Fashion Dystopia

"In my nightmares, the world is run by people like this, a fashion gestapo who decide who is in and out of society. Style becomes some kind of predestination, and culture is a quasi-Calvinistic realm where one must constantly display the grace you secretly hope God has granted you, which would make your grace then unquestionable. One must forever work hard to seem effortlessly natural—to me this is the ultimate in anxiety, a spiraling abyss of self-analysis and shame and pretension and phoniness and endless humiliation. To guys like Charney and his youth goon squad, this is utopia." - Rob Horning on "American Apparel" from his Marginal Utility blog at Popmatters.com

Read the whole article. Especially if, like me, you find yourself both drooling and recoiling at those entrancing American Apparel ads.

you can cleanse yourself afterwards HERE.

one day, baby....

yeah. still hasn't happened.

For the last week or two i've been diggin' the following music:

Congo Man - a very mellow dub remix of Lee Perry's production of The Congos (1974) remixed by Carl Craig - a generally crappy dance dude - but there is no techno to this - except for brilliantly pioneering drum and bass patterns brought to the fore by Scratch, and brightened up a bit by Carl Craig.

Year of the Cat - Al Stewart. A 1976 soft rock smoothy i heard recently in a pub. Stewart was originally from Glasgow. I like it in the way i like a lot of sunshiney pop. Weird that such a dingy gray town like Glasgow could produce such sunshiny pop - Teenage Fanclub, Belle & Sebastian - although like all GREAT sunshine pop the sounds of the song bely the often biting lyrics beneath (Quasi, Zombies, The Association, etc)

Sun Ra - everything. I've dug a couple of his records in the past (primarily 1978's Lanquidity), but now i am feeling the whole Sun Ra musical universe! The free jazz is great - but when the Arkestra comes together in a hard soulful groove - nothing beats it. See - "King Porter Stomp" and "Lights on a Satellite" from Live in Paris at the Gibus (1976), "Disco 2100" or "Spontaneous Simplicity" or scores of others. I'm thinking i'll make a beginners guide - which of course won't be for beginners at all - you have got to be a pretty advanced listener to get into most of this stuff. Then again - that statement goes for most of the music i like anyway.

Scott Walker - II (1968). If you like Nick Cave or other deep voiced freaky crooners, Scott Walker is not to be overlooked. I especially like his versions of a couple of really crazy Jaques Brel tunes - "Next". So So Brilliant!, or "Jackie" or "The Girls and The Dogs" damn. it just needs to be heard.

more to come, and look for a launch of a new site??????

e-zetti

check me

I'm coming back. Check back in the next two weeks for updates.

this week i'm loving:
american hardcore punk rock circa 1983-6.
The Association
Roxy Music "Country Life"
The Clarke-Boland Big Band
raccoo-oo-oon, Double Leopards
The Seeds
George Jones
and stuff.

Blog Roll: Orgy In Rhythm

Orgy in Rhythm is a recent discovery for me. This is even more specialized for funky music afficianados - but well worth a sift for an introduction to all kinds of rare and obscure vinyl - most of which is unavailable in any type of digital format elsewhere.


If record labels like Strata East, MPS, Black Jazz, Milestone, Cadet etc. mean something to you, then you should be looking here (and the other mp3 blogs i list in this post). If that means nothing to you - then you MUST go and start exploring, downloading and grooving immediately.


Need to Know: Most of these blogs store their shared music files via a free downloading site called 'Rapidshare.de.' It is an easy way to avoid having to post the files on your own server - which is costly. You will find a clickable area in the particular post- which you don't need to right click for. just click through and you will be taken to Rapidshare.de. Rapidshare makes you wait about 90 seconds, then type in a 'bot-proof' code (3 alphanumeric digits hidden on a background of 'noise' so that internet searchbots can't see them - not out of illegality - nothing illegal here, just so that trawling doesn't happen). A download dialogue window will open asking where you want to save the file to - save it to the "blogging" folder i mentioned before. These are entire albums of mp3's and are contained in downloadable folders which end in '.zip' or '.rar' and when completely downloaded (the files are usually from 40mb - 110mbs so take around 10 minutes on a broadband connection) can be opened by double clicking on them (your computer will usually automatically open this using "stuffit expander" or another archiving software). You will then have a file folder filled with the mp3s of the album, and the original archive (rar or zip). trash or backup the archive and play your mp3's - reading back through the comments and knowledge from the blog that shared them with you!

