I’m sitting here at work working (kind of) and listening to music. I’m listening to internet radio and its playing a variety of music that is similar to songs I told it I like. For most of this morning it was playing a bunch of energetic songs with a lot of funk, the type that get your head bobbing and make parts of your body move on beat involuntarily. I was definitely in the groove. When slow songs came up I would skip them. Until. Lilac Wine by Nina Simone came on and suddenly my whole vibe changed. That song just made me OK with slow music. And then I realized – you have to give credit to anything that has the power to change you. Our moods and likes are constantly changing because we’re human and that’s what humans do, but how many things or people have the power to MAKE you do an instant 180?

Have you ever been dead set on staying out of a relationship and then met someone who made you suddenly decide that the couple thing is the thing to do? Ever felt completely anti-social and against human contact only to end up talking/chilling with a person who makes you want to re-emerge and become part of the world? Have you ever made up your mind about a concept and then heard someone break it down in a way that makes you reverse your position?

A friend of mine says you should always stop and take notice of natural occurrences of the color purple because they’re relatively rare. I say the same for anything that forces you to change. Stop, take notice and give respect where respect is due. Sometimes it takes a lot of power to bring about the smallest change.

I was browsing on Myspace last night when I came across this profile ->LINK<-

She calls herself Watts 1965. It’s not that often that I come across a new artist that grabs my attention like she did. I came home tonight and found myself back on her myspace page bumping the tracks she has up. Watts 1965 has a very unique style and words that mean something. I highly recommend that you check her out. As soon as I find out where to get a hold of some more of her music, I will post a link.

I make an effort to come up with catchy titles for my posts. Today I am pleased with myself.

So I just watched a video of one of the girls from Destiny’s child falling in the middle of a performance. The remarkable thing about it was that the other two just glanced at her before turning back to the crowd and going on with the song. At first it was just something to laugh at, but then it got me thinking about performance technique.

On Sunday I got a chance to see Eric Roberson perform. When DC had an interruption to their performance, they pretty much pretended that it didn’t happen. On the other hand, ER had tons of interruptions. He kept stopping in the middle of songs to respond to things people in the audience said. After responding, ER would return to the song without missing a beat. That kind of interaction added so much to the performance. I’m not saying DC should have stopped the show to have a conversation, but damn, they could have helped their girl up. Mainstream performances nowadays are so choreographed that there is no room for the spontaneity of accidents or the spontaneity of momentary genius. At a performance I did a few years ago I started one of my favorite songs at the time. I was throwing all my passion and energy into it when I realized – I didn’t remember the next word. After messing the song up, I stopped the band, told the audience I didn’t want to do a messed up version of the song because I loved it so much, and I started over. Can you imagine if DC had done the same thing? For them, starting over again would have meant doing the same choreographed walk to the center of the stage followed by the same pre-planned hip shaking. That kind of thing doesn’t come off well a second time around.

A good performance is a dynamic performance. If someone falls on stage, make it a part of the show. Give them the chance to laugh at themselves in front of everybody to make it a little less embarrassing. That way people will go home saying “she busted her ass and still killed it” instead of just “she busted her ass.” A good show should be planned and practiced until you could do it in your sleep, but paradoxically, the thing that will set it off is good improvisational skills.

This is reposted from my Yahoo! 360 blog.

Tuesday January 10, 2006

So I’ve been considering starting a new blog for a while now, and here it finally is. The purpose was to write down my random thoughts on random things, not really to write about myself or my life. The problem is now that I’m sitting at the keyboard, there are no random thoughts. Randomness can be so inconvinient at times. It never happens when I plan for it to.

Well, since I can’t count on the unpredictable , I’m going to pick a subject that I had a heated discussion about a few weeks ago. I post regularly on a message board for musicians (and music related people). A few weeks ago somebody posted an article about a studio owner who was shot and robbed by some guys who initially gained his confidence by posing as rappers and prospective clients. You lose ten points if you can’t guess what happened next. A bunch of people posted some ignorant ass responses, things like “that’s why I never work with rappers.” A long time ago somebody told me “choose your battles” and I try very hard to live by those words because they make sense. Why fight a battle you can’t win or if winning isn’t worth what it takes to fight? I knew it wasn’t a battle I was going to win, but as its so close to home, I had to jump in to let those people know that that was some dumb shit to say. Of course then a long back and forth followed with more ignorant comments and in vain responses to them. I had a few backers along the way, but I think most of the people who were smart enough to understand what was wrong with what people were saying were also smart enough not to waste time on that conversation. I’m not going to rehash the whole thing, but if you’re really interested in reading it, here it is.

So from that argument I realized two things that I already know. (What? Sometimes you need to be reminded of what you know)

1 – Hip hop is seriously misrepresented in mainstream media

2 – A lot of people don’t know that

Let’s take a very rough trip back through hip-hop history. Hip-hop music started out as a party thing – fun and good times. Hip Hop music evolved and developed new species. there were different sounds and different subjects. Some hip hop was still about parties, some was political and social commentary, some expressed racial pride, some was about love and relationships. Most of it wasn’t very big with the “mainstream.” In the 80s and early 90s, it definitely seemed that hip-hop was for black folks and rock was for white folks. At some point that changed. Back then, the jewish kid who used to lend me Ice Cube CDs was an oddity, today he would be the norm. It seems that around the same time that that change was happening, the whole “Gangsta Rap” thing was getting big. I remember at first the radio was loving it, but then some of the “leaders of the black community” (Maybe I’ll explain the quotes in another post sometime) started getting upset and making noise about the negativity they were hearing on FM frequencies. I remember when WBLS in NY decided that they were boycotting gangster rap.

I guess that despite (or maybe because of) the controversy and protests, gangster rap sold well. Record companies decided it was profitable and media companies agreed. Today, when you hear rap on the radio, chances are its about how hard someone is, how much ass someone gets and/or how much money someone has. That is what a large chunk of the population believes hip-hop is about. Nowadays if you listen to the radio and watch TV, you rarely hear uplifting words or social commentary or anything substantial coming from a rappers mouth. If Sony and ClearChannel and all these other corporations are right, hip-hop is a culture of violence, excess, negativity, and nothing more. But what happened to the diversity that used to be there? Did the rappers who had something to say beyond these three categories suddenly stop talking?

I’m going to end this here and leave the (probably 1 or 2) people who read this with that question along with the answer’s rmifications to think about. Also, I’m tired of typing.