hahamusic

Why did no one tell me there was an insane, whacked-out freaking awesome video for the Beastie Boys song “Shadrach”? More to the point, why did no one tell me there was a crazy, Cosby Show-colors animated freaking awesome video for the Beastie Boys song “Shadrach”?

I’ve been around 23 years and counting, and the video has been around for 21. And you’re telling me that in that time, no one, not one person on this earth could have said something? Dropped the ball big time, entire world.

Big time.

All kidding aside, I was talking to a friend recently about hip-hop and the video for the Beastie Boys song “Root Down,” another great video which shows a lot of the early New York hip-hop scene (graffiti, breakdancing, huge boom boxes, all that jazz), came up. So I decided I needed to see it again, looked it up on the ol’ YouTube and came across the official (I guess?) Beastie Boys video channel, which included “Shadrach,” which then proceeded to blow my mind. It was already my favorite song on Paul’s Boutique, sampled one of my favorite Sly & The Family Stone songs, and now I find out it also has this really cool video. Pretty sweet bonus.

Here’s a site with the lyrics and a list of samples and references (along with all the other songs on the album).

And for fun, here’s a site which makes the case that the song is a postmodern masterpiece.

Beastie Boys - Shadrach (Buy It)

Sly & The Family Stone - Loose Booty (Buy It)

posted by Adam

In the interest of keeping up with the site here, and also of letting you know about cool music stuff, here are a couple cool things going down around NY that I’ll be heading to and you should be too.

First up, there’s Devin the Dude and Prince Paul at Studio B in Brooklyn (see flyer above). Now to be honest, I’ve never really listened to Devin the Dude’s music. But everything I hear about him is good. And I hear it from people who know what they’re talking about. And I tend to listen when those people talk. Plus, Prince Paul. Producer of some of my favorite albums of all time and pretty much the inventor of the story-telling hip-hop album. Can’t beat it.

Check out the venue here.

De La Soul - Ain’t Hip To Be Labeled A Hippie (Buy It)

Next is house favorite Shelly Bhushan, who is playing two sets at the 55 Bar this Saturday (April 12) at 8:00. I’ve written about Ms. Bhushan a few times here, and I really can’t say nice enough things about her. Amazing voice, amazing band, amazing songs, amazing live. Better get to it if you’re around. I know I’ll be there.

Venue here.

Shelly Bhushan - Little Piece (Buy It)

posted by Adam

Please to enjoy. . . .

We Are Scientists - After Hours (radio mix) (buy) (watch)

The Cool Kids - Action Figures (listen)

Adele - Tired (buy)

Maritime - Be Unhappy (buy, love)

Josh Ritter - Right Moves (buy)

So, NoVa? You guys good? And Vermont? And NY, of course - All good? I think you guys will like this one.

Oh, and this too: bigger mix

posted by charlotte.

Hey everybody, back from my sanity-saving trip north. While in Vermont, I saw a couple movies I’d like to recommend to you:

First up is Super Amigos, the first two minutes of which you can watch above. The film is a documentary about professional wrestlers in Mexico City who also fight social ills as modern-day super heroes. Super Barrio fights landlords who attempt to evict their working-poor tenants unfairly. Super Gay battles rampant homophobia, counsels family members of victims of homophobic attacks and educates the community about AIDS and HIV. Super Animal fights against the cruel, yet popular sport of bullfighting. Super Ecologista fights the rising tide of pollution and deforestation, and Fray Tormenta fights poverty and drug use by taking in and mentoring street youth. It’s a pretty incredible production with, as you can hear and see in the clip above, fantastic music and visuals, including the heavy use of cartoons.

Check out the website here: http://www.opencityworks.com/superamigos

The second film is Jupiter’s Dance, a day-in-the-life documentary about the struggling musical community in the impoverished city of Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Though the film gives a few details on the political background of the country, the focus is mainly on the musicians themselves and the widely varied music they produce with little in the way of resources. The movie mostly focuses on the titular Jupiter Bokondji, leader of the Okwess International band and the band’s struggle to make it, or even put on a decent concert. The music in this movie is absolutely incredible (you’ll get a little bit of an idea from the trailer), and as I am extremely uneducated on Congolese music, if you’ll drop any idea of a good place to start learning more about it (a suggestion of an artist or compilation) in the comment section, I would greatly appreciate it.

