Beng geng gedda ba-oing
Geng geng gedda ba-oing
Gen gen gedda ba-oing
Gen gen gedda ba-oing
Gen gen gedda ba-oing
A den a den ye-en, ben!
Down in the ghetto is where I gro-ow
Pain and tribulation all I kno-ow
Mommy and daddy all we a live poo-or
Wha make we a feel suffer so-o, eh
Storm it come, blow down the do-or
Rain a blow through my one windo-ow
Shoes tear up, toe jus a sho-ow
Jah kno-ow, eh, ja kno-ow, eh!
Mi na kno-ow
jah no mi no kno-ow, jah no jah no mi no kno-ow
jah know mi no kno-ow, jah know mi no kno-ow
jah know mi no kno-ow, jah know mi no kno-ow, eh!
Fi mi muma tell mi don't rob no store
Else police beat me make me back sore
She tell all daughter "don't turn a whore"
Just take this suff-er-a-tion so-oo, eh!
Five pon da bed, four 'roun da flo-or
When we a go de mi no know no-oh-oh-oh
Muma just a ball, pupa jus a ba-all,
The greatest crime is to be poor.
ay-ay dedduh mo-oing....
Down in the ghetto is where I gro-ow
Pain and tribulation all I kno-ow
Mommy and daddy all a we live poo-or
Wha make we a feel suffer so-o, eh!
Storm it come, blow down the do-or
Rain a blow through the one windo-ow
Five pon da bed, four 'roun da flo-or
Ja kno-ow, ey, jah kno-ow
Ay ay mi no kno-ow
Ah no mi no know
Ah no ah no mi no kno-ow,
Ay ay mi no kno-ow
Ay ay mi no kno-ow
Ah no mi no kno-ow
Ah no mi no kno-ow, eh!
Muma tell mi, don't rob no store
Else police beat me make me back sore
She tell all daughter "don't turn a whore"
Because sufferation so-o..
Five pon da bed, four 'roun da flo-or
When we a go de mi no know no-oh-oh-oh
Muma just a ball, pupa jus a ba-all
The greatest crime is to be po-or.
Ay mi no kno-ow.....
Seemed like whole heap of excitement
Lots of people they gather around
Feel like him dead in front of them.
And there lie child on da ground
Them want to kno-ow
who kill-illed, little Ado
The-em want to kno-ow
who kill-illed, little Ado-o
A no mi no kno-ow,
Who kill-illed little Ado-o
A no mi no kno-ow,
Who killed little Ado-o, eh!
Down in the ghetto is where I gro-ow
Pain and tribulation is all I kno-ow.......
a satirical look at pop culture
Saturday, March 31, 2007
The anatomy of a Reggae song
Lee "Scratch" Perry Recorded all the greats, even Bob Marley. Always drum and Base ghetto rhythms. That is how reggae is regarded and recorded. Scratch has a formula too creating a raw song, that can never be copied abroad. Rhythm from the ghetto and Lyrics from the street. Play on MR. music. describing revealing and persuading always political and always spiritual.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Plus Ultra Goes Underground!
From Lambiek
The late 1960s saw the emergence of underground comics, a new wave of humorous, hippie-inspired comic books that dealt with social and political subjects like sex, drugs, rock music and anti-war protest. For this reason, these new comics became known as "comix" to set them apart from mainstream comics and to emphasize the "x" for x-rated.
Comix originated from a variety of sources, which can be traced back to the 1950s. First, there was the influence of the Mad tradition. Harvey Kurtzman had liberated comedy in comics and inspired a new generation of cartoonists to push the boundaries of satire even further. More directly, in his post-Mad magazine, Help!, Kurtzman provided pages devoted to "amateur talent," where many future undergrounders, like Robert Crumb
and Gilbert Shelton, got their first break. Also, underground newspapers such as The East Village Other (which featured articles, music reviews and hippie news), started to publish comix and attracted work by artists such as Vaughn Bodé, Spain Rodriguez and Willy Murphy. As these comix gained popularity, The East Village Other started its own monthly comix magazine, Gothic Blimp Works.
One of the earliest underground publications was Zap Comix, famous because Robert Crumb published there, and also Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso, Spain Rodriguez and S. Clay Wilson contributed.
A major underground influence was the anti-censorship reaction to the imposed 'comics code'. In the 1950s, there had been a crusade against comics (especially those published by E.C. Comics), which had inspired the passing of the Comics Code, a set of rules to which comics creators had to adhere. As children, the future underground artists were the very people who had been worst hit - they watched their parents tear up their comics collections, or throw them on the playground fires. Now it was time for payback.
The most outspoken production against the Comic Code was the defiant series Doctor Wirtham's Comix & Stories, which appeared around 1977. The colophon read: "We publish good art and underground stories in the E.C. vein, the kind of stuff you know the good doctor would love to hate," which referred to Dr. Fredric Wertham, the man who wrote "Seduction of the Innocent," the book that was responsible for causing the ban on comics in the 1950s by alledging that comic books were corrupting kids. Some of the artists who contributed their work to this series were Doug Potter, Mike Roberts, Al Davoren, Ripp, Greg Irons and Hector Tellez.
The underground movement was an expression of its time. In the latter half of the 1960s the hippie movement in America was engaged, to a greater or lesser extent, with protests against the Vietnam War, the civil rights struggle, anarchism, Women's Lib and Gay Liberation. Add to this an interest in the spiritual value of taking drugs and of "free love" and you had, very simplistically speaking, a thriving "counterculture" against traditional values.
Another theme treated with irreverency in underground comix was religion. One of the most splendid examples of this is 'The New Adventures of Jesus', created by Frank "Foolbert Sturgeon" Stack in 1969. Another one is 'God Nose', by Jaxon. This comic is considered by many as the first underground comic.
Also other well-respected institutes such as Disney were "befouled," for instance in Air Pirates Funnies (1971), a comics series by artists Bobby London, Ted Richards, Shary Flenniken, Dan O'Neill and Gary Hallgren. The well-known Disney characters were made to perform several unspeakable acts, which caused Disney to start a process for copyright infringement.
San Francisco and the New York area weren't the only places that produced underground comix. Many people featured their comic art in self-published fanzines from all over the United States. One hot spot in the underground comix scene was the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, Texas, which was basically a pub with a music hall that attracted many artists, and resulted in publications like 'Armadillo Comix' and 'Austin Stone'. Some of the artists that were a part of this scene were Jim Franklin, Guy Juke, Karl Dolgener, Dennis Harper, Kerry Awn, Micael Priest and Danny Garrett.
Without the financial, strategic and moral support from the publishers and comic stores behind the scene, the comix couldn't have survived. Print Mint, Last Gasp, S.F. Comic Book Company, Kitchen Sink, Apex Novelties, Comics & Comix stores and others were the vital links to keeping the comix alive and flourishing. They faced the financial risk of the books being commercial flops or even worse, being arrested for promulgating literature considered "obscene according to the standards of the local community."
In April 1968, Gary Arlington (1938 - ?) opened the San Francisco Comic Book Company, one of the very first 'comics only' book stores, in the city's Mission district. As guru and 'godfather' of underground comics, he encouraged and directed many artists on their path to publication. His tiny 200-square-foot store became the underground nexus where artists met, discussed projects and exchanged ideas. He also published several series of early comix, namely Skull Comics, Slow Death Comics and, of course, San Francisco Comic Book (issue no. 1 of this series is very rare and has become much sought after by comix collectors).
By the end of the 1960s, women comic artists united and founded their own comix, such as Wimmen's Comix, Tits 'n Clits and Twisted Sisters. After 1975, a second wave of underground comix came up, with more punk inspired comix such as Anarchy Comics, founded by Jay Kinney.
The publication of Arcade in 1975 marked the end of the first era of underground comix. This magazine was founded by Art Spiegelman and Bill Griffith and featured the work of the most influential comix artists of the early underground era. It contained work by artists such as Robert Crumb, S. Clay Wilson and Justin Green.
The late 1960s saw the emergence of underground comics, a new wave of humorous, hippie-inspired comic books that dealt with social and political subjects like sex, drugs, rock music and anti-war protest. For this reason, these new comics became known as "comix" to set them apart from mainstream comics and to emphasize the "x" for x-rated.
Comix originated from a variety of sources, which can be traced back to the 1950s. First, there was the influence of the Mad tradition. Harvey Kurtzman had liberated comedy in comics and inspired a new generation of cartoonists to push the boundaries of satire even further. More directly, in his post-Mad magazine, Help!, Kurtzman provided pages devoted to "amateur talent," where many future undergrounders, like Robert Crumb
and Gilbert Shelton, got their first break. Also, underground newspapers such as The East Village Other (which featured articles, music reviews and hippie news), started to publish comix and attracted work by artists such as Vaughn Bodé, Spain Rodriguez and Willy Murphy. As these comix gained popularity, The East Village Other started its own monthly comix magazine, Gothic Blimp Works.
One of the earliest underground publications was Zap Comix, famous because Robert Crumb published there, and also Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso, Spain Rodriguez and S. Clay Wilson contributed.
A major underground influence was the anti-censorship reaction to the imposed 'comics code'. In the 1950s, there had been a crusade against comics (especially those published by E.C. Comics), which had inspired the passing of the Comics Code, a set of rules to which comics creators had to adhere. As children, the future underground artists were the very people who had been worst hit - they watched their parents tear up their comics collections, or throw them on the playground fires. Now it was time for payback.
The most outspoken production against the Comic Code was the defiant series Doctor Wirtham's Comix & Stories, which appeared around 1977. The colophon read: "We publish good art and underground stories in the E.C. vein, the kind of stuff you know the good doctor would love to hate," which referred to Dr. Fredric Wertham, the man who wrote "Seduction of the Innocent," the book that was responsible for causing the ban on comics in the 1950s by alledging that comic books were corrupting kids. Some of the artists who contributed their work to this series were Doug Potter, Mike Roberts, Al Davoren, Ripp, Greg Irons and Hector Tellez.
The underground movement was an expression of its time. In the latter half of the 1960s the hippie movement in America was engaged, to a greater or lesser extent, with protests against the Vietnam War, the civil rights struggle, anarchism, Women's Lib and Gay Liberation. Add to this an interest in the spiritual value of taking drugs and of "free love" and you had, very simplistically speaking, a thriving "counterculture" against traditional values.
