I’ve been listening to John Grant’s (formerly of The Czars) “Queen of Denmark” repeatedly for the past week and it’s the best thing I’ve heard so far this year. If you like great songs delivered beautifully, the sound of heartbreak from someone with a smile on their face, and those albums which sound different on every listen and your favorite song jumps from one to another, just grab this record no questions asked, put on headphones and enjoy.
The story, which I gleaned from the 5-star Mojo review which turned me on to the record, is of an album that may not have happened without the kindness of friends. When John Grant met Midlake they were on different trajectories: Grant’s Czars were imploding, he was falling deeper into depression and drug addiction, and by the sounds of the record going through a nasty breakup while Midlake were gaining momentum and had the world waiting on their next record. Midlake took him home to Denton, TX, were the backing band for “Queen of Denmark” and helped mix the record to what it is today after two failed mix attempts by others.
If you dig it half as much as I do it’s worth your time. Enjoy.
I’ve been to Coachella, Bonnaroo, and now Electric Daisy Carnival this year. There’s only one thing left to conquer:
The above video is long but keep watching. It gets even better as it goes on.
I have so many questions.
– Girls go to this?
– Does it require one security guard per attendee to keep the deaths below 10?
– Who is Sugar whatever and what’s up with that skirt?
– Is it possible to get enough Faygo to make this event happen?
– How is possible I’ve never heard of a SINGLE group on their label apart from ICP?
– WTF is Cube thinking? Scarface?!
– This is a good look for Coolio and Vanilla Ice, though.
– The Dayton Family?! That’s my shit. I gotta be honest.
– Paradime is Kid Rock’s DJ. I kinda like him, too.
– Why do I not have Get Busy Committee playing at this?
– They’re letting these people in helicopters?
– “DUDES ON STILTS”
– Rowdy Roddy Piper is a comedian?
– Do you need a jester hat to participate in the rap battle?
– “Magicians and hypnotists walking around that bitch…”
– Butterbean?!
– “Seminars”?
When Jeff Jarvis is talking about moving from a mass market to a mass of niches he is most certainly talking about this event.
There’s been a TON going on with Get Busy Committee the last couple of months – the SXSW shows were amazing (thanks to everyone who supported!), we made our goal with the platinum 12″, this Beatminerz track is hot, the group has so many new tracks done they’re trying to decide if they’re doing a new EP or a new album this summer, etc. To be honest between my day/evening/weekends job, helping GBC, having a three year-old, a nineteen year-old, a wife, and taking care of myself with an occasional run or trip to the skate park I haven’t had any free time to blog. Sorry about that.
For those of you who have already gotten behind the band, I thank you. As I’ve said from the beginning I know the album isn’t for everyone but for those of us who grew up on NWA and Beastie Boys it’s a pretty easy call. There *is* more to it than just rhymes, though, I love the record because it’s got *songs*, not the “one beat, one chorus, three verses” rut hip hop has fallen in to. Yeah there are samples but actually the majority of the tracks on the record don’t have ANY samples — there’s a pretty diverse selection of beats on here, something for everyone.
But there’s also a live show now. Apathy and Ryu have done countless shows over the past 15 years in front of hundreds of thousands of people. Scoop’s a natural. DJ Cheapshot is a pro (in fact he has a weekend gig for the summer DJ’ing for New Kids On The Block — I know that sounds like a joke but it’s a fact). They spent a ton of time pulling videos together for each and every song for the show and have a full video DJ set up a la Mike Relm (actually very special thanks to Mike Relm for helping us get the bugs worked out).
Watch the video below. In 8 minutes you get a sense of what I love about the show: great music, good fun, moving a crowd, not taking itself too seriously, entertaining video production, and under it all they’re skilled MCs who have the confidence and swagger of those who have been in the game a long time. From Apathy’s acapella mic check to that cat in the video (that cat is CHILLIN!) to the little bits of Missy Elliott, Eazy, BBD, and BDP, to Ryu taking a shot he was handed from the audience, I love that clip. It was fun as hell to be there even though I’m bored by most hip hop shows at this point and I’ve already seen GBC five times in the past two months.
Come early, King Fantastic is opening. This King Fantastic record is incredible. Be sure to grab all his weekly remixes between now and the album release over at TheKingFantastic.com. This week’s was a cover of Ice-T’s “Colors”. Hell yeah.
Skateboarder/photographer Atiba Jefferson has a new magazine simply called The Skateboard Mag. Each month they feature someone well-known in the non-skate world who also skates. Last month it was Teen Idols/Minor Threat/Embrace/Fugazi/The Evens/Dischord Records’ Ian MacKaye.
To say Ian was a major influence on me would be an understatement. I’m sure I’ve already said this elsewhere in this blog but watching him in Another State of Mind on USA Networks late at night in the 80s was a turning point for me. I didn’t relate to Mike Ness putting on mascara, but Ian MacKaye talking about not knowing what he wanted to be but knowing what he *didn’t* want to be — that’s where I was at 15, I didn’t know what I wanted to be but I knew I didn’t want to be like everyone around me in Goshen, Indiana.
It’s funny, in searching for this video I realize this is almost the only part of the movie I remember. And I must have seen this movie a hundred times before I was 16.
But that was 25 years ago. In 2010 Atiba does a one-page interview with Ian in The Skateboard Mag. You can read the full text here. What inspired me to post tonight is Ian’s description of how skateboarding contributed to his worldview:
What I can say about skateboarding is that I really learned how to reassign properties to the world around me. This was not a conscious practice, but still it was occurring. Suddenly the weather means something completely different to you. Swimming pools take on a new potential reality. You’re not just taking a swim anymore. If you go into a parking lot and there’s a little bank on the side of it, you make a mental note of it. The surface of the streets, are they rough or smooth? There are any number of lines that you start to see.
I think when skaters walk down the street, they’re looking at it with an entirely different grid in their minds. I think this practice enabled me to redefine the world around me—to take what was given and then readjust it to make it work. When I got into music, specifically punk rock, that sort of redefinition was central. I would look at a situation, the circumstances that had been presented, and think, “Okay, I’m just going to change all of this, or at least change the way I’m thinking about it.” I come at things from a different place, and I think that’s something I really developed through skating.
To this day I swim to the bottom of swimming pools just to check out the transition.
We all look at the world through the prism of what’s familiar. But I agree with Ian, looking at the world through the skateboarder lens, working with what you’ve got but constantly redefining what’s possible with the tools you’ve been handed, has always served me well. The Solitary Arts in general seem to spawn useful thought and good people, most of the people in my life are represented in Geoff McFetridge’s piece below, especially if you take that typewriter and add a CPU and an Internet connection…
FISTFULAYEN
