Back in 1981 20/20 did a story on this brand new phenomenon called “rap”. While the rest of my high school was listening to the J. Geils Band‘ Love Stinks album, I was listening to urban radio from Detroit and Flint.
This is pre-Run DMC people! I saw this when it first aired and have been seriously looking for it with no luck since youtube hit the scene.
Notice the lack of negativity except for the disdain for loud boomboxes.
It was Philly’s 8th consecutive day of rain so the crowd was a tad sparse but it was $2 lanes night and $2 Genesee Bock.
Mayer Hawthorne did play live instead of only djing like was previously reported but he only did four songs. I told him the next time he visits Philly he’ll probably be headlining the TLA. He just made URB Magazine’s “next 100“.
Peanut Butter Wolf’s interesting set was much different than I expected. He basically mixed mainly ’90s R&B video clips projected onto a giant backdrop. Very weird but still pretty cool. The set started with Barington Levy’s “Black Roses”, went on to Dennis Brown then on to classic early hip hop R&B from De La Soul, Tribe Called Quest, Janet Jackson, Boyz 2 Men, Luther Vandross, Midnight Starr, etc.
Embarrassing story of the night: (There’s always gotta be one!)
Wolf announced that gansta rap originator and Philly boy Schoolly D was in the house and that he was his boyhood idol. I wanted meet Schoolly and tell him a story so I pulled this guy over who I thought was Schooly and told him a quick story. After I was done embarrassing myself he informed me that he wasn’t Schoolly and wasn’t even from Philly- he was from Cincinnati and was a member of Black Street (who Peanut Butter Wolf also played) He said he was gonna work with Schooly on a record later in the year and he’d be sure to tell him.
Great. I’m a dork.
My story? I told him how I used to spin his track Parkside 5-2 all the time back in college in the Midwest. I knew all the words but had no idea what Parkside 5-2 meant until I moved to Philly and one day drove down Parkside Ave. past 52nd Street.
Philly hoods all love their corner. My former students never shut up about “3T0″-30th and Tasker.
Sorry, I don’t have any of Schoolly’s stuff. Here’s the B side to Parkside 52:
Pretty much every reggae afficianado considers Bob Marley (and the Wailers) the best Jamaican act of all time. I’m usually leery of the hype that seems to builds up over the years about a charismatic people who die in their prime. Sure, some deserve the praise: Cobain. Hendrix. Chris Farley. Vandross.
Some don’t: Marilyn Monroe. James Dean. Can’t really think of any other singers who don’t, but you get my point.
Anyway, Marley really was a God. His music completely stood out from all the other stuff coming off that island. (Not so much the early ska stuff, but lots of that wasn’t even his). The Wailers- Peter Tosh, Bunny Livingston (Wailer) and the lesser-known (but better voiced) Junior Braithwaite- really were the shizzit.
He re-recorded a lot of his early material, sometimes three or four times, often changing the song into a completely new one.
One of my all-time favorite tracks is Don’t Rock My Boat. Funny thing is, I hadn’t heard the original until this week. Now I can’t decide which one I like best. The original has an amazing organ line most likely done by the great Jackie Mittoo:
I find it so weird that Bob spent part of his life in Wilmington, Delaware of all places.
Speaking of Marleys, Here in the States, at least with the over-30 crowd, son Ziggy is the only one who people know. That’s pretty sad because he’s the suckiest of the bunch. I have to listen to him sing the theme song to Arthur every morning on PBS and I swear his Jamaican accent sounds fake.
The two who matter are Damian and Stephen. Stephen joined the Blazed and Confused tour with Snoop Dogg and Slightly Stoopid. He’s also got a decent acoustic album out now.
My office iMac’s hard drive died. I watched the beach ball spin for weeks every time I tried to do basic stuff like read my mail or surf the net. Couldn’t figure out what was causing it ’till I opened Disk Utility and got terse error message that said something like, “Back this shit up quick cuz, like, your drive is SOL.”
I couldn’t do a complete backup using Carbon Copy Cloner. Kept getting errors. Couldn’t back up to my 500 GB Lacie Big Disk because the power supply died. So I borrowed another LaCie drive and copied all of the folders individually. Our IT department replaced the hard drive and installed a fresh OS but told me they couldn’t mount the old drive to back it up, so I took it and plugged it in with my invaluable USB hard drive adaptor. Had to copy everything manually- library files, preferences, mail, bookmarks, application support files… but after a full day everything was back exactly the way I left it. All my mp3s (9,000+), pictures, FileMaker databases, saved passwords, and ten years of work files. Whew.
While I’m talking computers, I must share with you the applications I simply cannot live without (besides the usuals: iTunes, iChat, Toast, Preview):
1. NetNewsWire: Hands down the best Mac RSS reader out there. Safari? Safari blows.
2. Peel: Think of it as an RSS reader for your mp3 blogs, with a nice iTunes-like interface. Plug in your favorite mp3 sites and hit the Play button. A song strikes your fancy? Click the Download button. It tosses it in the folder of your choosing and opens it in iTunes. Done. MacLife magazine reviewed Peel and compared it to another app. called Songbird. I’ll have to give that one a try.
3. PasswordMaster: It’s no longer being developed but it still works fine in OS 10.5. I store every password and serial number for work and home. Keychain? Keychain blows.
4. CopyPaste Pro: Multiple clipboards, clipboard history. For thirty bucks ($20 with a coupon) its a no-brainer.
