The 90′s sound. The Boom Bap. Acid Jazz. Bringing back some of the Jazz greats and introducing them to a new audience. The Acid Jazz revolution that had records labels like Ubiquity, Acid Jazz and others releasing some smoothed out Jazz influenced cuts that made your head nod. Not only did it influence a whole genre of listeners, but it influenced a whole generation of musicians as well. Everyone from Stestasonic to ATCQ to Gangstarr to Digable Planets to bands like Dream Warriors and Boogie Monsters, not to mention the grip of Golden Age producers (as well as DJs like Krush and Cam) were using Jazz in their music. Acid Jazz took it to another level, it was, um “Slicker this year”…..to quote Digable. Jazz as a whole influenced many players, and was a definite revolution while it was happening. Although Acid Jazz had its time in the sun, it eventually faded a bit as the next thing took over. However, this period of time to me, is still important. A new interpretation of what once was, another example of the old to the new.

Here we are in 2013, forget radio Hip Hop. They’re too busy rapping about Molly and driving their car into a brick wall after being shot at, all over repetitive beats that put me to sleep. Enter Freqnik and WDRE, remember these guys? Last year they released a Big Daddy Kane remix ans well as the “Favela B-Boy Funk” single. They’ve just gone against the grain and put out a new mix: Jazz In The Present Tense. Chock full of jazzy beats and grooves and definitely full of the boom bap (not to mention some pretty great samples), these guys are taking it back once again. So sit back, and unwind your mind. Alright, Alright now!

Keep Diggin’!

SwiftNief is a Combination of Two Artist Who Are Also Both Producers. (Swift aka Km3 and Nief aka Kinief Sarn-the Man From Saturn) We’ve Been Doing Music Together Sense The Early 90′s With Other Groups in Our Home Town “Philly”. After Several songs and albums recorded, We Decided to Join Forces to Conquer the WORLD!!!! By Combining our talents and abilities to compose many albums to come. We’re Bringing Fun and Lyrical Skill in a Positive way Over CraAazy Beatz that sound like the could have come from the inner circle of Saturn, LOL! Enjoy! Check us out on Youtube

As stated several posts ago, I have plans of making a playlist for each month of the year.  These playlists will reflect a variety of things, like a good playlist/mix tape  should.  At the height of my mix tape making years, with good old analog technology, I was able to fit 15-20 songs per side of the tape.  Yes, let that soak in all of you who also made mix tapes and know how crazy that number is.  I was a mix tape making goddess!!!!  Well, let’s just say I was pretty good at it.  Moving on.  I freely admit that my playlist making in this digital age gets a little long (for a Pool Mix I had over 30 songs and that was after I edited down…my school list has 106 songs….you get the idea I’m sure). So, for the sake of expedience, I will limit my lists to 10 songs.

There is just something so great about taking songs that mean something to you and sharing it with someone else – especially when your words fail.  A good mix tape can make someone laugh, let them know you care, and express feelings you might otherwise be afraid to put out there.  Isn’t it amazing that something so simple as a 3min song can say so much about our lives, our personal moments in a world so vast?  They remind us that we aren’t the only one in the world that feels the way we do and that’s fantastic.

So anyways, here it is, Playlist #1 for 2013: “New Beginnings From Some Other Beginnings End”

1. Nrrrd Grrrl – MC Chris  In many ways, this is my theme song.

2. Just the Way You Are – Bruno Mars  While I may be different, I think I’m pretty okay the way I am.  Plus, I love dancing to this song!

3. This Too Shall Pass – OK Go This song is great to get you through a rough day.  (Also, it makes me think of the Vernon family which is always great and welcome!)

4. Cut My Hair – the Who  From Quadrophenia, this song is one of my favorites of all time.  I love the lyrics,  particularly “Why do I have to move with the crowd/of kids who hardly notice I’m around/I work myself to death, just to fit in.”

