Thanks to all the rubberfans and funkateers who came out for (the last?) MUM this weekend! Brother Cleve, DJ Flack, Wayne&Wax, DJ Axel Foley, Dziga, Tdogg, yours truly and all the other people who volunteered their time and gear cooked up a proper P-Funk tribute all slathered up in rubbery bass, screwy syths and more bounce for your flashlight. There is nothing like dancing in the street with a few hundred of your new best friends to make you feel good about the world. Here’s some video of my set that gives you a sense of the vibe this year.
Thanks to the Somerville Arts Council for getting the community together to dance in the street.Those from funkier locations may think this sounds insane, but up here in the brainy Northeast, its often hard to get people dancing period. Forget about throwing a legal family style p-funk tribute dance party under a highway overpass. Despite the odds, that’s what we have done for the last 5 years.
This year the bass was so heavy and the funk so stanky that it made me want to take the show on the road. I kept wondering, “could a traveling caravan throwing outdoor electro-boogie-disco-breaks parties unite the country? The world?” Under a bridge in Somerville, MA this weekend, it sure seemed like it could.
Although the video clip above does not make it so clear, ever year we rock together. Here’s a clip from last year with all of us on deck.
Folks, what can I say. I had so much fun at the All American City Beard and Moustache Contest this weekend that I had to share some YouTube links pics and stories! Not only was it packed with supportive onlookers and fans, the facial creativity was in full effect (as the videos will attest). Two particularly awesome moments included the 12 year old kid with the barely started fuzzstache who won second place in the mustache contest and the elderly Sikh gentleman who won in the natural beard category with his wonderful whispy white beard. So great! Somerville was certainly showin’ the love this Sat.
Along with all the nice community feeling, it also gave me an excuse to play some classic rock tunes and drink free Naragansett tall boys in the afternoon. What could be better? Well, how about an impromptu DJ lesson for the kids to wrap it all up?
I have often noticed this when I play family style events. The kids always seem fascinated with the DJ rig and often come up wanting lessons. At one wedding, I was literally swarmed with a ring of Lilliputian onlookers all decked out in their finest. Of course, being a teacher at heart, I am always glad to mess up the mix to explain the technique to inquiring little minds.
All in all, a pretty sweet weekend. Hope to see you all next year.
Its all up at WZBC for a bit longer, but grab it while you can. Thanks to Chris Faraone for comin’ by on the third day and bringing some of the latest local heat and classics from the last decade. I gotta confess, I spent much more time digging into the early years and left a lot of the more recent stuff to future efforts.
I also have to thank Brick Casey again for coming down on the second day. As we were getting packed up I was snapping shots of the tectonic layers of local music history captured on the densely stickered, tagged and postered walls of WZBC. Among the Bentmen stickers and band posters from the 90s, there was the original Street Poets poster tacked up on a wood paneled wall next to an old milk crate. Apparently, Casey has been subliminally promoting down at ‘ZBC since the mid 1990s. Who knew? And who put that poster up?
Thanks again to Scott for having us down and to Brian for manning the decks!
Thanks to Brick Casey (aka Polecat) who braved the snow storm yesterday to come down to WZBC and talk to us about the 1990’s scene in the Bean. Casey came up in the 4 Corners neighborhood of Dorchester and released a couple of early 1990’s underground gems under the name Polecat. Out Ta Flip is one of my personal faves. The Ruffa Mix features the gravelly Buju-style vocals of Dorchester’s own Ruffa and hints at the deep roots of the ragamuffin hip-hop sound in the Bean. More on that today as we round out the last of the 1990s and head into the Oughts and beyond. Happy 2010.
Thanks to everyone who showed up on Monday for the Beat Research Rep Da Bean Night. Amazing to hang with 7L, Karma, Lyrical, Nomadik, Polecat/Brick Casey, Def Rock and the Megabug crew and many others while we listened to unreleased Lecco’s Lemma tapes, TDS Mob, T-Max and so much other incredible Boston hip-hop! We all agreed we need to do it more often.
We ended the night with a surprise appearance by Def Rock and Dr. Dooriddle (of Megabug/Monstamind fame) and DJ Richie Gambles on the decks. Check them out rockin’ through a hole in the wall using the random breakbeat records I happened to bring along.
Its finally here. The day the book drops. I am heading over to Beat Research soon to celebrate with the Beantown massive and wanted to put up the article before I do.
There is so much to say about this piece of work that I can’t even really begin. It took longer and was harder than I ever could have imagined. But it was also the highest honor to be asked to write the first real academic piece on Boston’s hip-hop history. What would you say? Its a complicated tale to say the least. Well, this is what I came up with.