Another theme treated with irreverency in underground comix was religion. One of the most splendid examples of this is 'The New Adventures of Jesus', created by Frank "Foolbert Sturgeon" Stack in 1969. Another one is 'God Nose', by Jaxon. This comic is considered by many as the first underground comic.
Also other well-respected institutes such as Disney were "befouled," for instance in Air Pirates Funnies (1971), a comics series by artists Bobby London, Ted Richards, Shary Flenniken, Dan O'Neill and Gary Hallgren. The well-known Disney characters were made to perform several unspeakable acts, which caused Disney to start a process for copyright infringement.
San Francisco and the New York area weren't the only places that produced underground comix. Many people featured their comic art in self-published fanzines from all over the United States. One hot spot in the underground comix scene was the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, Texas, which was basically a pub with a music hall that attracted many artists, and resulted in publications like 'Armadillo Comix' and 'Austin Stone'. Some of the artists that were a part of this scene were Jim Franklin, Guy Juke, Karl Dolgener, Dennis Harper, Kerry Awn, Micael Priest and Danny Garrett.
Without the financial, strategic and moral support from the publishers and comic stores behind the scene, the comix couldn't have survived. Print Mint, Last Gasp, S.F. Comic Book Company, Kitchen Sink, Apex Novelties, Comics & Comix stores and others were the vital links to keeping the comix alive and flourishing. They faced the financial risk of the books being commercial flops or even worse, being arrested for promulgating literature considered "obscene according to the standards of the local community."
In April 1968, Gary Arlington (1938 - ?) opened the San Francisco Comic Book Company, one of the very first 'comics only' book stores, in the city's Mission district. As guru and 'godfather' of underground comics, he encouraged and directed many artists on their path to publication. His tiny 200-square-foot store became the underground nexus where artists met, discussed projects and exchanged ideas. He also published several series of early comix, namely Skull Comics, Slow Death Comics and, of course, San Francisco Comic Book (issue no. 1 of this series is very rare and has become much sought after by comix collectors).
By the end of the 1960s, women comic artists united and founded their own comix, such as Wimmen's Comix, Tits 'n Clits and Twisted Sisters. After 1975, a second wave of underground comix came up, with more punk inspired comix such as Anarchy Comics, founded by Jay Kinney.
The publication of Arcade in 1975 marked the end of the first era of underground comix. This magazine was founded by Art Spiegelman and Bill Griffith and featured the work of the most influential comix artists of the early underground era. It contained work by artists such as Robert Crumb, S. Clay Wilson and Justin Green.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Plusultra turns 100 today
This is post number 100 on Blog Plus Ultra. I thought it would be nice to let you know a little bit more about my very multi-level complicated self. BE AWARE that I am not the first plusultra nor the last . I am infinite. So are you. That in mind let me tell you about some of the younger days. I used to manifest many images under the name Davo. 
The name I was born with is David Charles Levasseur.
I was heavily influenced by more paranoid method, more lucidity, more craziness and more Salvadore Dali.
After years of silent meditation I became a monkey and learned to photoshop my name in the sand.
But here I am in black and white looking not bad for 100 in my one of a kind original Plus Ultra T-shirt. Ever Higher Ever Farther Ever Better.
The name I was born with is David Charles Levasseur.
I was heavily influenced by more paranoid method, more lucidity, more craziness and more Salvadore Dali.
After years of silent meditation I became a monkey and learned to photoshop my name in the sand.
But here I am in black and white looking not bad for 100 in my one of a kind original Plus Ultra T-shirt. Ever Higher Ever Farther Ever Better.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
You Can't Blame The Youth!
Sonic Youth Brings Back Daydream Nation
By Party Ben
FromMother Jones
Sonic Youth (the legendary New York band Motorbooty magazine once called “definitely sonic, if no longer youthful”) is planning to perform special shows in seven cities this summer, at which they’ll play their 1988 album Daydream Nation in its entirety, reports Pitchfork. Besides the fact it's kind of like The Beatles saying they're reuniting and playing all of Revolver, there are at least three more reasons this is cool:
1. Bringin’ it back.This album came out 19 years ago! I (thank God) and most people I know were barely out of our New Wave diapers at that point. Could we have been expected to cut English class and go to New York to see Sonic Youth perform these songs? No we could not. So, now we get our chance.
2. Slow on the uptake. More than almost any band, Sonic Youth makes music that rewards repeated listenings over time. My first exposure to der Yoof was seeing “Shadow of a Doubt,” an uncharateristically pretty song, on MTV’s “120 Minutes" back in 1986. I bought the album (EVOL), but my poor 15-year-old ears weren't really ready for the rest of it. It was only a couple years later (after some stoned viewings of the full-length video to 1990’s Goo) that I went back and realized how great the other albums were. As life goes by and, ahem, “takes its crazy toll” (I’m quoting them), Daydream Nation means different things to me.
3. Well-adjusted. While Sonic Youth has, in the past few years, delved into obscure, avant-garde experimentalism, their latest album, Rather Ripped, proved they don’t mind sounding like the band they were 15 years ago, either. Unlike, say, Radiohead, whose neurotic relationship with their own musical past means you won’t ever see them perform “Creep,” Thurston, Kim & crew seem to like their old songs. At the “Ain’t No Picnic” festival outside of LA in 1999, all the band’s gear was stolen, including their uniquely tuned guitars. But instead of cancelling, they borrowed Sleater-Kinney’s gear and performed a set of “classics,” which turned out to be one of the highlights of my concert-going life (snif). You know that these performances will be anything but perfunctory.
Hooray, Sonic Youth. Tour dates are here.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Ooh La La, La La! Plus Ultra Dali Tribute!!
Hello Dali!
"Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing."
-Salvador Dali
Text From Salvador Dali Online
Salvador Dali [1904-1989] was born on May 11th, 1904 in Figueras, a little village in the province of Gerona in Spain.
It is the favorable light of Cadaques that created in Dali as a child an irresistable vocation of painter that would permeate every work of the artist. At first an impressionnist, with a pallette rich in colors, he discovered cubism in 1921 and then formed friendships which influenced his intellectual and artistic evolution thereafter.
Salvador Dali Documentary
In 1929, Dali encountered Gala, the woman that would be his companion and his inspiration. Under her influence he fully opened himself to her own universe, through Surrealism, and rejected hesitations and prejudices which hindered his creative power.
Dali's passion for grand metaphysical, religious and scientific themes underlied this inspiration. Fascinated by the human adventure, he was the prophet of his age. He loved to probe the irrational and the subconscious.
Dali was not only a Painter but an Artist. His Art is filled with questions that his intellect "The Only Master of Space and Time" asks about the Age of Transition in which he lived.
Exhibited in the most prestigious museums of the world, distinguished by the highest academies, Dali lived as an ascetic at the Chateau de Pubol and in the Museum of Figeras after the death of Gala in 1982.
"When I paint, the sea roars. The others splash about in the bath."
-Salvador Dali
Go To The Salvador Dali Gallery
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Warning the following plusultra post is preposterous
Allan Thicke as pea-soup of the Daydream Believer and a Homecoming Queen of Diamonds are a girl's best friendly neighborhood Spider-mano-a-mano body knows the troubles I've seen Fire and I've seen Purple Rain.
After all the research I did for yesterday's post on mashups and my own special variety of A+D=D, I could not help but thinking and speaking in a manner very similar to the example above. Has everything already been written, said and done already? Are we at the point in history today in the year 2007 (the web 2.0 times) that anything that can be done said or thought of has already been done said and thought of. I personally do not believe we are at that stage quite yet, but I find the mash-up culture is a very interesting statement on our times. Recycling physical material has become very popular in recent years as the average person is becoming aware of the importance of lessening the impact we are having on the planet. The recycling, and restructuring of music and images and ideas is less practiced, but gaining momentum and may one day be widely used as a natural progression of our increasingly global consciousness.
-by David Levasseur
-- Doctor Benway, from http://mathforum.org/dr.math/ wrote the following article that made me wonder at what point in time will every image possible have been uploaded to the internet. "
After all the research I did for yesterday's post on mashups and my own special variety of A+D=D, I could not help but thinking and speaking in a manner very similar to the example above. Has everything already been written, said and done already? Are we at the point in history today in the year 2007 (the web 2.0 times) that anything that can be done said or thought of has already been done said and thought of. I personally do not believe we are at that stage quite yet, but I find the mash-up culture is a very interesting statement on our times. Recycling physical material has become very popular in recent years as the average person is becoming aware of the importance of lessening the impact we are having on the planet. The recycling, and restructuring of music and images and ideas is less practiced, but gaining momentum and may one day be widely used as a natural progression of our increasingly global consciousness.
-by David Levasseur
-- Doctor Benway, from http://mathforum.org/dr.math/ wrote the following article that made me wonder at what point in time will every image possible have been uploaded to the internet. "
"Mind-blowing example. A typical digitized picture on your computer
screen is 640 pixels long by 480 pixels wide, for a total of
307200 pixels. Using only 256 different colors, you can get decent
resolution. Now if you take 256^307200 (256 times itself 307200 times)
you get... well, a pretty big number, but a finite number nonetheless.
That's the number of different images you can have of that particular
size. Any picture you would scan into a computer at that size and
resolution will necessarily be one of those images. Therefore,
contained in those images are the images of the faces of every human
being who ever lived along with the images of the faces of every
person yet to be born.
Deep stuff, eh? I'll leave you with that thought."
Saturday, March 24, 2007
M*A*S*H up 4077
1 + 1 + 1 = 1
The new math of mashups.
♦Mashup (or mash it up) is a Jamaican Creole term meaning to destroy. In the context of reggae or ska music, it can take on a positive connotation and mean an exceptional performance or event. The term has also been used in hip-hop, especially in cities such as New York and Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Video mashups are the latest genre of mashup. First there were music mashups, where two or more tracks are combined, often with one acapella track by one artist over a second backing track by another.
Then there were software mashups in which two or more sets of data are combined over the Internet to create a new entity. Such as overlaying houses for sale over a Google Map.