5. Ho Hey – the Lumineers This song is just great – I’ve noticed a theme here in my music this month….hmmm….

6. Why Am I So Dizzy? – featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt  Move on the Sun has been a happy discovery for me and this is a song I can relate to at least figuratively.

7. The Weight – the Band  If you can listen to this song and not tap your feet, sing along, I don’t know what to do for you.

8. These Are the Fables – The New Pornographers have been a happy find for me.  While all the lyrics aren’t always the clearest, I love that the tunes are always interesting and thoughtful.

9. Doctor Who – Parry Gripp  I have recently become fascinated (some say obsessed) with Doctor Who and this song makes my day when it comes on my iPod.

10. Stoop Sale – MC Frontalot This is just a fun song – smart and funny like I how I imagine MC Frontalot to be in “real life.”

I hope you’ve enjoyed the variety of music listed here.  I have purchased some new tunes recently and look forward to broadening my music horizons.  Suggestions are welcome!

It was a nice treat today to wake up to an email from my West Coast homie DJ Delgado letting me know that he was featured in SF Weekly wearing my FMF “The Way We Live” tee. His Fresh Jamz party is 5 years old, and for this special night, he sat down with the paper to discuss his DJing philosophy, the Aztlán Roots confederation, and his return to the Bay area. Not only is Delgado a good guy, but he’s a dope DJ as well. The FResh Jamz Crew dropped a 5 year anniversary mix that encompasses the spirit of the night. A great blend of “dubplates, dancehall, Golden Age hip-hop, new Bay Area Rap, and some classics”, this will get your Friday moving. Props to DJ Delgado and the Fresh Jamz crew, and if you are in the Bay area, make sure to check where he is spinning. Have a listen to Delgado’s part of the Anniversary Mix below:

Keep Diggin’!

If you’re not familiar with Hevehitta, it’s high time you get familiar. With over 70 mixtapes under his belt, Hevehitta has been holding it down the mix tape game proper for a minute. Along with the mixtape game, Hevehitta is the webmaster over at The Diggers Union Local 1200. This is their mission:

“Diggers Union is a family of music connoisseurs who have made a lifelong commitment to accumulate and preserve recorded music. Immeasurable amounts of time and money go into our research to separate the honorable from the horrible. We are here to enjoy and educate, be it through media, speech, etc. to ensure fans that their horizons are constantly being broadened. With the vast amount of music being released consistently, it can be quite a challenge to keep up; but rest assure Diggers Union will accomplish the goal of being as informative as possible. Think of it as “Collecting Done Correctly.”

That’s a pretty good idea of what Hevehitta is all about. I’m proud to have a guy like this in Big Ups. Enjoy.

Check out The Digger’s Union here.

Follow The Digger’s Union on Twitter.

Keep Diggin’!

Ruben and James are joined in this episode by Alleycat Comics owner Nick Idell. They discuss VHS mix tapes, gratuitous PG nudity, Batman’s seemingly endless supply of Robins, the effects of Spider-man #700 on Marvel, the Evil Dead red band trailer, Guardians of the Galaxy casting rumors and a new unnamed segments answering questions about pop culture.

To Directly Download, click here or on the links below.

Nós aceitamos o amor que achamos merecer. Esta frase é uma daquelas que ficam martelando na cabeça e nos faz pensar. Esse filme também é assim.

A história é sobre Charlie, um garoto que acabou de entrar no ensino médio e não tem amigos, mas quer que seu novo ano escolar seja diferente. E será.

Patrick e Sam são meios irmãos desasjutados e que fazem parte de uma turminha peculiar. É dessa turma que Charlie fará parte.

Todo medo, expectativa, experiências e alegrias da adolescência estão presentes no filme. Mas tudo é retratado de maneira universal.

A trilha sonora é de chorar.

Tem Smiths, a banda predileta de Charlie. Tem Bowie, que é essencial para o filme. Tem muito dos anos 80, até porque é quando o filme é situado. Tem vinil, tem Mixtapes gravadas em fitas K7. De chorar literalmente.

*A cena da ponte é marcante.”

