A ladle dripping with honey

I prowled around the Machine Project website for a little while this afternoon, hearing righteous NPR blind date accounts of being buried alive, seeing a million little pieces of paper that I want to put in a bag and bury under my bed, and I found a great recording of Ben Ehrenreich reading some of his 1-a-day short stories. I tried to find a photograph of him and got creeped out by all the older fellows that kept popping up, who are all these shriveled ding-dongs writing that first beautiful story about love? Luckily he's not shriveled and the pictures were misleading, BEN EHRENREICH IS A YOUTHFUL AND ROBUST VOICE OF OUR NEW GENERATION. Be young have fun drink pepsi sometimes you feel like a nut what do you want on your boboli tombstone just do it!
Go on this journey with young squire Benji because it is fantastic
Ben Ehrenreich reading

Also, if you're gently typing away at an index or just want something to satisfy the eyeballs sitting in your ears, listen to these podcasts I've been producing for the Progressive Reading Series They're located here and have some great stories by Michelle Tea, Steve Almond, and co.

sELF promotion is #1! go see David Copperfuck at the Knockout and Missouri Lounge this weekend!

Brian Walters is a genius

He takes pictures of his paintings and drawings with his cellphone then text messages them to me. This is a new revolutionary art form!








sometimes he draws a picture specifically to take a picture of it, then text me the image.



he also does collage work



I'm sure anyone cool knows everything about Francoise Hardy already and is into way cooler French stuff by now, but i'd never heard her album "Soleil" and I listened to it 50,000 times last week.

Francoise Hardy- Le Crabe


p.s. DEAN!!! resize them images that are too big!!!! and show me how to do it soon....also "homeschooler" and "dingleberry"- time to get to bloggin!

Tatiana Ali

This is doing it for me on so many levels

LET THIS SOUND AND VISION HEAL YOUR AILING BODY AND SPIRIT CHRIS BAKER!

Addendum

Here's a little something to carry over from yesterday's post in light of Ghana's advancement. I am not a soccer fan, dear reader(s?), but I always have a soft spot for the underdog (see: Gonzaga & the Phoenix Suns).



Lord Kitchener - The Birth of Ghana

Biking to Babylon

I bought a new bike frame yesterday and I'm really pumped because I figured out what direction I want to take it in. I've decided that it's going to be a blue and white love letter from myself to John Pentsil. Sure, glory is fleeting, but the dude moved me and what else do we pay tribute to but that?



Ghana has so much righteous music! I can't handle it. I can only dream that John Pentsil's presence will inspire some forward-thinking Jews to play some highlife music about kabbalah. I will pay top dollar for it. In other mystical news, I believe this link recreates the relationship between G-d and moses on sinai! Cuz you can't see his face. Or maybe it's just weird and vaguely psychedelic.



Anyway, what would tie a post about Africa and Israel together more than music by African Jews? Yeah that's cool, but what about Africans who converted to Judaism by their own volition without any contact with other Jews and who made up a completely separate liturgy that is by similar to traditional Judaism and totally unique? Well...funny you should ask, because I've been listening to some music that fits that bill pretty well. Accordingly, here are two tracks by members of the Abayudaya (Lion of Judah) community in Eastern Uganda. Check it out on wikipedia and elsewhere, because the story is amazing and crazy and righteous and really fuels my pan-semitic fire! Okay, maybe this post has been a little weird, but I swear you'll feel this really hard.

Psalm 136
Mwana Talitambula (The Child Will Never Walk)

Keep it Movin

I started putting my cell phone movies up on youtube. What i realized is that they sound and look horrible. This one came out cool though. This Volume 10 song "Sunbeams" played on a mix in my car this weekend for two non-rap fans who thought it was amazing. Maybe whoever reads this will like it also. Many folks know Volume 10 for his one kinda hit. There's also a video for a remix of Sunbeams that is kinda better.

Volume 10- Sunbeams

Why does the Dictators 2nd album suck so bad, when the first and third albums are so amazing? I still wanted to hear this song so bad last night that I (Gasp!) bought it off itunes


The Dictators- Exposed

DEAN!!! resize my image

Tonight my roommate and I are singing Karoake off the TV. They have it on demand. So far we've done "Rock The Kasbah" and "Borderline". I nailed Borderline. I am officially adding it to my repertoire.

Last Friday I left work early and took about 5 hits of amazing liquid LSD. Some real hippy shit. I went to Chris's house and watched Bay Area Rap videos on MTV Jams. Highlights included , Tupac's "Brendas got a baby",the Goapele video for "Closer" (trip the fuck out!), and Oaktown .357's "Juicy". I have to mention that "Brendas Got a Baby" may be one of the best rap videos ever, even though it's kinda depressing. Thanks to the quality of LSD, this video did not send me spiraling into depression. Goapele looked so fine that I almost peed my pants- is she from another planet? The .357 video sent me into fits of crying snot nosed laughter. Here they are in order.