Mashup films can be broken down into several predominant styles and tropes. Most of the Mashups found on the internet fall into one category and more or less obey the unwritten rules of that class of film. These categories, are: word associated mashups, which like Danger Mouse’s “Grey Album” unite two disparate source materials by a pun or joke found in the name; transgressive mashups which transgress the sexual norms put forth in a film, often subverting hetero-normative portrayals; and overdubbing mashups, which use the images from a film and replaces the soundtrack with new dialogue or dialogue from another work, which undermines the original narrative.
Mashups based on word associations speak more than just for the wit of the appropriator. In principal, these mashups, when executed well, express some of the central creative tenets of modern found footage filmmaking: 1) Narrative film consistently follows the same filmic grammar and rarely diverts from it, making it easy to unify disparate films because of their similarities; and 2) the formulas inherent in narrative film are so well known by audiences that a few stylistic cues (which have been imitated to the point of cliché) can easily alert an audience to the nature of what they are watching. Using these two principals, mashups are highly successful at parodying more than just the films they chose to amalgamate, but also at critiquing and revealing the tools of narrative filmmaking.
Some exceptional word associated mashups include “Must Love Jaws” a combination of the romantic comedy “Must Love Dogs” and “Jaws” in which music cues and humorous scenes turn visual source material from “Jaws” into a story about a man who falls in love with a shark. 8 1/2 Mile is a mashup of Fellini's film "8 1/2" and Curtis Hanson's "8 Mile." One of the best received mashups to date is word associated: "10 Things I Hate About Commandments."
Video mashups are the latest genre of mashup.
First there were music mashups, where two or more tracks are combined, often with one acapella track by one artist over a second backing track by another.
Then there were software mashups in which two or more sets of data are combined over the Internet to create a new entity. Such as overlaying houses for sale over a Google Map.
But more recently the video mashup has come of age thanks to the likes of YouTube.
This is where videos from multiple sources are edited together into a new video. To date, many of these video mashups have been parodies, but even music mashups are being integrated with them to make combined audio-visual mashups.
Mashup films can be broken down into several predominant styles and tropes. Most of the Mashups found on the internet fall into one category and more or less obey the unwritten rules of that class of film. These categories, are: word associated mashups, which like Danger Mouse’s “Grey Album” unite two disparate source materials by a pun or joke found in the name; transgressive mashups which transgress the sexual norms put forth in a film, often subverting hetero-normative portrayals; and overdubbing mashups, which use the images from a film and replaces the soundtrack with new dialogue or dialogue from another work, which undermines the original narrative.[citation needed]
Mashups based on word associations speak more than just for the wit of the appropriator. In principal, these mashups, when executed well, express some of the central creative tenets of modern found footage filmmaking: 1) Narrative film consistently follows the same filmic grammar and rarely diverts from it, making it easy to unify disparate films because of their similarities; and 2) the formulas inherent in narrative film are so well known by audiences that a few stylistic cues (which have been imitated to the point of cliché) can easily alert an audience to the nature of what they are watching. Using these two principals, mashups are highly successful at parodying more than just the films they chose to amalgamate, but also at critiquing and revealing the tools of narrative filmmaking.[citation needed]
Some exceptional word associated mashups include “Must Love Jaws” a combination of the romantic comedy “Must Love Dogs” and “Jaws” in which music cues and humorous scenes turn visual source material from “Jaws” into a story about a man who falls in love with a shark. 8 1/2 Mile is a mashup of Fellini's film "8 1/2" and Curtis Hanson's "8 Mile." One of the best received mashups to date is word associated: "10 Things I Hate About Commandments."
In popular culture, Mashup usually means:
* Mashup (music), a musical genre of songs that consist entirely of parts of other songs
* Mashup (web application hybrid), a website or web application that combines content from more than one source
* Mashup (video), a video that is edited from more than one source to appear as one
* Mashup, in parts of the UK also means a brew, or a pot of tea (colloq. Yorkshire)
by Sasha Frere-Jones
In July of 2003, Jeremy Brown, a.k.a. DJ Reset, took apart a song. Using digital software, Brown isolated instrumental elements of “Debra,” a song by Beck from his 1999 album “Midnite Vultures.” Brown, who is thirty-three and has studied with Max Roach, adjusted the tempo of “Debra” and added live drums and human beat-box noises that he recorded at his small but tidy house in Long Island City. Then he sifted through countless a-cappella vocals archived on several hard drives. Some a-cappellas are on commercially released singles, specifically intended for d.j. use, while others appear on the Internet, having been leaked by people working in the studio where the song was recorded, or sometimes even by the artist.
Mashups find new uses for current digital technology, a new iteration of the cause-and-effect relationship behind almost every change in pop-music aesthetics: the gear changes, and then the music does. If there is an electric guitar of mashup, it is a software package called Acid Pro, which enables one to put loops of different songs both in time and in tune with each other. Mark Vidler, known professionally as Go Home Productions, explained some other benefits of digital technology to me in London not long ago: “You don’t need a distributor, because your distribution is the Internet. You don’t need a record label, because it’s your bedroom, and you don’t need a recording studio, because that’s your computer. You do it all yourself.”
Mashups are known by a number of different names, including:
* Bootlegs (mostly in Europe)
* Boots (but not Booty which is a branch of Electro)
* Mash-ups
* Smashups (or Smash-Ups)
* Bastard pop
* Blends
* Cutups (or Cut-ups)
* Powermixing (Usually the pace has to be sped up to allow for more song to be played and thus cannot play any single blend for the full lenghth of the song)
In addition, more traditional terms such as "edits" or (unauthorized) "remixes" are favored by many "bootleggers" (also known as 'leggers).
Video mashups are the latest genre of mashup. First there were music mashups, where two or more tracks are combined, often with one acapella track by one artist over a second backing track by another.
Though the term "bastard pop" first became popular in 2001, the practice of assembling new songs from purloined elements of other tracks stretches back at least to the 1950s, and, if one extends the definition beyond the realm of pop, precursors can be found in Musique concrète, as well as the classical practice of (re-)arranging traditional folk material and the jazz tradition of reinterpreting standards. In addition, many elements of bastard pop culture have antecedents in hip hop and the DIY ethic of punk.
The new math of mashups.
♦Mashup (or mash it up) is a Jamaican Creole term meaning to destroy. In the context of reggae or ska music, it can take on a positive connotation and mean an exceptional performance or event. The term has also been used in hip-hop, especially in cities such as New York and Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Video mashups are the latest genre of mashup. First there were music mashups, where two or more tracks are combined, often with one acapella track by one artist over a second backing track by another.
Then there were software mashups in which two or more sets of data are combined over the Internet to create a new entity. Such as overlaying houses for sale over a Google Map.
Mashup films can be broken down into several predominant styles and tropes. Most of the Mashups found on the internet fall into one category and more or less obey the unwritten rules of that class of film. These categories, are: word associated mashups, which like Danger Mouse’s “Grey Album” unite two disparate source materials by a pun or joke found in the name; transgressive mashups which transgress the sexual norms put forth in a film, often subverting hetero-normative portrayals; and overdubbing mashups, which use the images from a film and replaces the soundtrack with new dialogue or dialogue from another work, which undermines the original narrative.
Mashups based on word associations speak more than just for the wit of the appropriator. In principal, these mashups, when executed well, express some of the central creative tenets of modern found footage filmmaking: 1) Narrative film consistently follows the same filmic grammar and rarely diverts from it, making it easy to unify disparate films because of their similarities; and 2) the formulas inherent in narrative film are so well known by audiences that a few stylistic cues (which have been imitated to the point of cliché) can easily alert an audience to the nature of what they are watching. Using these two principals, mashups are highly successful at parodying more than just the films they chose to amalgamate, but also at critiquing and revealing the tools of narrative filmmaking.
Some exceptional word associated mashups include “Must Love Jaws” a combination of the romantic comedy “Must Love Dogs” and “Jaws” in which music cues and humorous scenes turn visual source material from “Jaws” into a story about a man who falls in love with a shark. 8 1/2 Mile is a mashup of Fellini's film "8 1/2" and Curtis Hanson's "8 Mile." One of the best received mashups to date is word associated: "10 Things I Hate About Commandments."
Video mashups are the latest genre of mashup.
First there were music mashups, where two or more tracks are combined, often with one acapella track by one artist over a second backing track by another.
Then there were software mashups in which two or more sets of data are combined over the Internet to create a new entity. Such as overlaying houses for sale over a Google Map.
But more recently the video mashup has come of age thanks to the likes of YouTube.
This is where videos from multiple sources are edited together into a new video. To date, many of these video mashups have been parodies, but even music mashups are being integrated with them to make combined audio-visual mashups.
Mashup films can be broken down into several predominant styles and tropes. Most of the Mashups found on the internet fall into one category and more or less obey the unwritten rules of that class of film. These categories, are: word associated mashups, which like Danger Mouse’s “Grey Album” unite two disparate source materials by a pun or joke found in the name; transgressive mashups which transgress the sexual norms put forth in a film, often subverting hetero-normative portrayals; and overdubbing mashups, which use the images from a film and replaces the soundtrack with new dialogue or dialogue from another work, which undermines the original narrative.[citation needed]
Mashups based on word associations speak more than just for the wit of the appropriator. In principal, these mashups, when executed well, express some of the central creative tenets of modern found footage filmmaking: 1) Narrative film consistently follows the same filmic grammar and rarely diverts from it, making it easy to unify disparate films because of their similarities; and 2) the formulas inherent in narrative film are so well known by audiences that a few stylistic cues (which have been imitated to the point of cliché) can easily alert an audience to the nature of what they are watching. Using these two principals, mashups are highly successful at parodying more than just the films they chose to amalgamate, but also at critiquing and revealing the tools of narrative filmmaking.[citation needed]
Some exceptional word associated mashups include “Must Love Jaws” a combination of the romantic comedy “Must Love Dogs” and “Jaws” in which music cues and humorous scenes turn visual source material from “Jaws” into a story about a man who falls in love with a shark. 8 1/2 Mile is a mashup of Fellini's film "8 1/2" and Curtis Hanson's "8 Mile." One of the best received mashups to date is word associated: "10 Things I Hate About Commandments."
