I’ve always liked and admired this guy. Many of his philosophies can be found in mine.
Chris DeCarlo
Cambridge Gets Publicity!
Christian Science Monitor Reporting…
Atlanta – The arrest of an African-American professor at his home near Harvard University gives a rare view into racial tensions in a seemingly unlikely place: America’s ivory tower and its liberal environs.
At least in the popular mind, flare-ups between police and minorities tend to occur in the ‘hoods and barrios of poverty-ridden American cities. But the liberal bastion of Cambridge, Mass. (per capita income: $31,156; black population: 12 percent), the home of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has its own complex encounters with racial attitudes. Continue reading Cambridge Gets Publicity!
CD Review: Bitte Orca (DP)
Band: Dirty Projectors
Album Name: Bitte Orca
Release: 2009
Comments: I believe there’s a point when indie-pop bands try too hard to be both indie and pop at the same time. Swedish artists like Peter Bjorn and John and Jens Lekman haven’t had much difficulty in accomplishing both. The Dirty Projectors, an all-American band from New York, wrote an album in Bitte Orca that wants to b
e European, but isn’t at all. The light melody of “Temecula Sunrise” is refreshing. The scattastic artsy offering “The Bride” has annoying written all over it. The “I’m more indie than inner city black girls” of “Stillness is the Move” gets old quickly. On a positive note “Two Doves” is a perfect WERS song — sexy female voice in front of orchestral background music — and for that reason it happens to be the album’s effortless strong suit. The jangly electropop of “Useful Chamber” is Veckatimestastic. “No Intention” is kind of awesome. “Remade Horizon” seems like it would get a lot of college radio station airplay . There’s certainly some room for improvement, but it’s generally pretty good…if the constant “yay-I-wanna-blah-blah-remade-horizon” doesn’t piss you off, that is. “Fluorescent Half Dome” is a chill aged ending. The last one minute is flat out greatness. I think this album is going to take a few more listens for me to appreciate. It has potential, though probably not as much as Pitchfork [9.0 rating] makes it out to have.
Grade: 8.2
No Age Cover Art Revealed
New Black Lips Video
If I wasn’t obsessed with nuravebrainwave.com I probably wouldn’t have found this video until like tommorow, but they posted about it today so that’s awesome. And it’s awesome.
Elementary Ideas on Propaganda
Let’s face it everything you see and hear is propaganda. Every day since you abandoned that womb, you have been indoctrinated by family, friends, school, church, the government, the media, and everything else. I refer to myself as a propagandist and therefore my mission is to honestly spread my radical agenda to as many as possible. I reject journalism because journalism claims to be objective reporting, without any hint of emotion or opinion. I can and do not do this and no one truly can. When you watch the news or any mainstream (as well as most independent, but they’re not as hazardous) media outlet they are being subjective because they choose certain stories, perspectives, or ideas and omit others. This creates bias, a major no no by traditional reporting standards. The truth is, as many have stated over and over again, the aboveground make propaganda for the state and private sector scumfucks, while the underground press makes propaganda for the working and middle classes, the anti-scumfucks. Propaganda is not only ok, it’s moral. Everyone uses it; who uses it? is not the question we should be asking ourselves. It’s how do they use it? That’s the real question to ponder. It’s only moral if the propagandists make their media open propaganda and do not portray it as news. Unfortunately, the mainstream society doesn’t do this. Their propaganda is “news,” “education,” “gospel,” etc. Well, I self-righteously say FUCK OFF! to the establishment with my propaganda. Keep your eyes and ears open kids!