“E nesse momento, eu juro. Nós somos infinitos.”

Aí vai o trailer:

“What the hell kind of house are you planning on buying for $50,000?!?”

Good question!  I don’t know.  The New York City real estate market is expensive to get into, so maybe I will need that much.  If I buy overseas, maybe I will need to put down more than 10%.  Or if I buy a shithole, I’ll have leftover money for renovations.

“Is your record collection really worth $50,000?!?”

Ha!  That’s cute.  No.

“I can’t believe you’re selling your records!  Can I buy them?”

Yes!  I mean, you’re making me second guess my decision.  Maybe I want to keep them now!  Oy… this is so hard!  But yes, I will be posting everything on eBay, and you may certainly purchase anything you like.  My eBay username is aptly RecordsVsHouse.

One friend even forced her boyfriend to watch two episodes of House Hunters International in response and suggested we do a marathon.  Of course we should do a marathon!  But never regular old House Hunters.  The Americans are utterly unbearable to listen to.  Plus, who cares about people buying condos in Cleveland?

On to the show…

KARATE - THE BED IS IN THE OCEAN
Buy this record! (on sale 01/13/13)

I wish everyone still had cassette players.  I wish cars still had cassette players.  I wish the people at my gym had walkmen dangling from their waists as they ran their 30 minutes of cardio on the treadmill.  I wish all of this because I love mix tapes.  Actual tapes!  I have a cassette suitcase that an ex-boyfriend gave me just full of mix tapes from old friends and lovers!

Call me nostalgic!  But these mix tapes were so important to my musical evolution.  I hated the radio in my youth, and I’m just old enough to remember when the Internet had limitations–one webpage could take minutes to load (minutes!), and downloading one song could take all night.  So the circles I ran in made mix tapes for each other to discover and share music.  And making a mix tape is not the same as making a playlist, or even a CD!  You had to choose the songs in real time, recording them as you listened.  You had to make sure the last song on each side didn’t get cut off.  There is a real art to this.  And I love the art.  I wish I still had people I could make mix tapes for.

In college, I was friends with a girl named Andrea.  Andrea was fun and exciting and knew just about everyone in the music scenes in Chicago and Philadelphia.  We went to shows together all the time and we made mix tapes for each other.  One of the cassettes she gave me had a song on it called “There Are Ghosts” by Karate.  I just found the cassette!  It also has songs by Chamberlain, Afghan Whigs, Lifetime, Elliott Smith, The Police, Owen, Christie Front Drive, Braid, Boys Life… this is really bringing me back!

It’s hard to disassociate the songs we love from the time they came into our lives.  I was 19 years old when I received this mix tape.  And I loved this Karate song.  It’s so sad and haunting.  The lyrics make a small moment in time feel like something much, much bigger.  And that’s what the song does for me.  Andrea may have just been a blip on the radar, but this song makes me think of roller skating at the legendary (but now defunct) Rainbow Rink in Chicago, riding in trains to the east coast, baking brownies in dorm rooms, hanging out backstage at The Metro… this little song is so big in my memory.

But, alas, it’s just the one song that stole my heart.  The whole album is pretty and moody.  But that’s not enough to stave my heart for selling it.

Goodbye, The Bed is in the Ocean.

It couldn’t have been more perfect of timing though. I’d just settled into my new apartment and new eating habits (portion control is not my strong suite) and was in desperate need of some musical motivation that could kick my ass during a long cardio session. Thank goodness I follow T.I on Facebook or I probably wouldn’t have heard about B.O.B’s new Mix-tape until Nov 2013.

My favorites are….

And…

The best song on the whole tape…

Love the girl on this one (below) and the hilarious speaking track that leads up to it

The smashing ender…

While the speaking tracks can get annoying during a workout session, they’re pretty hilarious, and one of the reasons I love mix-tapes so much. The artist has the freedom to mess around and be as strange as they want because its FREE, no pressure to make record sales, the fans can take it or leave it.