In popular culture, Mashup usually means:
* Mashup (music), a musical genre of songs that consist entirely of parts of other songs
* Mashup (web application hybrid), a website or web application that combines content from more than one source
* Mashup (video), a video that is edited from more than one source to appear as one
* Mashup, in parts of the UK also means a brew, or a pot of tea (colloq. Yorkshire)
by Sasha Frere-Jones
In July of 2003, Jeremy Brown, a.k.a. DJ Reset, took apart a song. Using digital software, Brown isolated instrumental elements of “Debra,” a song by Beck from his 1999 album “Midnite Vultures.” Brown, who is thirty-three and has studied with Max Roach, adjusted the tempo of “Debra” and added live drums and human beat-box noises that he recorded at his small but tidy house in Long Island City. Then he sifted through countless a-cappella vocals archived on several hard drives. Some a-cappellas are on commercially released singles, specifically intended for d.j. use, while others appear on the Internet, having been leaked by people working in the studio where the song was recorded, or sometimes even by the artist.
Mashups find new uses for current digital technology, a new iteration of the cause-and-effect relationship behind almost every change in pop-music aesthetics: the gear changes, and then the music does. If there is an electric guitar of mashup, it is a software package called Acid Pro, which enables one to put loops of different songs both in time and in tune with each other. Mark Vidler, known professionally as Go Home Productions, explained some other benefits of digital technology to me in London not long ago: “You don’t need a distributor, because your distribution is the Internet. You don’t need a record label, because it’s your bedroom, and you don’t need a recording studio, because that’s your computer. You do it all yourself.”
Mashups are known by a number of different names, including:
* Bootlegs (mostly in Europe)
* Boots (but not Booty which is a branch of Electro)
* Mash-ups
* Smashups (or Smash-Ups)
* Bastard pop
* Blends
* Cutups (or Cut-ups)
* Powermixing (Usually the pace has to be sped up to allow for more song to be played and thus cannot play any single blend for the full lenghth of the song)
In addition, more traditional terms such as "edits" or (unauthorized) "remixes" are favored by many "bootleggers" (also known as 'leggers).
Video mashups are the latest genre of mashup. First there were music mashups, where two or more tracks are combined, often with one acapella track by one artist over a second backing track by another.
Though the term "bastard pop" first became popular in 2001, the practice of assembling new songs from purloined elements of other tracks stretches back at least to the 1950s, and, if one extends the definition beyond the realm of pop, precursors can be found in Musique concrète, as well as the classical practice of (re-)arranging traditional folk material and the jazz tradition of reinterpreting standards. In addition, many elements of bastard pop culture have antecedents in hip hop and the DIY ethic of punk.
Breggae News
We interrupt this blog for an emergency broadcast of a very cool Reggae rip on Eleanor Rigby. The video is weedy, juicy, surreal and well take a look for yourself at this awesome video remix.
Loo and Placido's classic remix of Eleanor Rigby mashed with a bit of Seeed.
Loo and Placido's classic remix of Eleanor Rigby mashed with a bit of Seeed.
Saturday way out time machine back to 2003
Today I found an old C.D. with pictures of me from 2003 and I threw it in drive D. I thought I would post some of the pictures as a tribute to the year I was first connected to the internet
and some of the first digital pictures I took and/ or manipulated in photoshop.
I really was an ass lover back then, often passing out in a pile of leaves and having higher order dreams of strange obese naked burning men in Buddha form. Now 4 years later, I am much more Internet savvy. My name is David Levasseur, I am Plusultra and my motto is Ever Higher, Ever Farther Ever Better
Friday, March 23, 2007
Quitting Smoking
Desperate people make great actors. They have to in order to survive, and who is more desperate than a an addict with no money and no funny. I have always had a compulsion towards excess and I took Andy Warhol's advice quite seriously when he said to "try every drug once", twice even. Have you ever tried to quit smoking cigarettes? It can be extremely difficult and for me next to impossible.Unfortunately due to my excess behavior and avant-garde financial sense(my credit is so bad, most people won't even accept my cash anymore), I recently found myself unable to purchase any smokes, never mind buy anything mind-numbing, state altering, gambling, or even a cup of coffee never mind, even food would have been a luxury. At this point of poverty a man has a very clear idea of what his priorities are. Mine were clearly:
1.Cigarettes
2.Weed
3.coffee
4.Food
5.Sounds like a slice of heaven to me! What else is there?
So, that was the philosophy anyway. Than I realized if I could quit smoking cigarettes, buying Tim Horton's coffee everyday,
smoking joint after joint 25 hours a day, I would probably never be broke nor hungry. These desperate hungry days were awful and I could still remember the days before I was such a lazy chain smoking clown. If I did not miss smoking, life would be so great. If I was not so hopped up on juicy juicy weedy weedy all the time, maybe I could hold down a real job, maybe even buy a car and a house. Who knows at this rate perhaps I could become very healthy and become an athlete than join politics and become the prime minister of Canada and than the Emperor of the world one day eventually. And with all this power and all this money I could do what ever I wanted. Hmmm, I wonder what I would want most? Probably just some cigarettes, weed, and pizza. Darn those damn addictions! I guess I am destined to be a clown. If I was half as smart as I think I am I would have quit years ago. Any suggestions out there on how I can quit?
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Rasta Pac Man
I have been too busy getting high and playing Pot-Man today to post anything so why don't you just play this weed smoking version of the classic pac-man video game and come back later.
Click to View!
Click to View!
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
The D-Rangers Runaway on Plus Ultra
Have you ever wondered what Del Shannon's hit song "My Little Runaway" would sound like performed by a bunch O' hillbillies? Well, wait no longer because the original bluegrass madmen themselves, "The D-Rangers " have done just that. Featuring banjo, violin, mandolin, guitar, and even a muckbucket!
Artist Information
Instrumentation
Tom Fodey - muck-bucket bass, vocals
Aaron Goss - mandolin, vocals
Jaxon Haldane - lead vocals, banjo
Chris Saywell - guitar
Don Zueff - fiddle, vocals
The D-Rangers are getting ever higher ever farther ever better. They are my favorite local band here in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada and can often be seen playing live at the Times Change Cafe. If you would like to visit the official D-Rangers site click here or as eye high Lee recommend buy one of their C.D.s here.
Artist Information
Instrumentation
Tom Fodey - muck-bucket bass, vocals
Aaron Goss - mandolin, vocals
Jaxon Haldane - lead vocals, banjo
Chris Saywell - guitar
Don Zueff - fiddle, vocals
The D-Rangers are getting ever higher ever farther ever better. They are my favorite local band here in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada and can often be seen playing live at the Times Change Cafe. If you would like to visit the official D-Rangers site click here or as eye high Lee recommend buy one of their C.D.s here.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Hannes Coetzee from Documentary film "Karoo Kitaar Blues", plays slide guitar with a teaspoon in his mouth
HANNES COETZEE
|Hannes Coetzee’s is a soft-spoken 72-year old whose job is tapping the aloes that grow around his Karoo hometown of Herberstdale for their medicinal juice. Hannes composes his own songs and learnt to play the guitar on the side of the hill when the aloes were too dry to tap and to keep himself company on long lonely evenings in the mountains of the Kamiesbeg. The only known practitioner of the ‘optel and knyp’style he must rank as one of the most unusual slide guitarists in the world. If you shut your eyes you would think that there were two people accompanying each other on guitars.
Related post: Ghengis Blues
Visionary Art
Visionary art
Visionary art is able to transcend the physical world and portray a wider vision of awareness including spiritual or mystical themes, or is based in such experiences.
Both trained and self-taught (or outsider) artists have, and continue to create visionary works. Many visionary artists are actively engaged in spiritual practices, and some have drawn inspiration from psychedelic drug experiences.
Excerpt from:
A MANIFESTO
OF VISIONARY ART
by L.Caruana
One makes oneself a visionary
by a long, immense, and reasoned
disordering of the senses.
- RIMBAUD
PART I:
WHAT IS VISIONARY ART?
������Where Surrealists tried to elevate the dream-state into a higher reality (and opposed the use of narcotics) the Visionary artist uses all means at his disposal - even at great risk to himself - to access different states of consciousness and expose the resulting vision. Art of the Visionary attempts to show what lies beyond the boundary of our sight. Through dream, trance, or other altered states, the artist attempts to see the unseen - attaining a visionary state that transcends our regular modes of perception. The task awaiting him, thereafter, is to communicate his vision in a form recognizable to 'everyday sight'.
The history of Visionary art is characterized by the attempt to find a new visual language - a language that may overcome the inherent contradiction (of seeing what cannot be seen) and express in visual form the 'supra-visual' or, as we might say in French, le 'sur-visuel'. Insuch a language, the images of art, myth, and dream interfuse, different cultural symbols combine, and new forms are found so as to express the resulting vision -- be that sacred, psychedelic, esoteric, oneiric, occult, alternative, archetypal, primitive, transpersonal, fantastic or - as it sometimes happens - surreal.
Old master visionary artists
- William Blake
- Hieronymus Bosch
- Salvador Dalí
- Max Ernst
- Gustave Moreau
- Remedios Varo
- Morris Graves
- Emil Bittstram
- David C hetlahe Paladin
Visionary artists
Ernst Fuchs
- HR Giger
- A. Andrew Gonzalez
- Alex Grey
- Elle Nicolai
- De Es Schwertberger
- Rudolf Hausner
- Mati Klarwein
- Paul Laffoley
- Brigid Marlin
- Daniel Mirante
- Antonio Roybal
- Mark Ryden
- Robert Venosa
- Anne Sudworth
- X-8
Related genres
- The Symbolist and Decadent art movement
- Surrealism
- Outsider art
- Psychedelic art
- Fantastic art
- Neosurrealism
- Transcendental Painting Group
- Northwest School of Visionary Art
Monday, March 19, 2007
Joshua Gray the one and only on Blog Plus Ultra
The One and Only
I had cigarettes but needed coffee. The money just wasn't there and I'm not sellin' shit just for a cup o' mud. So I grab my keys, lock the door and head out for St. Augustine's.
