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.

DJ Pace @ MUM 2010 from Carey Foster on Vimeo.

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.

One nation under a groove. Under a bridge.

When I got to visit Magnus and the original Lecco’s Lemma tapes I was honored and humbled. Here were the raw materials of one of the oldest rap shows in the country (September 1985) and a critical one in the history of Boston hip-hop. In all of the wonder of that discover there was only one problem…Magnus didn’t tape his own show (or at least not that often). It makes sense. Listening to these tapes it’s clear he was juggling a lot already. The problem is, he did lots of on air stuff. Without the tapes of the shows the record would always be incomplete.

So I began asking around. Lots of people claimed to have tapes of the show. I have a few myself. But when it came right down to it, there just weren’t that many around. But there was one person on my list who I never quite connected with…until recently. I guess I just assumed when he said that he taped the show a lot it was the same as all of us…a lot less often than we remembered. Well. In this case I was wrong.

I finally connected with him this past weekend. As I walked up to the house with my backpack, he stood up from the stoop where he had been waiting and said, “Where’s your truck”. “Truck?”, I replied already taken aback. “What do you mean? How many tapes do you have?” “Like I said, I have boxes, man” was his only reply as he disappeared up the stairs to the archive. I still didn’t quite believe him until he opened the closet door. Then I had to sit down to keep from falling over. He has boxes man.

I left with one box containing 64 tapes of the show. He still has two more. Rounding down, lets say there are 60 tapes per box. That’s 180 tapes. Two tapes per show on average is about 90 shows. Since the show only ran for three years, that’s more than half the shows EVER! With this and Magnus’ original tape collection we will be able to compile a pretty complete picture of 80s Boston hip-hop.

Needless to say, there will be much more to say (and more importantly hear). I’ll be putting stuff up here and on the new Lecco’s Lemma soundcloud account all year. After all, September 2010 is the 25th anniversary of the first Lecco’s Lemma show in 1985…so bust out the tape decks people as we run it down for y’all.

Peace to Magnus and DJ Spin (the first Lecco’s archivist) and all the Lecco’s Lemma alumni out there!

LastLeccos1A 1 LeccosMegamix by LeccosLemma

DMX LeCarr Spring1986B by LeccosLemma

But it might be shown on YouTube. After a peaceful first day of G20 protest up here in Toronto, things got ugly yesterday. What began (and remained) a largely peaceful affair turned nasty when a small group of Black Bloc anarchists swarmed through downtown Toronto smashing (mostly) major chains and symbolic establishments like Starbucks, McDonalds, banks and the like. In one hilarious moment, they apparently pelted a strip club with mannequin arms and legs they had looted up the street. Despite not supporting their violent methods, I have to give them some credit for tactics and irony. I mean, despite 19,000 cops and security personnel, a few hundred kids were able to take over downtown Toronto for a few hours and thereby dominate coverage of the event. Hmmm. Maybe they were allowed to? It sure made for “good” coverage.

Sadly, their hour of mayhem allowed the media to focus almost exclusively on images of burning cop cars, protesters smashing windows and the like. Let me tell you, I was there off and on all day and I only saw them once. To me, it seemed like a hard core group of about a hundred folks with perhaps another hundred friends and curious copy cats. There were at least 11,000 other people up here peacefully demonstrating yesterday and we got almost no attention. Not only that, the cops were pushing and pushing all day. I watched all day and night as they surged against crowds of peaceful demonstrators on foot, bike and war horses. I met people who had been beaten. I heard a girl was trampled by a horse and almost killed. Tear gas was used in Toronto for the first time ever. It was a scary display of state power up here people, let me tell you. If you don’t believe me, watch the videos and decide for yourself.

In a strange bit of personal poetry, local record stores (which unsurprisingly remained unscathed) served as a backdrop for many poignant images throughout the day. (Although I heard after the fact that the iconic Steve’s Music sign melted from the burning police car nearby). Meanwhile, Kops records (I could not make this up) did a nice revolutionary window display in solidarity. My favorite moment was watching the reflected march in their window seeming to burst forth from the cover of Gil Scott Heron’s album “The revolution will not be televised”. Beautiful.

Although his words remain as true now as ever, it seems with the (temporary?) democratization of digital media production and distribution (think cellphone videos from Iran and YouTube posts from Toronto), perhaps we have a chance at a real people’s media before the state takes over all channels. They were blocking cell coverage at times up here and folks tell me that legislation is trending toward making it illegal to film cops on duty. As my man Wayne warned me, guard your grill folks (and more importantly, your YouTube account).

