. The site was just launched (November 2005) and my greatest desire then was to improve my storytelling skills. By that time, I’d started thinking about a character for a Young Adult novel who wouldn’t stop talking to me. Christine was loosely based on someone I’d met. After combing through countless articles on novel writing, and hemming and hawing about whether I could actually write a whole novel, I penned the first chapter of Christine’s story and posted it on the site.

In retrospect, it was terrible. My biggest problem was starting in one point of view and staying there. The emotion was evident, but the mechanics of good writing were all missing. Criticism was sometimes harsh, but always helpful, and with the assistance and guidance of better writers, plus that arsenal of articles on writing, I reshaped the novel. To date, the members of TNBW have had the biggest impact on my growth as a writer. This is where I threw off my shyness and dared tell myself I was a writer.

I knew storytelling would stay with me once I started writing Christine’s Odyssey. I was thrilled and flattered to find other people invested in the mixed fortunes of a twelve-year-old girl, birthed from my imagination. They cried when she did and cheered when she triumphed. I started a second novel before I completed the first and somewhere in the crafting of that story, I morphed into a writer. This not-so-new hobby wasn’t something I’d be putting aside any time soon, due to boredom.

But why had I denied myself the pleasure of writing stories for twenty years? The need to earn a living pushed the creative urge aside and the irony is, that same need rekindled my interest. Simply put, I needed money. But before I presumed to write anything, I did a week’s worth of research on the internet which nearly sent me blind. After that, I cranked out my first article under a pseudonym. To date, I’ve been paid for every other article except that first one. D’you think I had a premonition when I called that article If I Knew Then…?

Many of us who write, shy away from calling ourselves writers. We think it’s presumptuous to assume that title, especially if we haven’t been published and/or paid. I was one of those and even after I was paid several times over, I still wondered whether I’d made the grade. Am I a writer now? I’d ask myself. But no light bulb clicked on, nor did I get any sudden revelation that my status had officially changed.

With time, my views have shifted. A writer is defined as someone who writes for money or a person who can write and has written something. The Pocket Oxford Dictionary describes it as a person who writes books or articles as an occupation. I believe the latter definition is most accurate. Writing is now an activity that occupies much of my time. It is part of who I’ve become and it’s part of who I’ll be in the future. Moreover, I will continue to write whether I make money or not. That, to me, is the essence of writing. Something I do for enjoyment. Call it a compulsion that stemmed from another habit.

Writing is a natural progression from reading. Numerous writers have revealed that they dared to write after reading a book and thinking that they could do as good a job, or better. In grade eight (second form to Jamaicans), I wrote romance novels like the ones I liked to read, but my career as a novelist didn’t last long.

The teenage years intervened, and my focus changed to studying, but I never stopped reading. I can thank my love of books to my mother who provided them early and to a cousin who was an avid reader. She turned me on to books – pardon the pun, but you’ll see what I mean in a moment. Unfortunately, the material I read then was not stuff she should have left around for a pre-teen to digest. At the slightest opportunity, I’d steal into our room to read about titillating and impossible acrobatic activity between men and women and sometimes people of the same sex.

Those stories were a long way from the girls’ adventure novels and books of limericks I got from the school library. The tame Mills and Boon romance novels, which I devoured alongside these, paled in comparison to the activities of the nymphomaniacs in the smutty stories.

The nuns at the Catholic schools I attended encouraged us to read and thanks to their vigilance, I developed an eclectic taste. But they would have been horrified to know I’d graduated from reading the Bible – which my mother insisted I read at home (setting the stage for school) – to forbidden material.

Now, if you’ve got this far, picture a band of little kids huddled over a collection of book covers. Visualize attractive-but-sappy-looking females with flowing hair and ecstatic expressions. The same ones from historical romances, decked out in voluminous gowns and draped over the arms of muscle-bound men. The titles always came embossed with gold lettering.

That’s my first memory of reading. Some long-forgotten man, who lived in our tenement in Kingston , used to bring home the discarded covers. I’m not sure why. To entertain us kids, maybe? My aunt told me he worked for a book manufacturer and distributor, which is how he came by those goodies, which provided hours of entertainment for us children. We’d read the titles, shuffle them, trade them, and fight over them until they were dog-eared.

That’s where my fascination with books started, with those discarded book covers, and the love affair hasn’t ended. Today, I’m in the process of deciding on the cover I like for my book, which will be released next April. I’m also getting ready to edit a follow-up novel for publication.

I think about reading and writing as a process through which I’ve come full circle. I’m still an avid reader, but now I’m also a prolific writer. I’m living my dream. Seven novels, two partials, and an assortment of stories and articles later, I have endless tales to tell and the passion to nurture each new story to fruition.

More than anything else, this is how I know I’m a writer.

How do you know that writing is what you were meant to do?