Saint Augustine's is a nice enough house of God as churches go. It welcomes not only the devout, but tolerates the dilapidated as well. The broken souls who are at best ambivalent about a higher power, but very fervent about free sandwiches and tepid coffee.
. Y'see, along with the plush lawn that the bums lay on, smoking tobacco and squashing the flowers, St. Augustine's offers a section of itself known as "The Open Table". It's a small room no bigger than the average attic, with about twelve worn down chairs hugging a long shaky table. There might be some religious tracts piled high in the center of the table, but I never got close enough to confirm that. I think it used to be an anteroom of sorts because it's got these huge windows from ceiling to floor that look out onto the actual pews and pulpit. I've been there once before to grab a ham on rye and let me tell you, when the priest is hard into a sermon about the seven deadly sins and he gets to that part about slovenliness and he looks right through those all showing windows behind the pews and sees all of us guys just chowing down on the free eats and sippin' hot water and we're really just relaxed and unreligious, well it can get a little humbling even for us with next to no shame so I split that scene and haven't returned since.
But it's like I said, I had the smokes but no coffee. So I'm goin' back against my vows and headin' back to the "Open Table". Fuck it. I'll be in and out like a speed freak and no shame'll fall on me.
I'm about thirty yards away from the steps that lead up to the front door and notice a serious lack of customers outside who usually hang out by the stairway railing. These ones, like myself, only come to church for the caffeine and are looked down upon by the "Open Table" authorities for not really getting into the holy spirit of brotherhood among bums. The "Open Table" CEO's would much rather we hang around inside, not smoking, around the long table, listening as the priest's sermon comes in through the intercom and into our joyless hearts.
But the ones, like myself, who just want the warm water to sip on while the cigarette burns immaculate aren't down with that. Now I'm not linking myself to these fuckers as a whole, while we both make it clear that our visits are strictly non-religious and all free-shit consuming, the difference is that I don't stick around and linger like a foul fume in the noses of the "Open Table" top brass. I grab my cup and flee the scene, carefully getting the coffee back to my place. Out o' sight and out o' mind is what I'm thinking. No need to give the cunts a reason to scorn you. No need to risk a possible banning and cut off a good source of supply.
But those others... man.... they smoke and go back for seconds, smoke and go back for thirds. And while the "Table" has no real policy about helpings, all the weathered clientele know not to bleed this non-profit joint dry. But these others have been around long enough to know the score. And the score shows that they're always ahead as long as they're getting.
They carry two sandwiches in each hand outside with a cup clenched between their forearms, prop themselves up along the railing and laugh at ugliness.
They're all fat bastards with bad beards and slimy hair. Their dress is the same every day and usually consists of old bankrupt hockey jerseys like the Quebec Nordiques or the Hartford Whalers. Some of 'em wear winter hunting hats year round with baby blue suspenders holding up painfully tight corduroy pants. Others got those black horn-rimmed glasses. The kind Buddy Holly had but twice as thick with lenses so magnified it distorts their eyes and even their entire faces into something that no longer makes sense if you look at them too much.
This is one half of the flock that makes up the "Table"'s togetherness, so when I can't spot a single one of 'em, I begin to sweat it that maybe I missed my chance for a handout.
As I creep inside the doorway, bad signs are brewin' from the get-go. A service is underway and that's a rotten egg for sure, but that ain't what trips me up. It's the sight of this old skinny boy who once told me that he won't bug Jesus so long as Jesus don't bug him. Well this old bum is in the pews along with all the others and he's scratchin' his collar and twitchin' his bony skull like he's got a wasp in his eyelid. If there's one soul who wouldn't be pushed into the pews it's this guy so I'm thinking, what the shit?
My eyes push a little further past him and notice that practically all the congregation is filled with nothing but the depraved, the homeless and other assorted dregs and mendicants.
Jesus Christ, I'm thinking, how on earth did you manage to hypnotize so many low lifes all at once? On a very good, guilt-ridden day the staff at this place might manage to hoodwink one of the boys into believin' that the word of God will get him off the sauce and into eternal bliss, but a coercion of this magnitude trumps all the odds of Vegas. Unless Father Mackilvoy is handing out the sacramental wine, this scene reeks of pressure tactics and broken resistance.
There ain't no signs of life comin' from down the hall at the "Open Table" either except for some ominous shuffling of papers so I'm bookin' it for the exit as of this second.
Like a curtain-fly, this pseudo-nun drops out of nowhere and pinches my elbow to break my stride. She's got a good grip, so I forget about pushing on to the door and figure I'm in for somethin'.
These pseudo-nuns are the worst. They're a pack of zealot volunteers with monumental chips on their shoulders who bring a very ungodly hostility from their personal lives into the work place and it's always the poor who suffer their wrath, as I most surely feel I'm about to.
She starts clearing her throat and straightening up her ankle-long polyester skirt as though she had just run a mile to stop me from leaving. "I'm glad I caught you," she sputters, "Mr. Burnby's service has just started so you must hurry."
She pushes a ledger of some sort at my chin and still has my elbow in her palm. "Write your name for attendance purposes then follow me. It's a very nice crowd today but Mr. Burnby deserved it all. As you can see, all of our regulars have decided to come and say good-bye to one of their peers. Mr. Burnby had earned their respect, as he was one of the chosen few who, before his time came, embraced the word of God. He came here, just as you are now; hungry, thirsty, without direction, but he opened his heart to Christ and I can assure you he left here a full man."
This nut was almost salivating at her own spiel. She spoke with a skitterish monotone that suggested a robotic approach to every thing she did. She seemed to love this Mr. Burnby and almost acted as if he needed defending or constant adulation.
I back away from the sign-in sheet, and in doing so, snap her lock on my elbow. By daring to question her dominance of the situation, I agitate this cunt to no end. I try to explain, "I came for a cup of coffee ma'am. I don't even know who Mr. Burnby is."
This comment has no real effect on her, as she keeps claiming over and over that the service has just started and while most choice seats are taken, she will find me a place. "No, no, "I'm sayin', "I just come by now and then and... uhh... I never met that guy."
She won't believe this. She starts breathing faster. "Mr. Burnby had no enemies. Mr. Burnby knew everyone and was liked by all. You may not have known his name but I'm sure his face would have meant something to you. A fine man and an excellent Christian." She pauses for a moment with her head down, the instance of praise surpassing her need to be dutiful.
I'm starting to piece the whole shtick together and now know that this woman is ruled by a need to believe in people who have succumbed to her tight fisted persuasions. Burnby was clearly one of those people. Up until now I hadn't been able to decide exactly who this Burnby boy might be. But as she gathered herself, I could just see over her shoulder the casket that lay in the corner of the church stage. The one and only Mr. Burnby was in that box.
"Ma'am please," I find myself almost begging, "I'll just get a cup of juice and wait outsi-"
"Nothing will be served until the funeral terminates," she hisses in disbelief at my plea, shaking her finger, "not a thing... until it's over."
She has to state this fact with the tired unfurling of someone who has had to convince many men before me of the same decree, like the old skinny boy buggin' out in his seat, the fat grubbing fuckers who finally had to compromise their resolve, and all the truly silent dopes who never say a thing around the table and sure as fuck weren't gonna start now. She, this pseudo-nun, pseudo-everything, had gotten to them all. They were all willing to sit through an hour or two of searing boredom for a man, I'm convinced, they neither knew well nor respected as she claimed? Hard to swallow.
Burnby was a saved soul and a pillar in her eyes and her eyes only. None of those saps in there would put up with this unless their treats were being withheld. This nun had performed a miracle in getting Mr. Burnby into that field of one percent turn-arounds who start showing up at the "Table" for the goods, but unlike the other ninety-nine percent, stay for the God.
She held the food and the drink hostage just to fill the pews with asses, and in doing so, convinced herself that her work with project Burnby wasn't in vain. The comical shit about her whole plan is that those guys in there, in that funeral, don't even need what she's starving them of. Those chumps aren't waiting for sloppy salami and Kool-aid. They're waitin' to eat for free so they can put aside half their welfare cheques for booze and all the other things.
She simply threw a stick in the spokes of their cycle for a few hours. Tomorrow nothing will change. If she won today, then so be it for today. The "Open Table", the staff, this lady... they're all just makin' it easier for me and the men to stay high. In the end, the bums will always win. "I'm gonna leave now," I say and inch towards the exit.
She goes real cold but tries for the Hail-Mary anyway, "Mr. Burnby would have liked you to stay. I know he would have. Are you sure?"
"I'm sure," I say. And I was.
If you would like to read more of Josh Gray's writing click here.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Plus ultra presents Cab Calloway Performing Minnie the Moocher in Betty Boop classic Max Fleisher Animation
It is unbelievable how the dance style of Cab Calloway at the start of this classic 1932 animation looks very similar to how people are dancing today 75 years later. To say he was ahead of his times is true in many ways. He really was "a head" in his times as you can surely tell the legendary Jazz Musician is clearly high as a kite all hopped up on some mean reefer (marijuana, chronic, tea,etc...) Not only could the hep cat dance, but he could scat and sing and hi de hi de hi ho de ho de ho better than most hip hop free stylers do today. Betty Boop also seems timeless and is still as sexy today as she was 75 years ago. Even more impressive is she did not even need any cosmetic surgery, boob jobs or facelifts to maintain her popularity. Can you imagine how risque the burlesque cartoon creation of the Fleischer brothers was in the early thirties! The rotoscoped glide dancing animation is still extremely watchable, smart, creative, surreal, and whacky as even the most current technologically advanced cartoons of 2007. Check it out:
Cab Calloway (December 25, 1907–November 18, 1994) was a famous American jazz singer and bandleader. Calloway was a master of energetic scat singing and led one of the United States' most popular African American big bands from the start of the 1930s through the late 1940s. Calloway's Orchestra featured performers that included trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and Adolphus "Doc" Cheatham, saxophonists Ben Webster and Leon "Chu" Berry, New Orleans guitar ace Danny Barker, and bassist Milt Hinton. Calloway continued to perform right up until his death in 1994 at the age of 86.