Get out. Get involved. Post your findings. Before its too late.

peace

By coincidence, this weekend I happened to be in Toronto after a conference which coincided with the G20 meeting up here. A lot of Canadians seem to be pissed about the $1B price tag (a large percentage of which is for security) and the general inconvenience of having the global royalty in town for the weekend. In short its a big, expensive pain in the ass (and that’s if you are already pretty happy with the current arrangement of the global order). There is also a lot of pretty transparent fear mongering and state heavy handedness going on. For example, the US State Department issued warnings for citizens to stay away from downtown Toronto this weekend. Meanwhile, the Ontario legislature handed over even more control without much discussion.

Meanwhile, my little dorm/hostel/hotel room is a few blocks south of the “official protest” site (which is actually across the street from the conference location). Earlier this evening, I was headed to meet some folks for a farewell fete and stumbled into the front line of current conflicts about the impacts of globalization, resource distribution and social justice. The “dreaded” G20 Protests!

Among other things, the two teams clearly had their own special kind of marching music. On the one hand, you had pickup trucks blasting remixes of “Milkshake” (is that tune old enough to be cool again?) beautifully battling the beats of the hippie human drum corps. On the other, security forces in riot gear keeping time with batons, thigh plates and boots on asphalt. I haven’t tapped it out, but I think the tempos are even similar at times. Often around 115bpm is seems. Interesting.

Despite endless layers of cultural (and sometimes rhythmic) complexity, it was really scary to see the levels of force compared to the size of the marchers. It seemed a small (1,000 person?), clearly peaceful and actually pretty damn funky protest march. It was surrounded by an overwhelming number of continually shifting phalanxes of postmodern Pinkertons on foot, horse and (in a very Canadian fashion) bike.

I hope the second day remains peaceful. Today, everyone was out making their own kinds of marching music which was simultaneously scary and funky. (Post industrial Praetorian in the first case and people-centric in the second.) As usual, I prefer to dance with the people. Anyway, at first, when I watched the recent M.I.A. video about the persecution of gingers, it felt over the top to me. Not misguided. Just a little heavy handed an hyper violent for my taste (faint of heart, beware the link below). Today, it sounded and looked a lot like the intro to that video up here in Toronto.

M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

Don’t forget to work for peace every day. In whatever way. The alternative is unacceptable.

Hey all. Last week I got a short notice request to join flack and wayne at Beat Research tonight. I decided I’d use the night to showcase some of my favorite local ragamuffin hip hop. And when you are doing that, you are basically playing stuff from Jr. Rodigan’s Mastermind Records. Everyone knows the classic ragamuffin hip hop sounds popularized by Bobby Kondors via Massive B Records. Lots of folks also know the collection of stuff on Profile (including the seminal Daddy Freddy and Asher D track) not to mention all the stuff on Nervous. What most people don’t know is that in the mid-90’s, Boston was putting out raggamuffin hip-hop as good as anyplace!!!! Believe it. Like all things hip-hop, Boston’s contribs have gone less recognized than some other places. Until now.

Mastermind Monstamix

I offer this Mastermind Monstamix to prove that the Bean was rocking the ragga sound as hard as anyplace in the mid 1990s. As usual, its pretty much unedited and done live with two decks and included here warts and all. Its also clearly not ALL mastermind stuff and veers into a little paid in full mini-mashup by the end complete with Wayne flowin’ over a PM dawn IM (which always makes me smile).

Respect to Rodigan and his collaborators including the prolific Bingy Twins who co-produced many of his hottest raggamuffin hip-hop dancefloor burners! I’ll be rocking Boston Raggamuffin Hip Hop Classix tonight at Beat Research for anyone in town.

Bigup to the beantown massive. Stay tuned for the Monstamind Master Mix that will be highlighting some lesser known scientifikal rappers from MA.

peace

P.S.

Last night, I had the honor of meeting Jr. Rodigan and playing a set of his classic 90s track while he sat and listened. Talk about pressure. He shook my hand at the end of the night though, so I guess I did it proper. Listening to his verse on One in the Chamba while he sang along next to me has to be one of my all time best musical moments! More on that track in a minute but for now, keep those Boston beats bumpin’.

Here are two of the tracks

Epitome Spree

Take a lesson

P.S.
SUCH great news that he pulled out OK. Man, I was praying hard in my way over here and I know a lot of others were too. Hopes for a fast and full recovery and many more years of dopeness! WTF?!?!?

This weekend, my pal Rob reminded me of the incredible book, Modern Dancing. The first time he showed it to me, I got obsessed and did some lame animated gifs from a photo I took. Since then I married a modern dancer and got a scanner. The combination was irresistible so I spent my weekend immersed again in this incredible tome. Here’s what I uncovered rediscovered.