Here are a couple of selected links to particular albums i think the budding soul-jazz head must check out brought to us by the fine folks at Orgy in Rhythm:
Archie Shepp - Attica Blues (hella rare baby, and righteously angry!)
Salah Ragab & The Cairo Jazz Band - Ramadan in Space Time (groovy egyptian instrumentation on some jazz standards. Loungy)
Har You Percussion Group (Really nice latin soul group)
Sabu Martinez - Afro Temple (i've got this on vinyl - some of the heaviest drumming EVER)
Jean-Claude Vannier - L'Enfant Assassin des Mouches (If Serge Gainsbourgs "Historie of Melody Nelson" is one of your favorite albums of all time - and it better be - this is the guy that composed and produced the music for that brilliant piece of sexiness. This is from the same session and the only other thing by him, i think)
Fela Kuti - Roforofo Fight (what? you don't own any Fela? Fool!)
Sun Ra - Lanquidity (Sun Ra is often a bit difficult for me to get into, but this is a really groovy listen when the lights are out! A really really rare album, and even out of print in its reprinted cd format! A must own.)
Soil & Pimp Sessions - Pimpin' (I came across this group earlier this year on BBC Radio! Yes - Britain is very cool. The Soil & Pimp Sessions (Japanese 8 piece band) played on Gilles Peterson's (remember his name - he knows what's what) live sessions. This here is serious punk rock jazz shit from Japan.

Hint!: I think a lot of blog writers like you to leave comments - even if you just thank them, or mention your favorite cut, or - ask a follow up question!

Some links to similar collector/curator type nice people who share their record collections with us. The following MP3 blogs are all in the groovy jazzy '50's to '70's type of a vein. My suggestion is to spend a bit of time and choose which ones to follow more closely. (more to come)

Quimsy's Mumbo Jumbo - everything - with a lot of world jazz stuff, brazillian, and latin jazz.

Blog Roll: Soul-Sides.com

Oliver Wang is the Daddy of the MP3 Blog in my universe. A hip-hop head funk collector cum journalist - I used to peruse his website way back in '99 and '00 cuz he'd post little mini reviews of his record digging scores along with photos of the record covers. I used his website as a measurement and cheat sheet. Oliver (aka O-Dub) would rave about Bettie Davis, or some old Dizzy Gillespie lp on Perception Records then i'd have to search ebay, the web, and of course good old xxxxxxx (edited for digging secrecy) in Tucson to find a copy. I credit the guy (and xxxxx) for helping me find a good portion of my digging 'gems' during the early years (1997-2001) of my funk and soul obsession, and the health of my radio show "The Worker's Playtime" on Radio Limbo.

Nowadays, his real live website Soul-Sides is more of a group written blog that pairs very nice MP3 files with scholarly type info (and an often healthy discussion of finer points in the comments section of each post) making for fun background info with your funk. Hit this site NOW!

Keep in mind: Many mp3 blogs only have enough server bandwidth to keep a limited number of mp3 files live for a short time period. This rewards the loyal, while keeping the mp3 trawlers at bay. Check your fave MP3 blogs regularly and download. Soul-Sides keep their files live for around 10 days, then gone! The info on all the songs is kept alive in the archives of the site for easy reference.

If you dig Oliver as much as I do, you can read all of his knowledgeable shit in the following places:
O-Dub's Published Archives
which cover his articles from places like the LA Times, Oakland Tribune, The SF Bay Guardian and NPR.

If you know what's good for you, you already subscribe to this magazine: Wax Poetics. He often writes for that bible of all things funky as well. (if you are good - you will sniff around that site for some mystery mp3 clips as well)

Hustlin' for MP3's

Since ecozeek just asked me, "how do i get some free music off this internet contraption?" I thought I'd share this information with all my folks who've asked.

first of all, for the seriously uneducated, you need to know how to "right click" your mouse. Right click while holding your cursor over a link until you get a little pop-up sub-menu (if you are a proper player and are using a Mac, you need to hold the control button and click your mouse at the same time). One of the options should be "save link as." Click on it.

try it here for fun:

for fun

you have just downloaded a special surprise! In this case, it is not an mp3 - but a jpg image. Good work. But where the hell is it?

Try it again. When you are offered the chance to save it - designate a new folder which you will use to save all of your treasure! I have one called Blogging, and it is located in my Music Folder on my Hardrive. This comes in handy when i want to transfer a bunch of mp3's to my iTunes player. I can then trash them, or keep them if i want to. When you are downloading mp3's make sure you always put them in this folder.

Finally, you need a way to listen to these bitches. I like iTunes. i don't actually ever BUY shit from the iTunes store, but the iTunes software is a mighty nice way to turn my computer into a big jukebox! (tip: if you use iTunes, make sure you set your preferences to "Import using mp3 encoder" this ensures that your files are mp3s rather than mutated/converted into Apples own proprietary format. This way, you can one day change your player from iTunes, to any other type of player i.e. an open-source one). If you need help figuring this shit out, send me a comment and i'll help you out.

Ready? Steady? Go!

Welcome ever e body

here it is. a site dedicated to my time wasting. consuming music, film and other miscellaneous culture.

Lean forward and have a go. Use my links to buy crap so that I can buy more crap.