A treat from DJ Orator and Android Homme. Enjoy!!

I’ve been really keen on making mixes on my 8tracks, do visit! Also, knee deep in garbage research. Hope those mixes can tide you over in the mean time.

The first time I ever heard this song, it was in the background of “Grey’s Anatomy.” “Grey’s” uses amazing music; I mean the first song the show ever used was by my beloved Rilo Kiley, so for me to notice a specific song in that show, takes a lot.

But there it was. The scene was amazing, and I was sobbing. And still, this song stood out. At the time, I didn’t know what the song was; I just knew that I was haunted. And I was emotionally involved, and that scene drew out every bit of feeling I had in that particular time, and I cried till I had no more tears. The scene, and the song, made me feel more raw than I had felt in years.

Turned out that the song was “With the Notes In My Ears” by Peter Broderick. At the time I first heard it, nothing could have meant more. Every emotional pore in my body was drained by all of it.

And my bed is on the floor
Yes my bed is on the floor
Of one of the ones I often dreamt of
With the notes in my ears

That was a little less than two months ago.

I kept listening to this song, throughout the past month or so. I needed it, somehow. To hear it, to feel it. To remember. To understand.

I didn’t understand:

And that’s why I know that I can say
I’m lucky today

I didn’t understand that at all. How could such a sad sounding song, a song that was a part of such a heartwrenching scene on TV, and such a heartwrenching time in my life, have anything to do with being lucky?

Never mind. It was a beautiful song. So I played it masochistically almost every day in the weeks following. The first several times I heard it on my personal life-mix CD, it tore me apart. The other songs even when they were sad, were okay. I was okay.

But “With the Notes In My Ears” made me fall down, on the bed, on the floor – wherever I was when I heard it, I broke to the power of the sadness that the song made me feel.

Yet I’d try to get up, to be strong when I heard:

And that’s how I know that it’s time
to be brave

Mostly though, it was too hard, to get up, to be brave. The song just does something to me. And that was okay. This was the song that would always make me feel devastated. And that holds its own kind of beauty. Sometimes I just need to feel torn apart. For perspective.

And I expected this song to tear me apart for the rest of my life. But/so, I kept listening to it.

Last week, I listened to it again.

And that’s why I know that I can say
I’m lucky today

It didn’t make me cry, this time. It made me sad. But I got it. Because the notes were still in my ears, and they were the same notes, but they were in my ears differently this time.

And that’s how I knew that it was time to be brave.

Because I’m lucky today.

To be alive. To feel. To have felt. And to get to almost two months later and feel all of it, with some bit of perspective. To have the notes stay the same, but fall differently in my ears. Same notes, same ears. But this time accompanied by time, which may not heal all wounds, but sure does a remarkable time trying.

So here’s a mix I put together… Imagine it’s an alternate universe and you’re listening to an old mix tape from 1983 or something. I’m sure a friend called Mary Jane might help with your imagination.

[ Download ]

I’m not a huge fan of Christmas music, but I do love making playlists to listen to while doing Christmas-related activities like baking or wrapping presents. The songs I’ve been listening are bittersweet, in the sense that some capture the playfulness of the season–the snow, the love–where others hint at the darker aspects of the winter–the coldness, the darkness. Enjoy!

[Click the image to listen to the playlist.]

1. Half  A Week Before the Winter, Vanessa Carlton / 2. My Boots, Lights / 3. Falling, Emmy Rossum / 4. Coming Home, Marit Larsen / 5. Hiding Out, Sucré / 6. The Winter Song, Eisley / 7. Quiet, Lights / 8. Vanilla Twilight, Owl City / 9. Signs, Bloc Party

[ Download ]

I’ve had two reliable sources of great mix tapes: Jeff Butler and Tommy Heffernan. Jeff had superior equipment, Tommy had a vast knowledge of musical esoterica. Jeff leaned towards guitar rock. Tommy favored new wave. Jeff gave me a greatest hits of Queen. Tommy juxtaposed The Talking Heads with The Smiths.

