Exotica Dancer Kalantan “Exotic Buddah Dance” – YouTube.

Here we offer an all to brief look at a live performance at Mills College by maverick composer Harry Partch. He was a man who not only built his own instruments but really did march to his own beat. Mills being a women’s college the instrumentalists making this beautiful music are all women.

There is an excellent web posting about Harry and his instruments on the NPR web site. http://musicmavericks.publicradio.org/features/feature_partch.html

“You Asked For It” was an early “reality” tv show where people would send in requests to see strange things. We posted another clip from it that had a Theremin player on it. In this one a woman from Texas writes in wanting to see one of these Hawaiian cowboys her husband had seen while in the service. This leads to Johnny Ukulele’s spot. He is from a noble Hawaiian family and as a teenager traveled to America to play in a band touring with famed surfer Duke Kahanamoku.

He liked it so much he stayed for thirty years touring the country spreading the sounds of the islands. He spent a lot of the time in the midwest and one of his biggest fans was Al Capone’s brother Ralph who gave a suite in one of the mobs hotels.

Johnny was also an expert swimmer who competed against Johnny Weismuller and Buster Crabbe and others. He cut one lp on Capitol in the late 50′sit wouldn’t be until 1961 that he would finally return to Hawaii. After returning to the mainland he became a fixture in Vegas until his death in 1971.

It’s a very enjoyable experience, unless it gets really crowded. The food and drinks are fairly pricey and you have to get tickets and then get what you want. On the other hand your free to leave and come back and since your in downtown Chicago there places to eat and drink everywhere. We wandered off and found a great old school pub called Millers where we sampled a potent beer called Delerium Tremors.

Anyway back to the music I went on an overcast Saturday and saw four acts and enjoyed them all. We have a clip from each of them so sit back and help yourself to some blues;

Here we are in the second decade of the 21^st century with over fifty years worth of “classic” rock to play and that’s the best they can do? The sad fact is there is very little in the way of new (non popular) music being played on the radio and very little variety of older music. And it’s not just rock music radio does a poor job of representing the vast majority of the music out there.

And the record companies want to blame their failing businesses on downloading. Well sure you can’t fight technology downloading is a big problem for the major labels but they have spent too much time fighting technology instead of finding ways to adapt to it. And then there is the whole fixation on the ear of music from 25 to 50 years ago. The endless remastering, remixing, repackaging, re releasing, regurgitating and replaying of this stuff makes tons of money for the labels and the bands involved. The real threat to the major labels from technology is it removes the stranglehold on distribution they once enjoyed. Anyway.

That was over the weekend on Monday I had another musical experience again it was a transcendent one but this time in a more positive vein, for the most part. It was the opening night for a series New Music Monday free concerts held in Millennium Park in downtown Chicago. On the bill was Bonnie Prince Billy and opening for them was Eleventh Dream Day. A Chicago band that has been operating for almost a quarter century and has just released it’s tenth album.

They don’t do a whole lot of live shows so even though I’ve listened to them since the beginning this was my first time seeing them live. It was an excellent show great to hear some classics played live and hearing the songs from their new release. Drummer Janet Bean broke her ankle the day before. So even though she had to turn her kit over to a replacement for the evening trooper that she is stood on stage doing some percussion and adding vocals.

The weather was perfect and all in all it was a very enjoyable evening. But here’s the rub and the tie in to where I started. On the one hand you have the Doors who haven’t existed in thirty years and still they get more airplay in one day than 11th Dream Day will see in their entire 25 years. And in the end that’s why the music business is failing and it’s for the same reason the larger American economy is failing too much money and power in too few hands. And if the major labels go out of business well the music won’t be going anywhere. Rock on!

I recorded three  songs from Eleventh Dream Day’s  show and have uploaded them to my ChicagoRock1 station. Here is one from their new release “Riot Now”. We present in hopes you will follow the link to their site where can find more music and maybe pick up Riot Now

The Borden twins (Rosalyn & Marilyn) were semi famous they were onstage at the 1976 Super Bowl performing with Sammy Davis and Andy Williams. Although they have both passed Marilyn started a YouTube station that is still maintained in her memory. 

MindsiMedia is an Internet broadcaster with a series of YouTube channels. We have been operating since 2007 and have well  over six hundred videos posted. Visit our web portal.

