Tuesday, August 24, 2004

I'm out like bellbottom trousers.
I've seen this coming for a little while now, and it's finally here. I've been writing this for a year, and have decided that it is time for a break. Normal transmission may be resumed at a later date. Thanks for dropping by, and take it easy.

Friday, August 13, 2004

Too much weed.
BBC reports: "Hip-hop band the Black Eyed Peas have lost about $US500,000 worth of instruments and other items in a fire at a recording studio in California.
The act were recording their new album, Monkey Business, at the Glenwood Place Studios in Burbank, California.
Band members lit candles during the recording session but forgot to blow them out, Burbank Fire Captain Ron Bell told reporters.
Band member Will I Am told KABC-TV: "Guitars, drums, drum kits, keyboards, microphones, classic instruments that we've collected with our worldly travels are now destroyed."

You aint so worldly if you got so toasted you forgot to blow out the candles. Hippies.

Thursday, August 12, 2004

Get loose
The D4 are making a racket at the Rising Sun tonight before they tear off to the US to play at Little Steven's International Underground Garage Festival. What? Read this...

"[The Festival] will feature Iggy and the Stooges, the Strokes, the New York Dolls, Bo Diddley, Big Star, the Pretty Things, the Raveonettes, the Dictators, the Electric Prunes, the Mooney Suzuki, the Woggles, the Lyres, the Star Spangles, the Gore Gore Girls, Nancy Sinatra, the Creation and many others. The headliners will play full sets, but most bands will play just a few songs.
For Mr. Van Zandt, who at 53 still wears the loose, brightly colored garb that earned him the nickname Miami Steve, the radio show and the festival - which he hopes to make an annual event - represent a revival of rough, honest, beautiful garage rock as a musical form and a redemption from restrictive radio formats that rely on familiarity and market testing."
The article originally appears on the New York Times site, but its archived over here for your reading pleasure, cos they are stingy at the Times with their archives.

Meanwhile, upstairs at 4:20, i'll be playing in support of my man MC Word Perfect, who is launching his album tonight.
Friday night I will be off to check out Champion Sound with Ruffian, Earl E and Cian at Rakinos, some nice reggae styles, Saturday I'll be playing in Hamilton at Catalyst (Dub Asylum, Bassteppa, the Midnights and more), and Sunday at 2.30pm I'll be playing a short set at the Music Expo at Sky City Convention Centre. Have a good one, yeah?

Wednesday, August 11, 2004

Dancing barefoot
O-Dub is part of a round-table discussion on MP3 blogging over at Morning News...

"TMN: If all music goes digital—digital format, bought, sold, and spread online—what will you miss most about going to the record store?
MB: The great American pastime: flirting with the cute record-store girl! Also running into famous people and musicians and finding out what they’re buying and selling and whatnot. Years ago I was in [unnamed record store] in New York City and got to watch a clerk being an absolute sneering bastard to a nondescript middle-aged woman (who he seemed to think couldn’t possibly be cool enough to deserve to shop in his store) until his friend politely informed him that he might want to be a little more friendly to Patti Smith. You don’t get that kind of experience online!"
Read it over here.

Read the last Rick James interview yet? The dude's outlook was awesome. What a loss. He was planning to do his own reality show (not as wack as it sounds). Did you know he was a Muslim?

Monday, August 09, 2004

Rick James, RIP Read his final interview here. Scrubs Zach Braff from Scrubs has a blog about his first film (as writer and director, plus acting in it) Garden State... "Today was the second day of Scrubs. I shot my first scene with Heather Graham. Without giving anything away, it involved me being sopping wet and close to naked. Sort of an odd way to meet someone and get to know them. But that's what makes Scrubs fun, everyday I show up I have no idea what kind of bizarre thing is gonna happen. Tomorrow we're blowing up a car. Now that's a good day job..." Methodman is in it (Garden State), check his interview on the site under Making Garden State. And watch the one called Ice. Some quality canine acting. Heh heh. There's an entertainingly trite slice of video over on TVNZ's site, a report from Breakfast by Jay Harkness on the 'new phenomenon of blogging', looking at the impact and asking will it last. Look for a clip called 'The rantings and ravings of bloggers'. Amazingly, they got throught the entire piece without mentioning Salaam Pax. Or famous bloggers like Michael Moore or major media blogs like on the NY Times, The Listener (NZ), or Russell Brown's various blog activities... 