A few words of introduction are clearly in order. First, thanks to everyone who opened their lives, collections and memories to me. I could not have done it without you. Second, I know there are certainly going to be some errors, omissions, thoughts about other angles to highlight, etc. I welcome your suggestions (post them up here) and hope I can update this in a second version, later works, etc. This is certainly a first pass at a lifelong project. Finally, you may notice that the article leaves a lot of the recent history (and people) out. That’s not because I see it as less important, interesting, etc. Just that I had a chance here to tell some tales that have not been told, reach some people that are harder to reach, and dig a little deeper into the past. I also wanted to celebrate a scene that I have loved and been around (but not quite in) for my whole life. So, that’s what I did.
There are lots of things I would do differently if I could. But most of it, I would do the same way again. Visiting Rusty and Spice at Touch. The trip to Maine to see/hear the Lecco’s Lemma archives and talk to Magnus my old friend. Checking in with Skippy at his last remaining store and asking him about his first memories. Reconnecting the electro sounds coming out of Boston in the early 1980s to the birth of hip-hop. A lot. Anyway. I hope you enjoy reading it half as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Here it is with respect to all of you who lived it the first time around.
When you spend enough time listening to and discussing old records, sometimes it seems like the more things change, the more they stay the same. Let me explain. I recently had the pleasure of hosting a lovely couple named Olga and Raph and who had played at Beat Research under the name The Gypsy Sound System. Despite some of the commentary over at Wayne’s mega blog, I have to say I liked the set a lot. In addition to a tasteful selection of tunes, Olga sang mournful melodies over dub instrumentals and they generally played a tight, danceable (if perhaps a little ethnokitschy) set.
Not the make light of the serious issues (of which I am largely ignorant) around the gypsy term in their name, but the whole debate reminded of another Olga who was engaged in a complex re-presentation of Eastern European musical memes and modern dance trends. But this one fronted a band back in 1919. Now this is the kind of coincidence that can only occur if you have paid proper homage to the vinyl gods.
Olga Bibor and her Peasant Jazz Orchestra’s “Out My Album” was recorded in New York City in May 1919 by a Hungarian group led by a woman named Olga. It was also the subject of an old post of mine back in 2006 titled Olga Bibor’s Peasant Jazz Orchestra and the Proto-Jazz Melting Pot and was the most inexplicable record in Rob’s Collection. The post generated a little buzz among a handful of 78 collectors (scroll down), but never went viral. Until now. If you head over there, note that I was not the source of the “world’s first jazz record” question. But these folks do have some interesting notions about the global dance musical goulash represented here.
According to one commentator “like many such emigrant ensembles in New York during this period, their output included folk dance melodies (csardas, waltz, lander), as well as Tin Pan Alley tunes such as Silver Threads Among the Gold.” Rob Chalfen hears this song as blending the sounds of “circus, NY string bands, proto-jazz, klezmer & somehow St. Louis or Memphis-type (?) ragtime riffs in one enigmatic performance.” While others don’t hear as much nuance perhaps, they are similarly clear about the early jazz content. “The tune sounds to me like it’s based, at least partly, on Weary Blues, a jazz standard dating from 1915, by Artie Matthews (prolific African American songwriter and ragtime composer).” Apparently (and not surprisingly), the group also performed under the name Olga Bibor and her Gypsy Ensemble.
So, here we have a woman named Olga fronting an Eastern European band playing a combination of currently popular dance music with jazz in their name (a term which may have been added by recording executives who were trying to capture the exploding interest in this new beat heavy music). But remember folks, this was 1919, just two years after the earliest Original Dixieland Jazz Band releases. Back in the old days, people still managed to share their influences with no assistance from blogs, torrents or rapidshare sites. They traveled around buying records and playing them for (and with) other people. Listening, watching, learning, playing, and partying together as best they could given the social contexts they were coming from/into. In the process, things get creatively scrambled. Trust me. It happened just the other night.
The night Raph and Olga stayed over, I got to chat with them after the gig for a while. They didn’t strike me as boorish exploiters of others’ cultures. Rather, they seemed like kind, open-eared fellow travelers in the musical omniverse. Things got really interesting when Raph pulled out the accordian and I tried to accompany him on some trad sounding tunes. As an old rock guitarist from way back who has gradually lost his chops, I was having trouble finding the right strumming rhythm. After kindly suffering my rhythmic mutilations for a while, Raph finally turned to me and said, “its like ska, chak-chak-chak” as he mimed the guitar strum physically and sang it on the “ands” for me. Somehow, he must have known that a Specials reference would help this half Ukranian Boston PhDj former alterna-rocker learn how to muddle through Eastern European tunes he was still (re)learning himself.