And you can find more samples from the movie here.

In the meantime, update your queues and be on the lookout for these fantastic and interesting films!

posted by Adam

A small part of what my day-job entails is reading a variety of Jewish weekly newspapers. I don’t exactly relish the task, as many of the papers are full of far right-wing close-minded politics and really stifling religious content. It is always interesting to see what those opinions are, if not just to see how different they are from my own, but it can be a bit much sometimes.

The one that I actually enjoy reading is The Forward, a more leftist paper. The real pleasure of reading The Forward (which I always save for last) though is their arts section, which always has genuinely fascinating articles about Jewish art and artists. This week, I read an article about a middle-aged Jewish photographer named David Scheinbaum, who, after taking his 13-year-old son to a Del tha Funkee Homosapien concert, became fascinated with hip-hop and hip-hop artists. His work is being shown (along with Jewish painter Alex Melamid’s) at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC in an exhibit titled “RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture” through late October.

The photos range from live action concert shots to more formal portraits, but they’re all stunning and remind me a lot of Herman Leonard’s photos of jazz luminaries (here). It makes me happy to think of people fawning over photos of hip-hop folks down the line the same way that we look at stuff like Leonard’s.

Go here and check out Scheinbaum’s work. And if you’re in the DC area (I know some of you are), head over to the Portrait Gallery and check it out in real life.

And here’s some music to rock while looking.

Del tha Funkee Homosapien - Don’t Forget (Buy It)

posted by Adam

I think this video pretty much sums up why you haven’t heard from me around these parts for a while. Only instead of the corporate hell in the video, picture the non-profit version (ie, plenty of guilt and long hours). I’m being dramatic, but you get the idea:

Jeez, I need a vacation or something. There’s a trip planned for next weekend to go up to Vermont to visit friends, and we’ll see if that does the trick. Breathing non-city air, spending some time not crammed into a subway train, in the open air instead of hemmed in by buildings all the time. At least for a little while. In the meantime, enjoy the song and its accompanying video– it’s a good one, especially the ending. That ending always gets me.

The Chemical Brothers - Golden Path (feat. Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips) (Buy It)

posted by Adam

I’m sure a lot of you have read Julianne Shepherd’s ever-so-subtle music piece in the Village Voice on Vampire Weekend, titled “Please Ignore This Band.” Well, some of you probably have.

I’ll boil it down for you folks without the patience to read the whole thing: Ms. Shepherd doesn’t like the hype-prone NY indie band Vampire Weekend, and thinks that you shouldn’t either. “Why not?” you might ask, “Because they use African rhythms in some of their songs while simultaneously not being even remotely African themselves? Maybe because they do so while dressed kinda like college Republicans?” NO, she says. That’s all above-board (until she complains about all of it later in the article). What really makes Shepherd angry is that they don’t have any edge and their music makes them seem like they’re rich white kids.

My favorite part, the section that really just screams “I AM AN APPRECIATOR OF ONLY MUSIC THAT I THINK HAS ENOUGH CRED FOR ME TO LISTEN TO” and also makes me think that the piece was actually written by a guy in his 50’s who still wears his original CBGBs shirt (the one that Joey Ramone spit on that one time) and has orthopedic insoles in his Doc Martens, is as follows:

“Moreover, their calculatedly highbrow guitar techniques — pointedly undistorted; I bet these guys read sheet music — and carefully tousled nice-guy vocals drip so liberally with propriety that their style has, for me, become a resounding philosophical statement, a line in the sand. And because their whole steez is so ’80s, I am forced to choose Black Flag and Minor Threat. Impeach Reagan!”