I still have the tapes they made me, all of them[1].

My cousin Keith has emerged as the mix tape source in my adult life. More about him later.

But once, just once, I was given a mixtape from a friend kind of out of nowhere, and on that tape was a song that changed my life.

Christian Bauer was and is a music maven. He loved, breathed, lived for music, and found a way to collapse conversations into his comfort zone. I met him through soccer, we were both into punk—we both liked Screeching Weasel, Blink 182 and Lagwagon—but he had much more adventurous[2] tastes. He had a wide palate, dipping into all manner of musical subcultures.

We went to different high schools, and I was a year older but we were friends. He was smart and into ideas. I was interested in the world and read a lot. I remember he asked me once, when he was 17, how someone could pray all the time, constantly. “What would it look like?” (He was referring to Frannie and Zooey.) I said I didn’t know. He pondered. My attention drifted.

It’s hard to know how others view you, but I think he saw me as decent and generous with my emotional space.

Anyway, he made me a tape. I still have it. It’s titled “Something to fall back on.” He drew a picture of a smiling guy on the front. Some of the music was what we at the time called Emo Screamo, which has no real contemporary equivalent. Some of it was indie rock. Some of it was punk. And then, the first song on the second side, was a track by Hot Water Music: “Arms Can’t Stretch.”

2.

I used to go to punk shows at the Nite Owl, a shitty little rundown bar at the edge of a busted out shopping mall. Along with Sluggo’s—and later a tiny place called Section Eight—it was Pensacola’s only punk rock venue. (The mall has since converted into a Lowe’s. Or might be boarded up by now.) The Nite Owl had a stage, a reliable sound system, some pool tables and ratty gutter punk furniture. It drew huge all-ages shows. I saw Good Riddance, Face to Face, and Less than Jake there, among dozens of others. I loved it.

One of the perennial favorites was a band named Avail. They were amazing live, just stunning. They were a forerunner to the hardcore sound—a type of music, no longer around, that saw its heyday with Earth Crisis and The Henry Rollins Band and Hatebreed and, to a lesser extent, Pantera, and then dismantled into emo and death metal. I bought their cds. The music was okay but the magic wasn’t there. Avail’s magic was on the stage. I saw them a number of times.

Opening for Avail, when I was 19, was the band Hot Water Music.

3.

They’re a great band. The music is at times simple and comforting, but they have two singers and use them in tandem to great emotional effect. They also have a dynamite live show, but I was distracted and didn’t pay close attention.

I was in a difficult, unhappy period. I had a crushing avalanche of introspection. I essentially switched from an extroverted happy guy into a brooding, self-directed dude[3]. It felt like a malignant presence had invaded my thoughts. Placed into the new context of college, in a new city, I was unsure of who I was. I didn’t feel like I belonged with the soccer players on the team, and I didn’t have outlets to make new friends. I drank too much. I lost weight. I listened to whiny punk and power pop. I didn’t like myself. I didn’t enjoy my own company. I didn’t know how to talk to people. I didn’t know how to talk to girls. There’s more[4]. My buddy Jeff was in Georgetown, living a life I wanted. Robert and Chris stayed in Pensacola. I felt alone and isolated and lonely. It sounds silly and quaint at this telescoped distance, but at the time I missed my friends, and I missed them terribly. I missed my family too, although I wouldn’t have admitted the sickly ache to anyone, including myself.

A second level of dislocation. I didn’t like Montgomery. More provincial than Pensacola, which seemed impossible. No live music. No punk anywhere. Thick-accented people who belonged to a Deep South culture I had somehow averted.

I was all over the place politically, a hybrid of libertarianism and old-school republicanism, as well as a mish mash of religion. I suffered from a collision of Southern Baptist, old school religion and burgeoning Gnostic notions trickling down to me through the eons via literature. The mystery religions of the ancient world were alive, and I was electrified by their contact[5].

I felt alone, alone, alone, alien in my own body, disconnected from my own thoughts and the miserable surroundings. But I had that tape. Something to fall back on.