Fleischer Studios, Inc. is an American corporation which originated as an animation studio located at 1600 Broadway, New York City, New York. It was founded in 1921 by brothers Max Fleischer and Dave Fleischer, who ran the company from its inception until being fired by parent company Paramount Pictures in January 1942. In its prime, it was the most significant competitor to Walt Disney Productions, and is notable for bringing to the screen cartoons featuring Koko the Clown, Betty Boop, Popeye the Sailor, and Superman.
Betty Boop was the first female flapper cartoon. She made her first appearance on August 9, 1930 in the cartoon Dizzy Dishes, the sixth installment in Fleischer's Talkartoon series. She was little like her soon-to-be-famous self, however. Grim Natwick, a veteran animator of both Walt Disney's and Ub Iwerks' studios, was largely responsible for creating the character, which he modeled on Helen Kane, a singer and contract player at Paramount Pictures, the studio that distributed Fleischer's cartoons.
In keeping with common practice, Natwick made his new character an animal, in this case, a French poodle. Beginning with this cartoon, the character's voice was performed by several different voice actresses until Mae Questel got the role, in 1931, and kept it for the rest of the series.
Natwick himself later conceded that Betty's original look was quite ugly. The animator redesigned her in 1932 to be recognizably human in the cartoon Any Rags. Her floppy poodle ears became hoop earrings, and her poodle fur became a bob haircut. She appeared in ten cartoons as a supporting character, a flapper girl with more heart than brains. In individual cartoons she was called "Nancy Lee" and "Nan McGrew". She usually served as studio star Bimbo's girlfriend. She was not officially christened "Betty Boop" until the 1932 short Stopping the Show that same year. This was also the first cartoon to be officially part of the Betty Boop series and not a Talkartoon.
Related Post- Bimbo's Initiation and mybloglog
Cab Calloway (December 25, 1907–November 18, 1994) was a famous American jazz singer and bandleader. Calloway was a master of energetic scat singing and led one of the United States' most popular African American big bands from the start of the 1930s through the late 1940s. Calloway's Orchestra featured performers that included trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and Adolphus "Doc" Cheatham, saxophonists Ben Webster and Leon "Chu" Berry, New Orleans guitar ace Danny Barker, and bassist Milt Hinton. Calloway continued to perform right up until his death in 1994 at the age of 86.
Fleischer Studios, Inc. is an American corporation which originated as an animation studio located at 1600 Broadway, New York City, New York. It was founded in 1921 by brothers Max Fleischer and Dave Fleischer, who ran the company from its inception until being fired by parent company Paramount Pictures in January 1942. In its prime, it was the most significant competitor to Walt Disney Productions, and is notable for bringing to the screen cartoons featuring Koko the Clown, Betty Boop, Popeye the Sailor, and Superman.
Betty Boop was the first female flapper cartoon. She made her first appearance on August 9, 1930 in the cartoon Dizzy Dishes, the sixth installment in Fleischer's Talkartoon series. She was little like her soon-to-be-famous self, however. Grim Natwick, a veteran animator of both Walt Disney's and Ub Iwerks' studios, was largely responsible for creating the character, which he modeled on Helen Kane, a singer and contract player at Paramount Pictures, the studio that distributed Fleischer's cartoons.
In keeping with common practice, Natwick made his new character an animal, in this case, a French poodle. Beginning with this cartoon, the character's voice was performed by several different voice actresses until Mae Questel got the role, in 1931, and kept it for the rest of the series.Natwick himself later conceded that Betty's original look was quite ugly. The animator redesigned her in 1932 to be recognizably human in the cartoon Any Rags. Her floppy poodle ears became hoop earrings, and her poodle fur became a bob haircut. She appeared in ten cartoons as a supporting character, a flapper girl with more heart than brains. In individual cartoons she was called "Nancy Lee" and "Nan McGrew". She usually served as studio star Bimbo's girlfriend. She was not officially christened "Betty Boop" until the 1932 short Stopping the Show that same year. This was also the first cartoon to be officially part of the Betty Boop series and not a Talkartoon.
Related Post- Bimbo's Initiation and mybloglog
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Mybloglog and Bimbo's Initiation
This classic 1932 Surreal animated cartoon from the Fleischer brothers reminds me so much of the new Mybloglog community. Do you want to be a member of my community?
CLASSIC BOOK REVIEW
By Brent Erickson
The Bear Went Over the Mountain
A Novel
By William Kotzwinkle
Owl Books Copyright 1996
Poor Arthur Bramhall. After studding all the bestsellers, the Literature professor was on sabbatical from the University of Maine, working on a novel of his own, when his manuscript was destroyed in a cabin fire.
This was especially troubling to Arthur because, "He was ill-suited to teaching as he was subject to depression and preferred being alone, knowing that he was poor company when he was depressed which was most of the time. He'd purchased the old farm in hopes of having sex with women who'd move to the country and might themselves be depressed...His plan was that after having sex with them, he'd write a best selling novel about it. He'd written the novel, but it'd been from his imagination, not his experience for he found that the women who moved to the country wore shapeless overalls, frequently smelled of kerosene...and refused to shave their legs; he thought of them as fur bearing women...Consequently the only excitement he'd had was his house burning down."
Although his colleagues laughed at his persistence, Arthur Bramhall rewrote his book. "He gave up trying to write a copy of a bestseller and wrote in a fever of inspiration straight from the heart-about love and longing and loss and about the forces of nature in into whose power he'd been initiated...There was was still lots of sex but it had a connection to the ancient moods of the forests, to crow songs and fox cries and the crackling of fire in the hearth."
Having finished his new book Arthur thought his adventure in the woods was almost over, but it was just beginning. Fearing another house fire, he cautiously stored the book in a briefcase and hid it in the forest beneath a pine tree, when he went into town to celebrate. Everything would have been just fine for Arthur if there had not been a bear watching him hide his manuscript. "Now, as Bramhall got into his car and drove off to buy champagne, the bear padded across the field and slipped under the branches of the pine tree." The bear, disappointed that the briefcase contained no food was ready to discard it when a line caught his eye and he began to read. "'Why' he said to himself 'this isn't bad at all.' There was lots of sex and a good bit of fishing, "This book has everything," he concluded...He slipped the manuscript back into the briefcase, clamped the handle in his teeth and headed toward town."
Arthur was devastated by the loss of his book for the second time. Thankfully he was comforted by the locals who rallied to support him. Their quirky but good natured ways began to have a profound effect on the professor who was developing a keen sense of belonging in the forest, even forging a romantic relationship with a "fur bearing woman".
Meanwhile the bear, now known as Hal Jam, was doing some adjusting of his own. After replacing the stolen books by-line with his own name, and stealing a suit from a local store, the bear went to work pitching “his” book in the city, and like Arthur he was embraced by a strange but good-natured bunch of characters. The people in the literary crowd in which Hal soon found himself, were too wrapped up in highbrow ideas to notice they were talking to a bear. His publisher Elliot Gradson for instance was a little weary of “Hal” but not because he was a bear.
“Gradson was not warming to his new author for Jam was guarded. ‘God I hope he’s not homophobic.’ thought Gradson, whose wall carried a poster of Cary Grant in Bringing up Baby at the moment when he’d put on a women’s nightgown and cried, 'I just went Gay all of a sudden.' The bear was not homophobic, as bears have a tolerant sexual attitude. Occasionally young male bears who fail to find a female will hump each other and no one make a fuss about it.” After taking some time to warm up to his eccentric ways, Hal’s people eventually go all out in promoting their hot young writer. “We’ll make the Hemmingway comparison, I hope you don’t mind. Sportsman, adventurer, larger than life, the man of action who can also tell a story.”
William Kotzwinkle, a writer who, in his over 37-year literary career has demonstrated his versatility and talent countless times once again delivers both humor and insight in this classic novel. Kotzwinkle’s The Bear Went Over the Mountain has received critical acclaim all over the world, has been called “the funniest fable of our time.” by the Los Angeles Times and after devouring this fantastical tale it’s easy to see why. Reader’s familiar with Kotwinkles serious novels, (Swimmier in the Secret Sea, The Game of 30,) his screenplays (E.T the Extra-Terrestrial, Superman 3) or his children’s books (Walter the Farting Dog, Banned from the Beach) might be surprised by this satirical fable. However Fans of Kotszwinkle’s beatnik classic The Fan Man or anyone with an interest in the often-unbelievable literary world will surely find The Bear Went Over the Mountain a delight.
The Product is You!
Towards Understanding The Media
An Editorial
By Brent Erickson
Corporations sell products. Media Corporations are no different; they manufacture a product and sell it to their customers. But just what are, most magazines, newspapers, radio, television shows and web sites really selling?
Most people feel like they already understand the media. The death of model Anna Nicole Smith, the breakdown of singer Brittany Spears and other such stories are in the news for one reason, money. The masses want their sensational news and the media is simply making money by supplying the demand of the public. If Noam Chomsky sold as many newspapers as Anna Nicole and Brittany, he would be on the front pages instead of them. The customer is always right.
Though there is more truth to this argument than perhaps the person who makes it first realizes, this view is ultimately both condescending and inaccurate. Opinion polls show repeatedly that people are much more open to and interested in challenging issues than is reflected in most media outlets.
However the media continue to publish and broadcast an often fractured and distorted picture of the world with little objection from the so-called “educated” members of society. The fact that most of us in Canada and the U.S, despite being intelligent individuals, are unaware of the level of indoctrination in our countries, unfortunately only demonstrates the effectiveness of the propagandist system under which we live.
To be aware of the factors that influence media content is to develop Media Literacy. Media Literacy means bringing critical thinking skills to bear on the messages that inform, and entertain us every day. There are many factors shaping media content, two of the most fundamental to consider are; owners, and advertisers. These two variables, though they determine to a large extent how we see the world, are rarely are mentioned in discussions of the “Liberal Media”.
Media Ownership and Concentration
The number of corporations that control nearly all North American media has fallen from only 50 in 1983 to about 6 today. Media moguls such as Rupert Murdock and Conrad Black are known to media activists as stanch opponents of diversity and pro-labor sentiment, but even they are small potatos compared to some media owners. General Electric Corporation, one of the worlds largest weapons manufactures owns NBC / CNBC, networks that seem quick to push for war. Likewise with Westinghouse Electric Company, a corporation that owns a large number of media holdings including the CBS network.