Impeach Reagan? Give me a break. Cheesy nostalgia for political sentiment from 20 years ago aside, the logic here just doesn’t play out … She’s angry at Vampire Weekend for being good at playing their instruments, not using distortion, (allegedly) being able to read sheet music (GASP), being carefree in their lyrics and not having harsh voices … Ok, at the very least I can acknowledge that this is a viewpoint to which someone might subscribe. And that’s fine, honestly. If you like only music that has those things (shitty musicianship, politically aware lyrics being yelled/screamed), that’s cool. I’ve known some very worthwhile people who liked nothing but that kind of music. But if your tastes are that specific, then you shouldn’t be a music critic, and you should have the level of self-awareness to say to yourself “Well, my tastes reside in a very small niche in the musical spectrum. Other people can like other music if they want.” I’d also like to point out that while Minor Threat and Black Flag performed some harsh music, they were all DAMN good at their instruments.

As I was reading the article, I kept thinking about how basically all the British Invasion bands appropriated Black American music and dressed like the English version of preppy (mod), and they’re all canonized in “hip” culture. And Shepherd’s complaint about the conventional and provincial nature of their lyrics? The Kinks did a full album of it on their Village Green Society, which is considered a masterpiece by anyone who likes rock music and has ears. I don’t see how dressing in polo shirts, khakis and boat shoes and using some beats and guitar stuff that you copped from an African music blog is any different. And complaining that they’re too hyped or too catchy or too pop or too whatever for your holier-than-thou music tastes is just ridiculous too.

I had never actually seen a picture of Vampire Weekend until I read Shepherd’s article and went and found one. A couple of them do indeed look like they could be college Republicans. But here’s the real point: I liked their music before I saw what they looked like. And I liked their music despite (maybe even because of?) the good musicianship and provincial lyrics. So why should I give a damn about how they dress or if their lyrics discuss class warfare or whatever other nonsense people can come up with? If you don’t like Vampire Weekend’s music, then by all means, ignore this band. But don’t do it for some bs reason like the ones Shepherd trots out. Just take the music for the music and screw the rest.

Vampire Weekend - Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa

Vampire Weekend - Walcott (Buy It)

The Kinks - Picture Book (Buy It)

Related! My friend Katy posted this on her blog earlier this month. While I was ripping off her site, I also got my hair cut to look like hers. Creepy, right? (I didn’t actually).

Unrelated! I wrote a post for Contributor Matt’s blog here. It has nothing to do with music. Or vampires. It does have something to do with weekends, though. So I guess slightly related.

posted by Adam

I don’t get to watch too much soccer, being in a city that shuns TV and in a country that is yawningly moving towards a sentiment towards soccer, but I sure can follow it on the internet! With extensive coverage and up to the minute scores that pop up on the bottom right of Mozilla Firefox, I can easily follow Champions League soccer. Round of 16 starts tomorrow!

Another outlet I use is soccer literature. I started reading a book titled, Soccer Against the Enemy: How the World’s Most Popular Sport Starts and Fuels Revolutions and Keeps Dictators in Power. It’s less heavy than it sounds. As I was reading a chapter on South African soccer (timely since the next World Cup will be held there), I came across a short piece on the club team “Kaizer Chiefs.” I instantly thought of the Kaiser Chiefs and wondered if there is a connection. Sure enough, the name came to the band because Marcus Radebe, a famous Leeds United player started his professional career with the Kaizer Chiefs. Turns out Radebe was shot in South Africa and while not critically wounded, Radebe believed it was because a fan did not want him to leave the club. He did leave, moved on to Leeds United and became a local hero known as “The Chief.”

The Kaizer Chiefs stage a fierce rivalry annually in the Soweto Derby against the Orlando Pirates. If my knowledge of music were greater, I’d come up with a clever “rivalry” between the Kaiser Chiefs and a band with the name “Pirate” or “Orlando.” Until then, you’ll have to settle for the Kaiser Chiefs and a song by Mano Negra about “Santa Maradona”- the drug-addict turned talk show host Argentine soccer hero.

The Kaiser Chiefs- The Angry Mob (Buy here)

Mano Negra- Santa Maradona (Buy here)

posted by Matt

Don’t laugh at my lousy photo editing skills, young Bob Dylan…

Since the new Deluxe Edition of Beck’s star-making album Odelay came out, I’ve been revisiting the original a fair amount. The whole album is great, but my favorite song (and, if I remember the logic correctly, the reason I bought the album in the first place) has to be “Jack-Ass.” Sure, “Where It’s At” was more famous. And sure, “The New Polution” had a better video. But “Jack-Ass” was better than both. Very relaxing, for one thing.

