FOR DAY ONE, CLICK HERE

I woke up from the blazing heat in my tent.  It was about 7:30 – 8 o’clock in the morning.  By the time that I would manage to get myself shoed up and standing, the outside would already be slightly chilly and overcast.  This is a pattern that I would become accustomed to over the next couple of mornings; wake up early to the heat and then immediately put a sweatshirt on and hobble around looking for a different line of outhouses.  We were camped pretty deep into the grounds, which meant that our Honey Buckets took a while to be maintained and were usually “full” in the morning.  Such is the way of the music festival.

Apparently, Patrick has trained in the culinary arts and that fact, along with his generosity, resulted in us eating pretty well in the mornings.  He was in a really good mood from getting to see My Morning Jacket the night before, but the festival wouldn’t really be starting for me until today.  That morning, Jesse and I also got the chance to speak more about music.  We were both really excited about the opportunity to finally see Pavement and had different songs that we were hoping to hear.  I was betting on “Range Life“.  We knew that once we got into the venue we would be in there all day, so we tried to decide at which point we needed to head in and what we were willing to miss out on.  The collective decision was to wait and go in to see They Might Be Giants at 3:20. (more…)

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The sun finally arrived in Seattle.  On Friday, May 29th, I was laying on my couch, most likely in my drawls, and staring, head tilted, at my computer screen.  Neck sweat was accumulating under my beard; grimy and thick, like it was mixed with fruit pectin.  Nothing was happening, and it was the nicest day of the year.  I was still procrastinating about filling out my unemployment paper work when I received an email from our writer, Onsen, telling me about a free show at UW, only a few hours later.  Generally, I wouldn’t be too interested, however, the headliners were supposed to be Built To Spill.

I was skeptical at first, but it seemed to look legit.  The lineup would start with a local band, Smile Brigade, who would be followed by Ra Ra Riot and then, BTS.  I sent a text about the show to anyone that I thought would be interested, jumped in the shower, charged up my camera, and headed out with my girlfriend.  The bus never showed up and, about 45 minutes later, we finally reached Seattle’s University District.  After eating a giant gyro, I headed in to the Upper Playground to talk to the manager, Jen, and let her know about the free event.  No one that I informed about the show had heard anything about it and I was beginning to to wonder if this thing was even really going down.  If it was, I didn’t have any idea about what the set up would be.  There was a possibility that the performance was solely open to UW students and faculty.  If that was true, it also meant that there would be a very likely possibility that I was going to be jumping a fence and/or being chased by security.  I smoke too much and can’t run as fast, but I was set on getting in.  I saw MOS DEF at the UW‘s HUB building 10 years ago and got into to that one by transferring a UV stamp off of some random girls wrist. (more…)

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Back at the Evergreen State College, hip-hop with a message was huge in the 1990′s.  Blackstar, the group that Mos Def formed with Talib Kweli, was blasted out the dorms heading into the new millennium.  Mos Def (aka Dante Smith) has released a few albums since his popularity of the late 90s, but he has also been busy with making his share of films in Hollywood.

Take a trip to Netflix or imdb and you’ll find out that Mos Def is a fairly prolific actor who studied film at NYU back in the early 90′s.  He also appeared in “The Hard Way” with Michael J Fox (1991) and starred on the short lived “Cosby Mysteries” (1994) but, what really caught my eye was the “Hip Hopera“, “Carmen“, which was produced by MTV in 2001.  I remember watching MTV pump the musical like it was the sequel to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller“.  The latest Destiny’s Child video, “Survivor“, was even set to premiere after the television “masterpiece“.  Well, the music sucked and, although Mos Def did a good job, he couldn’t save this poorly conceived idea to make the modern day version of “Carmen“.  It was like a generic time capsule of the early 21^st century rap music videos as a long form musical.  What I did enjoy was the MC’s work on “The Dave Chapelle Show“.  It felt magical and his performances were awesome.