According to the media watch group F.A.I.R, in December 2002 then CanWest Global Communications CEO Izzy Asper, who’s company owned the National Post, 14 large city dailies, 120 smaller dailies and weeklies, and the Global TV network, among other holdings, made the decision to require all of its daily newspapers to run corporate editorials produced in its Winnipeg head office. Though known to be liberal on certain social issues, Mr. Asper held much more conservative views than the majority of Canadians on many subjects (most notably support for Israel) and fire journalists who did not agree with him. His sons David and Leonard Asper have proven even more extreme since taking control of Can West after their father’s death in 2003.
F.A.I.R adds “The Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) and the Quebec Federation of Professional Journalists (QFPJ) have denounced the actions of the media giant as ‘a disturbing pattern of censorship and repression of dissenting views.’”
Advertising
The old sayings “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” and “Never bite the hand that feeds you.” are good to keep in mind when assessing the role advertising plays in shaping media content.
Commercial magazines generate over 50% of their revenue from advertising, Newspapers about 80%, Radio, TV, and web sites get close to 100% of their revenue from advertising. Because such a large amount of money (over $175 billion a year in the U.S alone) comes from not the selling of media content itself, but the selling of audiences to advertisers the public is not the customer in our media system, we are the product!
The so-called “media content” is only the bait to generate audiences for advertisers. If the customer is always right, that customer is the car company (which might deny global climate change) who paid for the ads, not the person who buys the magazine or who watches T.V. This is why there has been such an effort made to stave out public broadcasting and push it into the commercial arena where corporate “sponsors” can regulate the content. Noam Chomsky could attract more viewers than a new Pamela Anderson sex tape and he still would be excluded from the front pages unless the advertisers gave it the green light.
If we do not, as a society develop a minimal degree of Media Literacy and push for, what has been called “Media Democracy” we are losing more than we will ever know. As U.S congressman Bernie Sanders recently said, “If you are concerned about Health Care, Iraq, the Economy, Global Warming you must be concerned about Corporate Control of the Media.”
Friday, March 16, 2007
Mongolian Throat Singing Blues vs. Freestyle tunrtables and Human Beatbox
A nice freestyle with qbert behind the turntables and Sly of the Saian Supa Crew with his incredible human beatbox skills
Paul Pena played blues with the greats T-Bone Walker, B.B. King, and Bonnie Raitt. In 1995, the blind bluesman became the first American ever to compete in an unusual contest of multi-harmonic "throatsinging."
The Autonomous Republic of Tuva, wedged between Siberia and Mongolia, for centuries has been isolated from the rest of the world by jagged mountains and Soviet restrictions. Only recently have the Tuvan art form of throatsinging become known to outsiders.
Pena discovered Tuvan throatsinging on a shortwave program of Radio Moscow twelve years ago. Multiple voices emanated from a single vocalist and the sounds gripped him like nothing he had ever heard. For the next nine years he worked to produce similar overtones with his own voice and to incorporate throatsinging into his blues music.
Unexpectedly in 1993, Pena discovered that Tuvan throatsingers were on their first concert tour of the U.S.. After their performance, the deep-voiced bluesman broke into his own self-taught style of throatsinging and serenaded the musicians with Tuvan traditional songs! The throatsingers were amazed by Pena's mastery of the Tuvan art form and likened his rich voice to the sounds of tremors in the earth. They insisted that "Chershemjer" (Earthquake) travel to Tuva for the next tri-ennial throatsinging contest which would be held in 1995.
Eleven years after he first heard throat singing, Paul Pena entered the National Theatre of Tuva to make history. The blind bluseman's performance was so well received, he became the 1995 throatsinging champion in the style of kargyraa. He also captured the "audience favorite" award for the week-long competition. The Tuvan people had never seen or heard anyone like him.
Pena was honored by the Tuvan people, not only because he mastered kargyraa, but he also learned to speak their language. His friendship flourished with Kongar-ol Ondar, the throatsinging champion who had invited Pena three years earlier. Ondar hosted Pena as the bluesman experienced the country he once believed he would never visit.
"Genghis Blues" is a film about exploration and friendship. It is the story of a man whose struggle in life is not defined by conformity and rules but by an unquenchable curiosity, and love of music. Pena's story is truly an inspiration to all.
Background
Paul Pena is the son of immigrants from Cape Verde, West Africa, and lives in San Francisco where he plays a unique blend of Mississippi Delta blues, Cape Verdian folk, and Tuvan throat music. As a blind Creole-American, Pena has continually struggled against injustice through the messages in his music. To Pena, his music represents the "inter-cultural harmony which is becoming increasingly important for the development of a sustainable world environment."
The Republic of Tuva, in the heart of Asia, was once an independent country whose people are proud descendants of the conqueror, Genghis Khan. Over one third of the population continues traditional nomadic ways of animal-herding.
For centuries after the collapse of Khan's empire, geographical, political, and cultural isolation resulted in the evolution of various unique and highly developed art forms in Tuva. The most remarkable, "khoomei" (translated as "throatsinging") confounds Western academicians to this day. People in Tuva have learned to produce multiple tones simultaneously while singing. Throatsingers have been described as sounding like "a one-man quartet" and "a bullfrog swallowing a whistle."
Tuva is comprised of a mixture of desert plateaus and green valleys ringed by snow-capped mountains of the Sayan and Altai ranges. The powerful contrasts of their environment are said to be the inspiration for the Tuvans' development of five distinct styles of throatsinging.
Most Tuvans practice a mix of Tibetan Buddhism and animist shamanism despite aggressive Soviet attempts to eliminate "paganism" since their occupation of Tuva in 1944. In 1991, the suppression of a popular call for independence in Tuva resulted in the massacre of hundreds of people including both Tuvans and Russians.
Kongar-ol Ondar, who won the 1992 throat-singing contest, invited his friend, Paul Pena, to participate in the contest of 1995. Currently, Pena and Ondar have recorded an album, "Genghis Blues," which combines elements of Mississippi Delta blues, Cape-Verdian ballads, and Tuvan throat music.
QBert (born October 1969) is the performing name of Richard Quitevis, a Filipino-American (of Ilocano descent) DJ and composer. Living in San Francisco, he started playing with records at the age of 15 and was influenced by the street performers of San Francisco's hip-hop community in the mid 1980s.
He started his musical career in a group called FM20 with Mix Master Mike and Apollo in 1990. They were playing a show in New York when Crazy Legs saw them and invited them to join the Rock Steady Crew. They accepted, and going by the name of the Rock Steady DJ's they proceeded to take the 1992 Disco Mixing Club (DMC) world title. Q-Bert was also one of the founding members of the band Invisibl Skratch Piklz. Although there were other turntablist crews before the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, the Skratch Piklz were the first to apply the band concept to turntablism, layering drums, basslines, and scratch solos on top of each other.
Although he can be seen in the 1991 DMC US competition performing beat juggles, creating melodies with test tones, and performing other tricks, since then he has almost exclusively focused on scratching and "drumming," a variation on scratching in which the DJ scratches a drumbeat rhythmically. Of his performance routines, one of his most famous is a scratched reworking of LL Cool J's "Rock the Bells." QBert scratches "hamster style," which means that his mixer's crossfader works in reverse order. (Many other scratch DJs prefer "hamster style" to regular style.)
QBert, along with other Skratch Piklz, created a series of videos entitled Turntable TV. Now out of print, the first 5 episodes were released on VHS and contained demonstrations, showcases, skits, and other dj related content.
QBert's solo efforts include 1994's Demolition Pumpkin Squeeze Musik, and 1998's Wave Twisters. The latter album was created mainly with samplers and beat machines versus the turntable, and later turned into an animated feature of the same title. Wave Twisters (2001) the movie was somewhat unusual in that the animators and digital artists had to invent images and movements to the pre-recorded music, as opposed to the other way around. Wave Twisters is often compared to The Beatles' Yellow Submarine for being an animated-feature-as-soundtrack, but in terms of the composition of the album itself, Wave Twisters actually bears much more of a resemblance to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
His music was also featured in the video games Tony Hawk's Underground (in which he was also an unlockable playable character) and FreQuency.
He is featured in the 2001 documentary film Scratch.
He is also featured in the first documentary film on battle DJing - Battle Sounds - 1997.
More recently he has worked with Vestax to develop the QFO, an all-in-one scratching instrument. The QFO combines a turntable with a mixer's crossfader. (needs citation) In 2006 he introduced the QBert turntable cartridge, a model put out by Ortofon. (needs citation) Thus far, the cartridge has received mixed reviews for its sound quality and skip resistance.
Awards and credentials
* DMC USA Champion 1991
* DMC World Champion 1992
* DMC World Champion 1993
* DMC World Champion 1994
* DMC Judge 1995
* DMC DJ Hall of Fame (along with Mix Master Mike)
* Acted in Hang the DJ
o Cannes Film Festival, France
* Appears in the documentary film Modulations
o Sundance Festival, Utah
* Appears in the documentary Scratch
Saïan Supa Crew is a French rap collective composed of three groups: Explicit Samouraï, OFX, and Simple Spirit.
The name is a reference to some of the characters from the anime show Dragon Ball Z.
Saïan Supa Crew produces a very musical style of rap with hints of chanting, reggae, and ragga. Beat boxing also is an integral part of their music, as well as classic disco; for example, Ring My Bell was partially revisited on their album KLR
Their primary themes extend from drug problems (Que dit-on?) to racism (La preuve par 3), including also relationships (A demi-nue), suicide (La dernière séance) and the justification of violence by religion (Au nom de quoi). Humor and seriousness are both at home in their lyrics.
Their second album, X-raisons, was awarded a Victoire de la musique in 2002 for Best Rap/Groove Album.
Most of the groups of the collective have solo albums out as well. OFX was the first to debut, with their album Roots in February 2004, followed shortly by Explicit Samouraï in January 2005 and later by Sir Samuël Vizé pli ô, whose solo album was released in April 2005.
The latest album from the Saïan Supa Crew, Hold Up, was released Halloween 2005. On this album, the group demonstrated their breadth with three featured artists: German singer Patrice on "96 degreez," the singer Camille on "Si j'avais su," and will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas on "La patte."