Chris DeCarlo
New Left
Throughout this year I have embarked on a journey of self-education through reading inflammatory recipes for revolution and amongst the incendiary material on my bookshelf, works concerning the New Left appear the most prominently. The New Left, unlike the Old Left of the 1930s and 1940s, focused on social activism and American culture. Elvis Presley and the Lone Ranger were just as important as Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. Their main aims were ending the War in Viet FUCKINGnam, ending racism at home, and protesting the conformist, capitalist, greedy, Amerikkkan lifestyle, amongst other initiatives, As I mentioned, I’ve read several books this year on this subject that I highly recommend to anyone and everyone. These include:
From Yale to Jail By: David Dellinger
Steal This Book By: Abbie Hoffman
The Black Panthers Speak By: Various Panthers
Kingdom of Fear By: Hunter S. Thompson
Flashbacks By: Timothy Leary
Soon to Be A Major Motion Picture By: Abbie Hoffman
Fugitive Days By: Bill Ayers
Do iT! Scenarios of the Revolution By: Jerry Rubin
It’s been fantastic learning about these turbulent times through such diverse, charismatic, and first hand accounts. It’s really funny seeing how certain figures are portrayed differently in various works. For example, acid guru, Timothy Leary paints Yippies Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin as pessimistic, Anti-American agitators that advocate violent revolution. Leary says some nice things about the boys, but he tends to omit their personal charm and dedication to social change. On the contrary, through the Yippies’ eyes, the sky is the limit, nope scratch that, after they levitated the Pentagon they could fly with it to the moon! You’ll have to do some reading to understand what the hell I’m talking about right now haha. All of these characters appear in just about all of these books at least once. And the aforementioned protests at the Pentagon, the 1968 (Un)Democratic National Convention and ensuing Chicago Conspiracy Trial are events that are discussed in depth in all of these works. I have also read about Tim Leary’s prison break through his perspective as well as his rescuers’, The Weathermen. Here are some other key New Left figures I haven’t mentioned:
Tom Hayden
Noam Chomsky
Howard Zinn
David Horowitz
John Lennon
Allen Ginsburg
Angela Davis
Mario Savio
Rennie Davis
That is by no means a complete list.
Chris DeCarlo
Citizen Cope
The combination of boredom, never having made a post, and coercion by Glen has led me to want to come up with SOMETHING for a first post. Music seems a popular choice, so I thought I’d bring in my favorite artist.
Citizen Cope- Sideways
Note: Glen has already gotten confused: that is NOT him lip-syncing. The music video happened to use footage of him live without the audio.
-Matt Hurton
How Awesome Is Crack Box?
Band: Animal Collective
Release: 2009
Recorded: 2000-2003
Crack Box is very much like when you were a little kid taking a stroll to the graveyard/forest to record every ominous sound you could. You, still very much a youngster, decided that the recording simply was not enough. You needed to make little noises, surely unintelligible, on top of all the nonsense. You, through whatever means, spawned a drum kit and keyboard.
The Crack Box is comprised of six sections…three tracks in each, except for the last. That one has five. Anyway, the disc manages to be awesome even if the entire musical composition is just Avey Tare whispering, a soft acoustic guitar playing, and two notes on the keyboard being tapped. A strong spot is the soft twee of “Hey Friend,” track C2 for all you following along. In “De Soto De Son,” I’m sensing some plagiarism on the part of the band Grizzly Bear. Call this claim far-fetched because, well, it is. Listen to “All We Ask” by Grizzly. Sure it’s faster and more reminiscent of “pop,” you got to admit something is there. Actually I’d reckon Crack Box is a fucked up Veckatimest. The base structure of the songs is totally there, but it’s far from complete. Far from musically bearable (that is to the average listener), these songs need just a push. So what the group did was say F U to most of the songs on Crack Box and add a little bit something extra to their new songs. The change to having a fully integrated album didn’t occur until 2008 when the group started playing songs that later were released as Merriweather Post Pavillion. “Do The Nurse” is hilariously screwed up if the title doesn’t already give that away. “I wish he would just get a boner. Do the nurse.” Seriously, Avey? They were young. “Ice Cream Factory” tells us that when you “black out you feel much better.” Heed those words. Or don’t. “Hey Light” you know from Here Comes the Indian. Crack Box version is quite lo-fi and only 2 minutes 35 seconds, a sign of the times. Listen real closely to “Don’t Believe the Pilot” and you can hear birdies chirping. Also this original version of “Who Could Win a Rabbit” pretty damn sweet. For obvious reasons it doesn’t have any polish. But sometimes things are left best unpolished. And finally, any better way to end the disc than with “We Tigers?” Probably. The original has awful sound quality.
Overall, I don’t think that I will ever again be able to manage listening to this from start to finish. There are some real gems, but most of the stuff is just too archaic and weird for me. Makes for some good relaxation music, possibly.
Grade: 8.0
Black Lips Wikipedia Files Interview
I think it is safe to say that Joe Bradley gives the best responses in interviews.
Kids Like You & Me (KLYAM) 