“Blues Maker” Mississippi Fred McDowell Singing & Playing,1969 Documentary

 ”Blues Maker” is a real gem with over thirteen minutes of blues legend Mississippi Fred Mc Dowell singing and playing. There are some brief snatches of conversation but mostly we get the unfiltered blues. Featuring Fred playing the sldie guitar with a real bottleneck. This film produced in 1969 by the University of Mississippi also has a lot of vintage footage of rural southern life.

 You can download your own copy at archive.org; http://www.archive.org/details/blues_maker_1969

The second is posted on ChicagoRock1 also found on YouTube

 Maxwell Street Blues, Documentary w/ Vintage Footage

A somewhat bittersweet film about the effort to save the Maxwell Street Market a vast mecca of peddlers and other commerce, food and widely regarded as the birthplace of Chicago blues. The scene in “The Blues Brothers” where they go to Aretha Franklin’s diner takes place here. It was a one of a kind cultural melting pot that has since that has since been rehabbed.The film contains rare archival footage of Maxwell Street in the 1940s, and documents some of the last blues performances in this historic community.

This flim was found at http://www.archive.org/details/Maxwell_Street_Blues

 Creative Commons license: Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States

Producer: Robert Wyrod

Contact Information: Robert Wyrod robertwyrod@gmail.com

We also have a play list of other vintage soul, blues and r&b;
http://www.youtube.com/user/MindsiMed…

MindsiMedia is an Internet broadcaster with a series of YouTube channels under development.
Visit our web portal at; http://www.mindsimedia.info/

]]> http://mindsimedia.wordpress.com/2011/02/05/america-eats-itsyoung-spits-out-the-old-the-kool-herc-story/ Sat, 05 Feb 2011 13:58:25 +0000 mindsimedia http://mindsimedia.wordpress.com/2011/02/05/america-eats-itsyoung-spits-out-the-old-the-kool-herc-story/ Todays post started out with a  story about hip hop pioneer Kool Herc who got the ball rolling in 1973 whem he invented “the break”. Now almost forty years later he finds hinself sick and without health insurance. So that story got me thinking about The Funkadelic’s lp, also from around the same time, “America Eats It’sYoung”. On it I found a song called “We Hurt Too”  that fit right in with the theme that was developing. From there we did some more searching on YouTube and found some video w/ Kool Herc And we end up our journey with a video about single payer health care from our Blago vision channel. Enjoy the trip.

Kool Herc he laid the musical foundations that made rappers rich. But Kool Herc’s plight is an indictment of US healthcare.

From The Independent (UK)

By Ian Burrell

Saturday, 5 February 2011

When Clive Campbell was growing up in an imposing high-rise block in the Bronx, he had little prospect of becoming a national icon, in spite of a god-like physique that inspired his friends to name him Hercules. Campbell was one of six children of Jamaican immigrants, who had headed to the richest country on earth but by 1973 found themselves in an unforgiving neighbourhood infested with street gangs. It was there, at 1520 Sedgwick, that on a hot August night in 1973 Campbell, also known as Kool Herc, deejayed at a block party in a way nobody had before – and hip-hop was born. You would have thought that, almost 40 years later, now that the genre has borne a global billion-dollar industry defined by gold teeth and expensive rides – and that Herc is revered as its founding father – he might have enough money to pay his hospital bills.

To readthe full story click here.

 So there I was driving around the south side doing my work and the radio just wasn’t happening for me. The “rock” stations were spinning the same stuff they’ve been playing for 30-40 years. The talk stations were just full of hot air so I started rooting around in my truck for a stray cd. My search was rewarded with a true gem, one that made the whole day a little brighter. It was “The UK Sue Label Story / The World of Guy Stevens”.

 Sue records was one of the first popular black owned record labels. Started in 1957 by Juggy Murray and Bobby Robinson who were established record promoters in NYC. They recorded a number of jazz and R & B artists most notably Ike & Tina Turner who a had all their early hits with Sue. Among the other artists recording for Sue; Jimmy McGriff, Elmore James, Inez & Charlie Foxx, Baby Washington and Bobby Parker.

At any rate it was an awesome CD w/ 26 cuts and also comes with a infomative and fully illustrated booklet. It’s British/Ace release from 2004 and the number, for those that want to track it down, is. CDCHD 1001

 For more information and discography from the lable here is an excellent site.

Here are a couple of videos of tunes from the disc for you to sample.