Their entire song catalogue is published by BMG Music Publishing.
The Members
* Leeroy Kesiah member of Explicit Samouraï (born in 1978 as Khalid Dehbi, Bagneux 92)
* Vicelow member of OFX (born in 1978 as Cédric Bélise, Bondy 93)
* Sly the Mic Buddha member of Simple Spirit (born in 1974 as Silvere Johnson, Montrouge 92)
* Feniksi member of OFX (born in 1976 as Samuël Adebiyi, Noisy-le-Sec 93)
* Specta member of Explicit Samouraï (born in 1975 as Gérard Nubul, Bagneux 92) Is no longer a member of the Saïan Supa Crew.
* Sir Samuël (Solo Career) (born in 1977 as Fabien Philetas, Montrouge 92)
* KLR member of OFX (died in April 1999 born in Noisy-le-Sec 93)
plus the DJ and producers DJ Fun, Alsoprodby and Eddy Kent, DJ Kärve also recently joined Saïan Supa Crew.
Discography
* KLR (1999)
* X-Raisons (2001)
* Hold-Up (2005)
* DVD Hold-Up Tour 2006 (2006)
Paul Pena played blues with the greats T-Bone Walker, B.B. King, and Bonnie Raitt. In 1995, the blind bluesman became the first American ever to compete in an unusual contest of multi-harmonic "throatsinging."
The Autonomous Republic of Tuva, wedged between Siberia and Mongolia, for centuries has been isolated from the rest of the world by jagged mountains and Soviet restrictions. Only recently have the Tuvan art form of throatsinging become known to outsiders.
Pena discovered Tuvan throatsinging on a shortwave program of Radio Moscow twelve years ago. Multiple voices emanated from a single vocalist and the sounds gripped him like nothing he had ever heard. For the next nine years he worked to produce similar overtones with his own voice and to incorporate throatsinging into his blues music.
Unexpectedly in 1993, Pena discovered that Tuvan throatsingers were on their first concert tour of the U.S.. After their performance, the deep-voiced bluesman broke into his own self-taught style of throatsinging and serenaded the musicians with Tuvan traditional songs! The throatsingers were amazed by Pena's mastery of the Tuvan art form and likened his rich voice to the sounds of tremors in the earth. They insisted that "Chershemjer" (Earthquake) travel to Tuva for the next tri-ennial throatsinging contest which would be held in 1995.
Eleven years after he first heard throat singing, Paul Pena entered the National Theatre of Tuva to make history. The blind bluseman's performance was so well received, he became the 1995 throatsinging champion in the style of kargyraa. He also captured the "audience favorite" award for the week-long competition. The Tuvan people had never seen or heard anyone like him.
Pena was honored by the Tuvan people, not only because he mastered kargyraa, but he also learned to speak their language. His friendship flourished with Kongar-ol Ondar, the throatsinging champion who had invited Pena three years earlier. Ondar hosted Pena as the bluesman experienced the country he once believed he would never visit.
"Genghis Blues" is a film about exploration and friendship. It is the story of a man whose struggle in life is not defined by conformity and rules but by an unquenchable curiosity, and love of music. Pena's story is truly an inspiration to all.
Background
Paul Pena is the son of immigrants from Cape Verde, West Africa, and lives in San Francisco where he plays a unique blend of Mississippi Delta blues, Cape Verdian folk, and Tuvan throat music. As a blind Creole-American, Pena has continually struggled against injustice through the messages in his music. To Pena, his music represents the "inter-cultural harmony which is becoming increasingly important for the development of a sustainable world environment."
The Republic of Tuva, in the heart of Asia, was once an independent country whose people are proud descendants of the conqueror, Genghis Khan. Over one third of the population continues traditional nomadic ways of animal-herding.
For centuries after the collapse of Khan's empire, geographical, political, and cultural isolation resulted in the evolution of various unique and highly developed art forms in Tuva. The most remarkable, "khoomei" (translated as "throatsinging") confounds Western academicians to this day. People in Tuva have learned to produce multiple tones simultaneously while singing. Throatsingers have been described as sounding like "a one-man quartet" and "a bullfrog swallowing a whistle."
Tuva is comprised of a mixture of desert plateaus and green valleys ringed by snow-capped mountains of the Sayan and Altai ranges. The powerful contrasts of their environment are said to be the inspiration for the Tuvans' development of five distinct styles of throatsinging.
Most Tuvans practice a mix of Tibetan Buddhism and animist shamanism despite aggressive Soviet attempts to eliminate "paganism" since their occupation of Tuva in 1944. In 1991, the suppression of a popular call for independence in Tuva resulted in the massacre of hundreds of people including both Tuvans and Russians.
Kongar-ol Ondar, who won the 1992 throat-singing contest, invited his friend, Paul Pena, to participate in the contest of 1995. Currently, Pena and Ondar have recorded an album, "Genghis Blues," which combines elements of Mississippi Delta blues, Cape-Verdian ballads, and Tuvan throat music.
QBert (born October 1969) is the performing name of Richard Quitevis, a Filipino-American (of Ilocano descent) DJ and composer. Living in San Francisco, he started playing with records at the age of 15 and was influenced by the street performers of San Francisco's hip-hop community in the mid 1980s.
He started his musical career in a group called FM20 with Mix Master Mike and Apollo in 1990. They were playing a show in New York when Crazy Legs saw them and invited them to join the Rock Steady Crew. They accepted, and going by the name of the Rock Steady DJ's they proceeded to take the 1992 Disco Mixing Club (DMC) world title. Q-Bert was also one of the founding members of the band Invisibl Skratch Piklz. Although there were other turntablist crews before the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, the Skratch Piklz were the first to apply the band concept to turntablism, layering drums, basslines, and scratch solos on top of each other.
Although he can be seen in the 1991 DMC US competition performing beat juggles, creating melodies with test tones, and performing other tricks, since then he has almost exclusively focused on scratching and "drumming," a variation on scratching in which the DJ scratches a drumbeat rhythmically. Of his performance routines, one of his most famous is a scratched reworking of LL Cool J's "Rock the Bells." QBert scratches "hamster style," which means that his mixer's crossfader works in reverse order. (Many other scratch DJs prefer "hamster style" to regular style.)
QBert, along with other Skratch Piklz, created a series of videos entitled Turntable TV. Now out of print, the first 5 episodes were released on VHS and contained demonstrations, showcases, skits, and other dj related content.
QBert's solo efforts include 1994's Demolition Pumpkin Squeeze Musik, and 1998's Wave Twisters. The latter album was created mainly with samplers and beat machines versus the turntable, and later turned into an animated feature of the same title. Wave Twisters (2001) the movie was somewhat unusual in that the animators and digital artists had to invent images and movements to the pre-recorded music, as opposed to the other way around. Wave Twisters is often compared to The Beatles' Yellow Submarine for being an animated-feature-as-soundtrack, but in terms of the composition of the album itself, Wave Twisters actually bears much more of a resemblance to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
His music was also featured in the video games Tony Hawk's Underground (in which he was also an unlockable playable character) and FreQuency.
He is featured in the 2001 documentary film Scratch.
He is also featured in the first documentary film on battle DJing - Battle Sounds - 1997.
More recently he has worked with Vestax to develop the QFO, an all-in-one scratching instrument. The QFO combines a turntable with a mixer's crossfader. (needs citation) In 2006 he introduced the QBert turntable cartridge, a model put out by Ortofon. (needs citation) Thus far, the cartridge has received mixed reviews for its sound quality and skip resistance.
Awards and credentials
* DMC USA Champion 1991
* DMC World Champion 1992
* DMC World Champion 1993
* DMC World Champion 1994
* DMC Judge 1995
* DMC DJ Hall of Fame (along with Mix Master Mike)
* Acted in Hang the DJ
o Cannes Film Festival, France
* Appears in the documentary film Modulations
o Sundance Festival, Utah
* Appears in the documentary Scratch
Saïan Supa Crew is a French rap collective composed of three groups: Explicit Samouraï, OFX, and Simple Spirit.
The name is a reference to some of the characters from the anime show Dragon Ball Z.
Saïan Supa Crew produces a very musical style of rap with hints of chanting, reggae, and ragga. Beat boxing also is an integral part of their music, as well as classic disco; for example, Ring My Bell was partially revisited on their album KLR
Their primary themes extend from drug problems (Que dit-on?) to racism (La preuve par 3), including also relationships (A demi-nue), suicide (La dernière séance) and the justification of violence by religion (Au nom de quoi). Humor and seriousness are both at home in their lyrics.
Their second album, X-raisons, was awarded a Victoire de la musique in 2002 for Best Rap/Groove Album.
Most of the groups of the collective have solo albums out as well. OFX was the first to debut, with their album Roots in February 2004, followed shortly by Explicit Samouraï in January 2005 and later by Sir Samuël Vizé pli ô, whose solo album was released in April 2005.
The latest album from the Saïan Supa Crew, Hold Up, was released Halloween 2005. On this album, the group demonstrated their breadth with three featured artists: German singer Patrice on "96 degreez," the singer Camille on "Si j'avais su," and will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas on "La patte."
Their entire song catalogue is published by BMG Music Publishing.
The Members
* Leeroy Kesiah member of Explicit Samouraï (born in 1978 as Khalid Dehbi, Bagneux 92)
* Vicelow member of OFX (born in 1978 as Cédric Bélise, Bondy 93)
* Sly the Mic Buddha member of Simple Spirit (born in 1974 as Silvere Johnson, Montrouge 92)
* Feniksi member of OFX (born in 1976 as Samuël Adebiyi, Noisy-le-Sec 93)
* Specta member of Explicit Samouraï (born in 1975 as Gérard Nubul, Bagneux 92) Is no longer a member of the Saïan Supa Crew.
* Sir Samuël (Solo Career) (born in 1977 as Fabien Philetas, Montrouge 92)
* KLR member of OFX (died in April 1999 born in Noisy-le-Sec 93)
plus the DJ and producers DJ Fun, Alsoprodby and Eddy Kent, DJ Kärve also recently joined Saïan Supa Crew.
Discography
* KLR (1999)
* X-Raisons (2001)
* Hold-Up (2005)
* DVD Hold-Up Tour 2006 (2006)
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