Here I was all prepared to write a blog about how Scott Stapp was back in Creed, when I see that they’ve released a new album (October 27th they released it to be exact).  After getting over that I am a horrible fan now, I decided to check the new album out.

The album’s first single “Rain” has already been very well received, even reaching number 1 on iTunes, and I have to say, that I very much so agree with the reviews.

I had given up on the band a few years ago after reading a few lovely quotes from Stapp’s ex-wife which I will not repeat but feel free to look up articles relating to him around 2004, you’ll see them.  I had really given up when I read Stapp was looking to do gospel music.

Anyway I was pleasantly surprised by the album, so please, if you are a forgotten fan, like me, check out their website.  The album is called “Full Circle” and it doesn’t disappoint .

Was vom Namen her so klingt, wie eine esoterisch angehauchte Metalband, zählt unter Rap-Connaisseuren seit 1993 zum absoluten Pflichtprogramm in der Plattensammlung: Souls of Mischief. 93 Til Infinity heißt die bekannteste Single und zugleich das Debütalbum der kalifornischen Rapper, mit dem sie den von Gangsterposses dominierten Westcoast-Rap chillige Rhythmen und inhaltlich neue Impulse verliehen. Alles andere als unheilvoll war der Live-Auftritt der Souls of Mischief in Heidelberg, zu dem sich jede Menge treue Seelen begaben.

Nachdem Produzentenlegende Prince Paul als Toursupport der Souls of Mischief aufgrund von familiärer Schwierigkeiten kurzfristig ausfiel und vor Ort im Karlstorbahnhof sogar noch das Gerücht die Runde machte, dass die Souls nur zu dritt – ohne Tajai – angereist waren, begann die Vorfreude auf die Show schlagartig zu sinken. Mit Mr.Brady von Deep Rooted hatten die Rapper aus dem Sonnenstaat allerdings noch ein Ass im Ärmel, das sie als Vorgruppe geschickt ausspielten. Fast eine halbe Stunde lang sorgte der Rapper und Beatproduzent aus San Diego zusammen mit DJ Lex für einen sensationellen Auftakt. Überraschenderweise gelang ihm das wie im Schlaf, denn Brady öffnete bei seinem Auftritt nicht ein einziges Mal seine Augen! High wie Cheech & Chong präsentierte der reimende Rastamann seine äußerst ausgefeilten Beats und ließ auch raptechnisch keine Wünsche offen. Höhepunkte setzte er zum Schluss mit dem Deep Rooted-Track Crazy, dessen Drums dermaßen knarzten, dass selbst die Barfrau im Vorraum die Füße von dem gewaltigen Basslauf massiert bekam. Die HipHop-Hymne Let My Record Rotate, die Rob The Viking meisterhaft arrangiert hat, hätte DJ Lex noch den ganzen Rest des Abends in Endlosschleife laufen lassen können, ohne dass er sich damit Feinde im Karlstorbahnhof gemacht hätte.

Gegen die anschließende Performance der Souls of Mischief hatte hingegen natürlich auch niemand etwas einzuwenden. Tajai stand dann wider erwarten doch mit auf der Bühne und machte auch gleich auf sich aufmerksam, indem er dem Soundmann rüpelhaft aber nicht ganz zu Unrecht wegen derzu leisen Mikrofone anpöbelte. Ohne Rapper A-Plus war das reimende Quartett aus Oakland dennoch unvollständig erschienen, der große Einsatz der MC’s Opio, Tajai und Phesto machte den Ausfall im Verlauf des Abends aber wett. Die Souls of Mischief sind allesamt auch Mitglieder des achtköpfigen Kollektivs Hieroglyphics und deshalb gab es heute auch einige Hiero-Hits wie Powers That Be oder den Rap-Klassiker You Never Knew auf die Ohren.

Das beständige Duell zwischen den drei Rappern und dem Soundmann, durch das so mancher Rappart zu einem Acappella improvisiert wurde, zog sich quer durch die gesamte Souls-Show. Passenderweise spielte das Trio Chaos And Turmoil deshalb etwas chaotisch mit übersteuerten Mikros. Den glanzvollen Schlusspunkt der sehenswerten und engagierten Performance setzten Opio, Phesto, Tajai und der technisch versierte DJ Lex erwartungsgemäß mit 93 Til Infinity. Auch 2009 ist der Alltime-Classic immer noch richtungweisend in Sachen entspannter Flows und lässig inszeniertem Sampling (Billy Cobham: Heather). Obwohl mit Prince Paul der Produzent des bald erscheinenden Souls of Mischief Albums Montezuma’s Revenge leider abwesend war, endete der Abend für die Fans erfreulich. Selbst der Sound klang am Ende versöhnlich.

Andreas Margara (16. November 2009)

Mr. Brady – Let my record rotate