Wednesday, August 04, 2004

The Jurassic age (originally posted on Public Address)
Jurassic 5 are tagged as being hiphop revivalists, recalling the party era of rap. They ditched that notion midway thru their show at the St James with a song introduced as "this is about the war in Iraq", followed by the groups four MCs raising their middle finger in the air while rapping the lyric "Well, I’m not hesitant in saying truck the President", cept they used another word that sounds like like truck, but starts with F. You get the picture.
The J 5 took their sweet time getting here - originally schedule to play here last October, they opted for more Australian dates instead. Now they made it, and the appreciative crowd is very happy to see them.
According to the NZ Herald's Rebecca Barry, the gig started with warmup sets from Scribe and "a duo who strapped their turntables and keyboards to their bodies and played them as though they were a rock band." Um, no.
What really happened was this. DJ Manuel Bundy played a few tunes, local MC Tha Feelstyle delivered a brief set (I didn’t make it in time to catch this, but have heard a few tunes on the radio - watch out for his album, due out in a few months, it will knock heads and blow minds) and then Scribe did a subdued set. His voice was a little lacking in power, looked like he might’ve been a bit crook. He was followed by Manuel Bundy, then Jurassic 5 strolled onstage.
They ripped thru half a dozen songs, then the 4 MCs (Chali 2na, Akil, Zaakir, Marc 7) left the stage and had a breather, while DJ’s Nu-Mark and Cut Chemist had some fun. Cut Chemist scratched away on the turntables, while Nu-Mark jumped on a drumkit and banged out a beat. Then Nu-Mark banged out a tune on a bunch of kid's music blocks, which was pretty twisted. For their final trick, Cut strapped on a portable turntable while Nu-Mark had a drum machine round his neck, and they grooved away down front (I think this is 'the duo' that Barry was referring to). If she arrived at this point, she would’ve also missed Nu-Mark sitting at a school desk, banging away at sample pads stuck to its surface, triggering a funky rhythm. J5 must be the only touring act in the world that include a beaten up old school desk in their road kit.
The crowd response was dynamite. The energy from the stage was well matched by the enthusiastic audience, and J5 namechecked Scribe, telling us that we should go out and buy his album, if we didn’t have it already – "support your own". Scribe joined the group later for a freestyle. Chali 2na pointed at his throat while Scribe was rapping, suggesting the dude had a sore throat. He’s a trooper tho.
The J5 live experience is one tight machine, well-practised stage moves, but not too many hiphop cliches, and it delivers the goods. If you didn’t smile at least once during this show, you had a face made of stone. When the show finished, they invited the crowd down to the official afterparty at Fu Bar with DJ Nu-Mark playing, then casually strolled offstage, put down their mics, and the MCs walked to the front, shaking hands and signing autographs. Nu-Mark and Cut Chemist packed up their record bags and left the stage, but came back out to meet and greet their fans, Chali 2na signing someone’s shoe! A charmingly low key end to a warm, genuine show.
I headed off to the Fu Bar, and partied with Nu-Mark til the break of dawn – well, they did invite us, and it would’ve been rude not to go - and then walked home, showered, and went to work. Had a nap under my desk, woke up, wrote this, and went back to sleep. Wake me at 5. Later. (written on Monday)

Tuesday, August 03, 2004

Rock the Casbah
Yesterdays big news story was the attacks on Christian churches in Iraq, a startling development by insurgents there. Previously they have attacked Christian businesses selling alcohol, but this was the first time they have gone after churches. So where did this major story rate on our evening news bulletins?
TV3 put it on as their 4th story - their lead was about the uncovering of the identity of donor for Jonah Lomu's kidney. That's a womens magazine cover, not a lead news story. TVone put the Iraq story even later in their bulletin, playing it at 6.24pm. Their lead was a cheapshot about Vincent Ward's new film (funded in part by taxpayers) being canned. The film's producer Don Reynolds told the Herald that was not correct. "I don't know where they got that from. I spoke to them and said it definitely wasn't canned." They failed to mention that Ward nearly went and shot it in Oz, as he had such a hard time rasing funding to begin with. A NZ story shot in Oz, great stuff. Where's the news, people?