4.

Yes, back to Christian’s mix tape. The first song on the second side. A song by the band I had seen back at the Nite Owl.

“Arms Can’t Stretch” is a love song, but I interpreted it at the time as a paean to life itself. It’s a soaring, rapturous song. It sounds of its time, there’s a touch of the 1990s to it, but it also sounds cosmic and timeless. There’s a spiritual strand in the lyrics.

I listened to this song constantly. Play, rewind, play, rewind. Along with “Modern Love” by David Bowie and, strangely, “Whipping Boy” by Lagwagon, I had a precise soundtrack of three songs.

One night I drove up to Athens to visit my cousin, Keith, at the University of Georgia.

We bopped around the campus, then around downtown, talking, talking, talking. We ate pizza. We walked. It was a calm night. We saw one of Keith’s friends witnessing to undergraduates. We passed the bars and the buskers. We made our way back to his dorm around 2 in the morning. He had a corner room. We were wiped out. I was happy, emptied out of negative feelings and at peace in a way that only the best of friends and the closest of companions can bring.

“I’ve got a song for you to hear,” he said.

And he put this on.

http://grooveshark.com/#!/search/song?q=Hot+Water+Music+Arms+Can’t+Stretch

As I roll into my second week of the Ace Hotel residency, I wanted to drop another live mix. All done in one take and spontaneous (with some pops and clicks and the usual live set stuff you encounter minus the drunk people asking for Shakira), just like my sets on Friday nights. Last week’s mix did really well over at mixcloud, with well over 1000 listens in a very short time. This week’s live mix is heavy on the drums, and has a lot of Funk and Soul, a Brazilian tune recommended to me by Allen Thayer aka The Ambassador, a few Hip Hop joints I have been feeling (any Edan side is genius and some older Roc Marciano plus some classic Tribe), a library track from some Blue Note reinterpreted, and of course some funky Reggae. The intro was one drop that I really cherish. I got it from Guru post Gangstarr, and he was very kind to do a whole slew of drops for me before he passed. You will also hear my man DJ Andy Smith with a few shout outs and some vocal snippets from Club Cheetah (which had a bad ass logo back in the 70′s..tee shirt anyone?)

talk to the people: a live mix Tracklist

Intro
Marcos Vallo – Mentira
Madlib – The Mystery (Dilla’s Still Here)
Odetta – Hit or Miss
Quinn Harris & the Masterminds – Stop! (Telling Me Lies)
Roc Marciano – Snow (Instrumental)
Eugene McDaniels – Cherrystones
Deadly Headly – 35 Years from Alpha
Ummah – Down Hear on the Ground
Natural Self – Solomon (Nostalgia 77 Mix)
Edan – Syllable Practice Remix
The Turles – Buzz Saw
Poets of Rhythm – The Upper Class
Ground Hog – Bumpin’
Pigmeat Markam – Who’s Got the Number?
Willie Henderson – Break Your Back
Brian Bennett – It’s A Crazy World
A Tribe Called Quest – Pubic Enemy
Lefty’s Soul Connection – Bam Bam
Dub Specialists – Banana Walk
Outro

Listen to talk to the people here.

Keep Diggin’!

Been looking forward to this quiet mix tape dropped by Young Jeezy earlier today, Its Tha World.   Pretty amazing that I have been fucking with Jeezy since his early days and he finally gets a tape with Dj. Drama, who is arguably the best Dj out there.  I remember back in 05′ when Soul Survivor (feat. Akon) dropped.  That was my shit.  Anyway this mix tape goes pretty hard and has a couple features including 2 Chainz, YG, Lil Boosie, Trey Songs, and Birdman.  Gotta check out this free download  to Its Tha World soon to add to your library of music.  (available at Datpiff by clicking the link)  An interesting thing also is that this mix tape was dropped on 12/12/12 at 12:12 which will never happen again. Something significant to add to the tape.  Jeezy back at it decade later.   #12/12/12