Happy Halloween Y’all! I love this holiday because its the time when everyone gets to dress up and act like a kid again. I also like creepy, crawly, dark and dusty places…’cause there are sometimes records down there. So, to celebrate, here are a few tracks with a horror theme for your enjoyment. I’ll break ‘em down below.
The first one, Count Dubula, is all Darren really. We were hanging out at my old apartment in Cambridge making beats and watching horror flicks. We had the audio of the DVD running through the mixer so we could mix it in live with whatever else we were doing. Classic. Finally, we had two lexicon JamMans locked to each other and some midi gear. The live sampling and midi/tempo locked delays on these make them great units for doing live dubs with samples. That’s just what Daren does here.
First, he grabbed a loop of the death scene in one JamMan. Then, he used the other JamMan to create dub effects and additional loops while the dialog of the death scene whispered and gasped and screamed along in the background. The whole mix was live, though the original was somewhat longer. No changing the timeline/looping/rearrainging though. Just condensation of the ideas that emerged and removal of the real clunkers.
Next, is Creature Double Feature. This is also a live mix, but with me on the decks playing a classic breaks record that ends with Godzilla screetches and then a big bass tone. I am doing a simple little improved doubles thing to which Darren was adding the bass drops (this might have happened after, I dunno). But its also basically a live jam. We got a kick out of the insanity of the dueling godzillas at the end and you can hear us laughing like jackals at the end (though some live mic apparently).
Finally, Haunted Castle also started at my pad, but this time used Def Rock’s MPC3000 and some freestyle from the wizard himself. Darren did some heavy clean up and post production on the original jam and then I added the scratch track live using Tino’s Halloween record today. I include this to give respect to a friend who has been a 4 elements b-boy since the early 1980s. He was taught by Dr. Freshh, was behind the legendary Monstamind/Megabug madness, is sick on the decks, is a true sensei and was featured in the important early graf book Freight Train Graffiti — all before most of you were even out of diapers. Like I said. Respect due.
He is also releasing a new record tonight Progress/Regress at Bullmoose Music up in Portsmouth NH. Get down there at 8pm to see a modern day horror author and b-boy original in action. Stick around for some other limited release Def Rock in the weeks to come.
Last Saturday morning, a friend texted me to tell me that a relative in Lexington was getting rid of her parents’ old record collection. Apparently, the collector had been an accountant and at minimum, his organizational scheme might be of interest. I was led to believe it was a few hundred records and possibly some 78s and didn’t expect much given the description. He told her that I was among the few people in town who would probably be willing to come haul it off on short notice. Apparently, he was right. I agreed to be there later that day.
What I discovered was a big collection of 78s (about 40 books in all!) that included some cool jump blues, jazz and hot 20s dance sides along with the predictable preponderance of schmaltz, 40s swing, vocal jazz and other goofball stuff. Luckily, I know one of the only people in town who has the skill to sift through the collection for any instances of blues, jazz or other proto-funk content. Watch and learn as the master works.
Those are big words for sure. But in this case, it has to be true. Last summer, while sorting incoming records at the old lab, I flipped past this copy of Ofra Haza’s Galbi 12″. As it was heading for the “sell/trade” pile (I already have a few), something caught my attention. The record sleeve seemed a little thick. There was clearly something else in there. “Hunh, might be worth keeping her promo shot/press kit, plus, it has an old WERS stamp on it…,” I was thinking as I removed the printed material inside. Then I fell over.
After a year digging into the basement of Boston hip hop looking for its origin stories, my personal grail had escaped me. I knew that The Source magazine started in Boston (in the Cambridge dorms at Harvard to be precise) and I really expected to run across an old copy. Indeed, lots of folks reported having copies way back when (before the move, fire, robbery…) but I never was able to track one down. Until now. In the most random way imaginable.
Here, in a record I was about to throw away was a copy of The Source, Vol 1, No. 2, November 1988! Not only was it still stapled shut but it started right out with a list of “hot picks from streetbeat” (presumably a reference to the weekly rap radio show run by David Mays Jon Shecter on Harvard’s student radio station WHRB). Also, nore the appearance of the local classic TDS Mob track Dope For the Folks along with a pile of golden age gems from national acts. This amazing bit of Beantown hip-hop history was delivered in a way that only the vinyl gods could have organized. It also put a beautiful bookmark on the end of my year-long quest for the foundations of Boston hip-hop. Grail. Check.