2004 was a good year for Mos Def musically.  He released the critically acclaimed album, The New Danger, which featured the band Black Jack Johnson. Even though it was not a straight hip hop record, it brought Bad Brains and Living Colour together and that, alone, is pretty sweet.  In this coming year the rapper is scheduled to come out with a new CD, but it is more likely that a new Mos Def movie or television program will hit the streets before that project is released.  Smith’s ex-wife, Alana Wyatt, recently wrote a tell-all book about him, which makes some scandalous accusations about the artist, who prides himself on being “conscious“.  I have not read it, but I’m sure it was made to exploit the character and career of the performer by someone that could never have created masterpieces like 1999′s “Black on Both Sides” and 2007′s “Be Kind Rewind“.  With his latest release being the film “Cadillac Records” and, without a new record out in stores to promote, it seems as if Mos Def will simply go on tour for the hell of it.  This time through, I was able to catch Mos live at The Moore Theatre to see what his current stage show was all about. (more…)

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“This album started as a daydream about watching a crazy, beautiful rock band play an ultra-gig.” -Tom Jenkinson, aka Squarepusher

If Squarepusher fans abandoned Tom Jenkinson for any reason other than for churning out his same recipe of jazz-fusion, drill-n-bass, and musique concrète, it would be for finally providing evidence that he may, after all, be human.  For over 10 years now, Tom Jenkinson, aka Squarepusher, has wowed audiences and home-listeners alike with his blend of virtuoso bass solos, chaotic amen-break reconstructions, and all-out fuck-all noise assaults.  Whatever genre Jenkinson has chosen in the past to tackle, be it jazz-fusion, acid-house, musique concrète, hip-hop, or breakcore, often on the same album, he has done so with such precision that his critics can only cite repeating himself as a point of contention.  And justly so- 2006’s Hello Everything played almost like an anthology of styles he has mastered since 1996’s Feed Me Weird Things, again with near-flawless results.  But while Jenkinson definitely delivers something new and different from his past endeavors with Just A Souvenir (2008, Warp Records), he reveals to the world that he is not a robot programmed to sequence psychotic drum explosions and stroke perfectly crafted jazz bass solos after all.   Nope, Squarepusher lives, breathes, and occasionally makes a mediocre album.

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I almost abandoned this review.  I’ve been swamped trying to do too much at once:  Building a website, transferring content, learning to read code, networking, editing, etc., but during that whole time I have been thinking about writing.  GZA/The Genius, from the infamous Wu-Tang Clan, is still on tour and his latest album, Pro Tools (Baby Grande), is still fairly new, but the particular performance that I saw took place on the the 26th of last month and I was seriously beginning to wonder if the topic was getting stale.  It’s true, I almost abandoned this review until I remembered this quote that I had read from GZA himself, “I’m not one to write a rhyme in 30 minutes“.  He continues by saying, “Once RZA came to me and was like, ‘Don’t take two fuckin’ weeks to write a verse man, don’t strain your brain.’ Then when I take two weeks to write something he’ll be like, ‘This is a masterpiece man!’ That’s how I have to do it, I like to work like that.”  These quotes hit me instantly and, not only encouraged me to continue but also epitomize the basis of the GZA’s appeal to me and the reason for his endurance and consistency in the unstable and oft-criticized realms of Hip-Hop and rap music. (more…)

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Rock Paper Scissors.  It will make you or rape you.  Me and my fiance tend to resolve a lot of our split decisions with a simple game of Roshambo.  “Who’s car should we take?“  “What restaurant should we eat at?“  “Should we stay for another drink or go home and go to bed?“  Simple conflict resolution.  Take my advise people: Don’t wager on a game of Roshambo and, if you do, be prepared to face the consequences.

About a month ago, my fiance and I were on a nice walk on the Burke-Gilman Trail by a canal in the Fremont district of Seattle.  We were discussing the fact that I seem to be subjected to these cheesy Sandra Bullock / Jennifer Aniston, wedding and love story “chick flicks” more and more but that I can’t get her to watch any ass-kicking/horror “man movies“.  I’d had enough.  I swear to god men, if you don’t  balance your masculine and feminine entertainment, you will start to menstruate every month.  You might be telling yourself, “Whatever man!  I’m no bitch!“  but, when you find yourself snuggled up on the couch with a bottle of wine and a chocolate bar watching Project Runway, you’re beginning the transformation.  Go to the corner store, buy a couple of 40oz high gravity malt liquors, get loaded, and beat the shit out of something fast!

So, we decide to make a fair wager.  If I win, she has to see a horror movie and, if she wins, I have to go with her to see Sex and the City.  Well my friend, I wouldn’t be writing this article if I had won, so I’m in the position of settling up with a Sex and the City evening of magic and wonder. (more…)

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