After watching four hours of the most amazing Video blocks I have ever seen, it was time to go to Gilman to see the punk show! I tried driving, cuz the LSD was kinda wearing off, but all the cars looked like they had lights on top like police cars (or ambulances! Hardy har har!!). I parked my car at my house and took a cab. David Copperfuck played a really good set. Do they read this blog? The most amazing thing was when the drummer guy broke his bass pedal during a song, but finished the song anyway by hitting all the other drums like a madman. It seemed like the rest of the group was supercharged during this song, I could really feel a good energy- but maybe I was just trippin. Regardless, those guys sure have a lot of spirit! Time for the weekend jams:



here's some 90's Tulsa OK rap, maybe I've been listening to it so much cuz it sounds EXACTLY like bay area rap from the same time period

Big Bur Na- Pleazure Kardz

.....a beautiful lil slice of 80's electro-pop!

Man Parrish- Together Again

and then the funk! DJ Quik sampled this Kleeer song for his hit "Tonight", and Snoop Lifted the chorus for "Gin and Juice" from the Slave song.

Kleeer- Tonight

Slave- Watching You

Waiting To Die

Something about the way those trust fund country singers sing their songs is enough to make an old man cry

Ata Kak

I usually try to champion original content on this site, and not pilfer from other nerds within the thunder dome but Awesome Tapes From Africa really lived up to its title this week by posting an undeniably "awesome tape". They only leave stuff up for about a week so I figured it couldn't hurt to build a little monument here.

It's a Ghanaian highlife/rap singer from the 80's who is like the perfect voltron of all of the music I've been listening to lately. Who made this rappin' African funky do morro bobby brown prince tiny tim smurf??? I don't know who or what or where, but I can't stop listening to these songs and they refuse to quit dropping little neon falsetto funk bombs all over my workplace.

Ata Kak- Moma Yendodo
Ata Kak-Obaa Sima
Ata Kak-Yemmpa Aba

here is dude's write up.

Lazy 2

Epic blog coming soon.

Chaka Khan playing the drums




Curtis Mayfield being an awesome beautiful genius

Fountainhead

I feel like the majority of the world probably feels these guys are annoying, but I really love those street performers who will juggle some twirling fire battons, read a book, and eat a sandwich all at the same time. The tempered, sophisticated street walker will say "they doin' too much" but I get so into it! This one time I had my eye on a certain lady until a common friend told me that she once saw her boyfriend "ride a bike, hold a 12-pack of beer, and roll a cigarette at the same time." WHO CAN TOUCH THAT?? Maybe you can roll up your ph d's and make a bionic arm or something, but otherwise we will all be using teamwork and the democratic process to make some sort of weak-voltron style cigarette rolling contraption while that guy is pedaling off into the beyond.

I also often think about the many ways in which I can fail at my life and often it at least partially boils down to this aesthetic. I will never proudly pronounce "I am the greatest titanium spoon and fork salesman in the universe!" Nope, it's juggling fire-breathing monkey, while bending a spooon with my mind, on a unicycle all of the way for me I think. Sometimes this knowledge is "OK" feeling though.

In my mind, this all ties together with the actual subject of this entry: Ezee Tiger The point is, I love one-man bands. Not shut-in 4-track tune engineers. But people who plug everything in, put it onthemselves and play it all at once. Not to get all fountainhead all of a sudden, but I've really idealized the image of a band practice "hey so what do you want to do?""i don't know what do you want to do""I don't know...." NO NONONO taping everything onto yourself and sailing out of the window on a giant speaker. The vocalization of a secret internal song, unrestricted and self-contained is such a beautiful sound. Little melodies and rhythms and energies come out that make me feel all inspired and funny in the stomach.
I've seen Ezee Tiger play some totally amazing everybody jumping up and down high-fiving ears bleeding (good way) shows and a couple of totally disastrous everything out-of-time, ears bleeding (bad way) babies crying. For better or worse, this is the natural terrain of the brave soul. You take your chance, you build your building, and then you eat a burrito and wait for your shitty building to fall down. Either way it's a total you can do it don't let the common b[m]an(d) slow you down kind of trip JUST LIKE IN THE FOUNTRAINHEEEAAAD MAAAAN! So yeah, he's from San Francisco (orig. from Denver, Tony!), has long hair and is really good, listen to it! Disregard the last 3 paragraphs! Build your building, work with friends, it's all good.

Ezee Tiger- The Tiger Bounce

A Little Morsel

I promise I will get it together and start putting things up again. In the meantime, snack on this little dish. The guy in the white coat looks like the uncle from Louis Malle's Zazie Dans le Metro