On Blast

Consumption (and yes I have officially recovered from my three-month bout of consumption) for the Week 28 February 2008

Video

Yeasayer - 'Wait for the Summer' Don't believe what you hear about Yeasayer. Watch this instead, http://www.mixtapeclub.com/.

Music

Portishead - 'Machine Gun' from ATP Nightmare Before Christmas
The entire show is a welcome return and no one can accuse Portishead of going pop. Of the four songs performed off the upcoming album Third - 'Wicca', 'Hunter', 'Machine Gun', and Peaches - 'Machine Gun' is by far the most stunning, built around a rudimentary snyth-drum loop and Beth Gibbons' rapturous voice.

Main Source - Breaking Atoms (1991)
You can't claim you know hip-hop unless you've heard this Large Professor produced masterpiece. The album would never see release today due to endless samples utilized here; think Paul's Boutique . It's not just the beats that remain relevant though as Extra-P plays the master surgeon, literally dissecting the major flaws of American society. The cat could have been a lecturer considering how deep he runs.

Culture - Two Sevens Clash (1979)
I have always held both ska and reggae in a very low regard - maybe it's the Germans and their strange fascination with dancehall that turned me off or that whole horribly ill-conceived third wave ska movement. Either way, I have recently found my way into dub and roots through Lee Perry, Junior Murvin, and most notably, Culture. How could you not love a band that revels so completely in the impending apocalypse?

The Clash - 'Magnificent 7' (Sandinista 1980)
The only reason the Clash should be defined as a punk band is because Joe Strummer, Mick Joes, Paul Simonon, and Topper Headon would venture anywhere and try anything. 'Magnificent 7' throbs with urgency and curiosity and is a bit reminiscent of Kurtis Blow with an edge.

Just a Friendly Game of Golf; It's Just Sport Dude, Just Like 24 is Simply Entertainment

Desert of the Real or A Loving Tribute to Fuzzy Zoeller?

Large Professor, mouthpiece of the inimitable hip-hop trio Main Source, likened police brutality and the larger American society that reared it to a friendly game of baseball. In an insightfully scathing and multi-layered approach Extra-P revealed that American identity necessitated both the repression and expression of racial insecurity through a Zizekian sublimation of reality. While Large Professor's main target was the overt violence directed at African-Americans during the tenure of Ed Koch - a reign which would later seem mild in comparison to Rudolph Giuliani's clampdown of New York City - he alluded to America's society of spectacle and obsession with diversion, one so complete that our own identity seems at once total and insecure.

And people watch the news for coverage on the game

Hmm, and got the nerve to complain

They need to get themselves a front row seat

Or sink a baseline for a beat

Cause television just ain't designed for precision y'all

It's just a friendly game of baseball

Baseball is a seemingly harmless diversion from the atomization precipitated by modernity.
Yet its societal function is one of symbol, where the nation and all its myths are on full display.
Sport is our great refuge from politics. We therefore cease to attempt to grasp our own identity and take for granted that which we believe has been settled.

So when overwhelmingly unimportant "golf analyst" Kelly Tighlman called for young players to "lynch Tiger Woods in a back alley," she made an unthinkable mistake, bringing Politics into our safe hyperreality. Our deluded self-image is so complete that her comments are as absurd as a foursome discussing The Souls of Black Folk or likening the Holocaust to our own Manifest Destiny. The shock is brief though, as the victim calls for calm and the golfing world moves on. Yet our society stumbles on, regurgitating myths and displacing the blame for her comments on the offended and not the offenders. Cue Bryant Gumbell, "after this brief intermission, let's return to the game."

http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/news/story?id=3189374
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JMdBR0kLrU

Don't Shoot the Master

If only this happened more often...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7068549.stm

Racism's Dead...Thank God for Georgia

While racism's genius has been its ability to weave itself intricately and unnoticed into the fabric of the American character, it sometimes erupts from one of the many buboes on the pocked surface of our societal skin. In a horrible yet necessary way it overtly reminds us of all that is latent within each one of our bodies. If only the disgusting images from the Auburn frat-boys dressed in black-face to Jena could bring about a true examination of our history instead of being suffocated under the oppressive pillow of our misplaced morality. Though digging for illusory truth might destroy the insidiously supposititious ground that saves us all from gravity, the purgatory of the postmodern might be preferable to the arrogance of identity. At least all could recognize that we stand unwittingly on burial sites.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?id=3080331

Gratitude

A year ago I was consumed by humidity, languishing in artistic torpitude as sluggish as any mid-summer Atlanta afternoon. It was a combination of a procession of dreams deferred and, to butcher Hannah Arendt's phrase, the evil of banality. A year later I am reveling in inspiration, an inspiration that comes at the dawn of autumn where I can see every word spoken in the cold induced outline of my warm breath. I have never so desired to devour life and I want to thank those who have abetted my hunger.

Shanna Sang (I could never express in words my debt to you)
John Gullick (A lovely man full of grace and humility)
Frankie Fisher (Although you attempt a cynical character your love of life is infectious)
Lee Tesche (My musical partner and the most interesting, inspired person I know)
Mom (Anything I might say would be trite in comparison to your love)

In Rainbows

Radiohead have just released quite a breathtaking album. In four words, impeccable, infectious, soulful and beatific. I'm not your average obsessive Radiohead fanatic but this record makes me want to weep. Although the entire album is a revelation, I would have to recommend the following:

'Bodysnatchers' - dirty, grimy rocker

'Nude' - utterly beautiful slow-burner

'Reckoner' - the new soul, quite possibly one of the greatest songs I have ever heard

It is fruitless to attempt a full album review since Greg Kot at the Chicago Tribune has already written the perfect piece,

http://leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com/turn_it_up/2007/10/12-million-down.html

My Name is Albert Ayler

I wrote a review for the above referenced film a few months ago and then that tarred and feathered international man of mystery, Lee Tesche, drops this on me...