Back in the teens, a high-society dancing couple named Vernon and Irene Castle made a name for themselves in Europe performing and teaching African American derived dances like the Turkey Trot and the Grizzly Bear. Returning to America in 1913, they found that social dancing and ragtime music were the rage in New York and quickly assembled a show to capitalize on the craze. As the story goes, because their dances “required syncopated music of a type that few New York bands were playing at the time” they needed a band that could cut the mustard. They found one in Europe’s Society Orchestra, an African American band playing a syncopated kind of driving ragtime that was circulating just prior to the first Jazz recordings.

James Reese Europe was already a successful African American band leader in New York when the Castles saw him performing with his band at a private party. The pairing of the au courant dancing of the Castles with the syncopated ragtime of Europe’s Society Orchestra created an extremely popular show which went on to break some important color barriers in American pop culture. In 1914, when the Castles were asked to perform at the top New York venues, white musicians objected to having black performers share the orchestra pit. The Castles refused to compromise and solved the problem by having the band join them on stage. Apparently, this was the first known appearance by an African American band in a major vaudeville theater. Their 1913 Victor recording was also the first by an African American band on a major label. More on that in a minute.

As part of all this excitement, in 1914 the Castles published a book called Modern Dancing, which was an instructional manual complete with plates from a film (perhaps the newsreel Social and Theatrical Dancing 1909-1936). The book is available from a few locations including Archive.org and Google.

Unfortunately, none of these sites provide a re-animation of the plates themselves. I could not resist. Here are some simple re-animations of the classic Castle plates showing Europe’s Society Orchestra playing along. While I have not been able to sync them up to music yet, the following MP3 of Castle House Rag and Castle Walk will give you a good sense of the vibe.

A note on my methods may be of interest here. Because these plates are probably excerpts from longer segments, the frames are not always continuous. Nevertheless, I decided it was worth having all the plates for a given dance together even if it adds some choppiness. I also used really low tech approaches (e.g., an orange highlighter and time) and certainly don’t claim any film restoration expertise. If it looks amateurish, that’s because it is. Here’s what I did.

First, I cracked a bottle of wine and put on some appropriate music (the awesome Victrola Favorites worked perfectly). After scanning the plates, I adjusted them to get each one as vertical as possible. Then I used Photoshop to chop out each frame, trying to get them all the same size. I created a folder for each dance and saved all the jpgs for that dance in order in the folder. Then I used Adobe Image Ready to “import a folder as layers”.

This got them into Image Ready as a set of frames, but I still needed to line them up (register them). This proved a little harder than expected. Not only are the images different sizes, but they are not all continuous frames. Therefore, the image jumps around a lot. Since I was most interested in the music, I decided to stabilize them around the band and let the Castles dance where they would. I found a few spots that seemed to work as registration points (highlights on chairs, corners of tablecloths and the nicely positioned circle on the bucket in front of a table). Using a highlighter pen, I marked these. Then I stepped through each frame (and often back and forth) moving things around until the highlights were all lined up.

Voila. Very analog in a way, but pretty effective.

There are two things that are especially fascinating to me about the Castle/Europe story. The first is the apparently close synergy between the dances selected by the Castles and the songs recorded by Europe’s Society Orchestra (Castle Walk, Maxixe, etc.). It serves as a powerful reminder that the cultural artifacts we study as “firsts” are themselves the result of complex processes of gatekeeping, meaning-making, status and so forth. The second is the obviously international flavor of these plates.

From the Cortez, to the beautiful Tango to the Brazilian Maxixe, the Castles certainly seemed hip to the latest global dance trends. They even provide some historical guideposts. “The Tango is not, as commonly believed, of South American origin. It is an old gipsy dance which came to Argentina by way of Spain, where in all probability it became invested with certain features of the old Moorish dances”. What’s more, the first recording made by Europe’s Society Orchestra was the tune Maxixe (though it’s rarely never included on Europe comps). I don’t know the story behind the selection of this Brazilian themed tune for the first song recorded by an African American band on a major label, but I’d love to hear it. In any event, with my pals tracking more recent/rapid diffusions of global dance/music trends, I love finding antique examples that seem so similar (if kind of slow mo) in their features.

So there you have it folks. The first real reanimation of these important documents of American pop culture history. I am on a quest now to find the original newsreel and have a good angle on its whereabouts. But if you know of a copy available somewhere, please let me know.

Meanwhile, here are some additional links and background info I used for this post.