So recently, I was looking around at some articles about the Deluxe Edition, thinking over whether I would buy it or not, and I came across a mention of how eclectic the samples on the album were. A note: Certain people, and I tend to count myself among them, have a pretty big thirst for musical minutia. It’s just like any other obsession — only instead of knowing all the names and plots of all the Star Trek episodes or something, we can tell you that yes, there’s a rumor that during the recording of The Ohio Players’ “Love Rollercoaster” you can hear someone being murdered, but that it’s widely known to be just a rumor. I’m sure you could count all the authors of all the music blogs linked on the right among these ranks as well. Knowledge of samples, for me and many others, is one of the best outlets for this brand of obsession.

Anyway. “Jack-Ass” is built around a sample of Them’s cover of the Dylan song “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.” Them, for your reference, was Van Morrison’s band before he went solo and became the artist that we all know and love and don’t understand the words he’s singing. They’re most famous for doing the garage-rock tune “Gloria.” People who write about music sometimes call the song “proto-punk.” Patti Smith famously covered it (and/or owned the crap out of it) on her first album Horses. Trivia!

Here’s the chain back to the source, from Beck to Van to Bob. Sample to cover to original.

Beck - Jack-Ass (Buy It)

Them - It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue (Buy It)

Bob Dylan - It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue (Buy It)

And just for a bit of contrast, here’s a different version of “Jack-Ass” from the Deluxe Edition of Odelay. Pretty good in its own way, but I still prefer the album version.

Beck - Strange Invitation (Buy It)

posted by Adam

Hey soul brothers and sisters, some news for you today. Contributor Matt, whose all-things-food blog Post Haste-Taste you’ve seen linked on the right since day one of hahamusic’s existence, has decided to give up the ghost on that endeavor and focus on another topic: Enthusiasm in all its incarnations. His new blog Irrationally Exuberant (the name taken from an Alan Greenspan speech) will feature, in addition to Matt still talking about food and farms and whatnot, an array of guest writers (including Your’s Truly) writing on an array of different subjects, with the only criteria being EXCITEMENT. So visit it early, visit it often, and let Matt know what you think. That’s my plan.

Right now though, I’m pretty enthused about my Windows Media Player. I’ve got it on random, and it’s just played a flawless series of songs I used to be OBSESSED with at one time or another and haven’t heard in a long time. Don’t you love it when that happens? Here they are:

Stone Temple Pilots - Sour Girl (Buy It)

Remember this song? With the weird Teletubbies-gone-goth dancing with Sarah Michelle Gellar? Or something like that? “Sour Girl” actually made me thankful that alt-rock radio repeated songs so often. For a little while anyway.

Mos Def - Jam On It (Buy It)

My friend Andrew and I talked to each other exclusively by quoting lyrics from this song for about a month, managing to confuse strangers and annoy friends. “Well hey, youngblood, that was fresh,” indeed.

Charlie Parker - Parker’s Mood (Buy It)

The first time I heard this song, it was the vocalese version by King Pleasure, on a collection called The Beat Generation (which also included the Parker tune “Cosmic Rays”). Of course, my parents’ house being the way it is (full of jazz records), I found the real version and commenced listening to it a lot.

Blur - Coffee and TV (Buy It)

I bought the Blur album 13 used, kind of on a whim and ended up not really liking it much, except for this and a couple other songs, which I really liked. Except the end, which I always skip past.

Massive Attack - Live With Me (Buy It)

I’m pretty sure that the video for this song, which was on repeat around my apartment for long time, may be the most depressing thing put on film ever. That’s why I’m not posting the video, I’m posting the song, which is ridiculously good.

Nine Inch Nails - Into The Void (Buy It)

Ahhh, high school angst. What an excellent soundtrack you had.

Bob Marley & The Wailers - Africa Unite (Buy It)

At age 14, my tape of Survival was really what turned me into a Marley fan — hearing Legend at summer camp just got the gears in motion. I played that album so many times on my walkman, but especially this song. That flute line gives me goosebumps every time.

Anyway, I’m off to think of something other than music that makes me crazy happy and would make interesting reading.

posted by Adam