James Reese Europe
@redhotjazz
@jass

Modern Dancing
@ Archive.org
@ Google books

Electro_Ragga_Defcon Mix

Just to be clear, I don’t actually believe there was a “first” rap song. The first one that most people heard was certainly Sugarhill’s Rapper’s Delight in 1979. It was definitely the first one I heard. But others in the know were obviously aware of Fatback’s King Tim III which barely beat Sugarhill to the presses (but was far less well known in the end). But of course, these were just the first “recorded” rap songs. There were obviously countless earlier versions being performed at parties and less formal settings way back into the 1970s. Still think there was a first rap song?

At this point, academic approaches start to trace sources of the practices and things get dicey. Of course, there seem to be similarities among things like Jamaican toasting, the blues tradition of the dozens, the rhythmic vocal talkovers of R&B radio jocks, the slick street talk of pimps, jazz scat singing and even the musical storytelling of West African griots. But we need to be careful about holding these too closely. In particular, that last turn toward the motherland is particularly tricky as it gets you pretty close to reaffirming some ugly old stereotypes about racial origins of “the funk”. So looking for the first rap song is at best quixotic quest and at worst an affirmation of old racialist stereotypes. In fact, all of these practices probably played some role in creating the cultural foundations for the song form that would eventually come to be called (and more importantly marketed as) rap.

All I am really doing here is tracing the history of a song that is less often mentioned as one of these many potential sources. Specifically, the tune/routine “Here Comes the Judge”.

Pigmeat Markham – Here Comes the Judge

While it was “discovered” by the mass market when it appeared in the late 1960s as a skit on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In in the 1960s, this routine had already been circulating around for some time in the “chitlin circuit”. Specifically, it was a signature routine for Pigmeat Markham, an African American comedian and performer who had been active since the 1930s and eventually became one of the most regular performers at the famed Apollo Theater. While Pigmeat was apparently annoyed that his routine had been appropriated by Sammy Davis Jr. for use on Laugh In, this exposure led to increased national recognition for Markham. In a strange twist, a novelty version of the song was recorded by Shorty Long and reached number-four on the R&B charts and number-eight on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1968. Later that same year, Pigmeat himself hit the Billboard charts with a “cover” of the Shorty Long version of his stage routine (which had itself become popular through being “stolen” by Sammy Davis Jr. on Laugh In). If these layers of appropriation and commercialization are not complicated enough, it gets a good bit deeper friends.

While Pigmeat seems to have claimed the routine as his own, research suggests that he may have borrowed it himself. I think most will agree that its hard not to hear strains of old minstrel tropes in the Pigmeat version of the song (and certainly in the Laugh In routine). Knowing that this tradition included some fairly standard routines that were widely versioned (for example, Louis Armostrong’s versioning of the Bert Williams’ Elder Eatmore routine). It got me wondering if there was an even earlier version of this routine lurking in the history of minstrelsy.

Sure enough. A little digging uncovered an old routine by Bert Williams called “Twenty Years” in which he plays cruel judge Grimes who doles out unreasonable punishments for non-crimes like “slipping on a banana peel”. Not only are there similarities in the content of these routines, they are both done in rhyme. While the 1917 Bert Williams routine does not use a funky breakbeat as an intro, it does feature a similar rhyming pattern. Pretty cool. Not only that, apparently Bert Williams was an early mentor to Pigmeat Marhkham. It seems likely that he would have known this routine.

Bert Williams – Twenty Years

Apparently, the courtroom skit was one of the scenes used in minstrel shows as early as the middle 1800s as part of a larger set of parodies of professional occupations. Willaim Mahar’s Behind the Cork Mask (p. 75) suggests that the Christy Minstrels had a judge routine for example. Given the extent of standardization in minstrel routines, it seems likely that the judge skit has a long history indeed.

OK. To recap. Here is a song that was described to me as “the first rap song” that starts with a funky breakbeat and a rhythmic rhyming vocal that likely traces its origins directly to a routine done by one of the most famous early African American performers, Bert Williams. Phew. But imagine this, it gets deeper still.

Some googling and crowd sourcing found examples of the “here comes the judge meme” in reggae as well. Specifically, in 1967, the year before the Shorty Long and Pigmeat versions, Prince Buster did a tune with a very similar theme called Judge Dread. However, in this version, the judge is now a righteous force judging real world rude boys for crimes like killing other black people. Finally, there is the Wailers version which continues to transform the message to one of righteous judgment of all oppressors. This version flips the silly and cruel judge of minstelsy into a divine and righteous judge sentencing a long list of oppressors including Francis Drake, Alexander the “so called” Great and in an interesting similarity with the minstrel tradition of ironic lyrical inversions, Christopher Crumbulous.

And around it goes.