8Sided Blog

a zine about sound, culture, and the punk rock dream

Looney Machine of Outrage

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Negativity Will Not Do → I could probably write about every other post that appears on The Red Hand Files here. Nick Cave’s answers to his reader’s questions are delightful and insightful, and most deserve highlighting. The latest, Issue #122, is a response to Pat from Chicago asking how Nick deals with hate mail. Nick jokingly — I hope — claims to enjoy “a good death threat in the morning.” Then I’m fully on board once he dismisses social media as “that looney machine of outrage.” I’m sticking the phrase in my quiver for future deployment. 

But it’s Nick’s dose of resistant optimism and a rally to continue doing creative work in the face of uncertainty that stirs my soul. I needed to read this today:

Of course, there is much in our world that is in need of change, to be set to rights, and clearly humanity is complex, conflicted and full of faults, but at this moment in time, when our very existence hangs in the balance, we need to come together not just in good faith and consolation, but also in a spirit of creativity and invention. Our existence depends upon offering the best of ourselves. Negativity, cynicism and resentment will not do.

On the same day, James A. Reeves offered this complimentary observation (unintentional) on his Atlas Minor blog: 

It’s an awful feeling, being afraid to hope. But I’ve relied on pessimism as a protective measure for too long, only to discover it’s another warped mirror.

I literally exclaimed, “Oh, shit!” when I read that. It felt like I got burned. This week’s tough — the toughest in a while — and the stress is nearly unbearable. My own ‘protective’ pessimism and wallowing outside of my creative pursuits aren’t helping anyone. Quite the opposite, actually. Thanks for the wake-up call.

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Joe Muggs on “Starfish and Coffee” → Joe Muggs was given the task of writing in-depth about a Prince song in a lengthy Twitter thread. He chose “Starfish and Coffee.” Hey, that might be my favorite one, too. Joe’s thoughts and recollections on this classic are heartwarming, reminding me of all the things that make one love music (and Prince). He also touches on that DJ set sweet spot: playing a song that everyone knows and digs, but you never hear on the radio (or the 2020 equivalent). Anyway, this is a great thread. Hopefully, someday this screed will get transferred to a blog or personal site (you should do one, Joe) and away from the ephemeral clutches of Twitter. Passionate remembrances such as this deserve a more hallowed ground. 

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“I Don’t Want To Talk About It” Masks → Orlando art troubadour Patrick Greene ran for mayor of ‘the city beautiful’ in 2004. His campaign slogan was, “I don’t want to talk about it,” a sentiment that has haunted us (and him) ever since. As we barrel further into COVID-times, Pat has heeded the call to extend his slogan to us mask-wearing ‘over its’ as we do our sensible duty while discouraging senseless chat. Or at least that’s how I read it. 

The masks are $16.00 (including shipping within the US), and Pat will donate four of those dollars to Community Hope Center. That organization helps the homeless and those living destitute in the (now) ex-tourist motels along the theme park highways. You may recognize this existence from the film The Florida Project. What was a budding problem at the time of that movie has gotten much, much worse thanks to the economic effects of COVID on Central Florida’s service industries. Supporting Community Hope Center in this crisis is a worthy cause.

Send Pat $16.00 for one of these handy masks. Click here for his email address for more info, or PayPal him using that same email. Be sure to include your shipping address.

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Affect Display – Animal Drift Animal → Canadian producer Damien Smith is Affect Display, and he’s released a unique seven-track album titled Animal Drift Animal through the Pirates Blend label. The tracks recall Detroit techno’s early explorations, as releases became less about the dance-floor and more about the head-trip. Smith’s drum programming sets Animal Drift Animal into this heady mode, with frenetic rhythms that betray influences traveling across a landscape of genres. There are scenes of pastoral ambiance, but also indie-quoting guitar lines in “FlightorFury” and a couple of others, a mellow gothiness in “Transference,” and disorienting experimentalism leading to grandiose prog-ness in “Dauen.” And it works. Affect Display has delivered something unusual and grabbing. He’s shaking things up, and what more can one ask for in these lockdown days of endless sameness? Check out the video for “Until the Light Hits the Door” for an eerily nostalgic taste of Affect Display’s electronica:

Kurt Rambus Tackles the Delusion of Genre

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Kurt Rambus is the mischievous studio pseudonym of Nigel John, a longtime staple on Central Florida’s underground DJ scene. Nigel is a purveyor of the unpredictable — his DJ sets veer wide alongside his musical taste and knowledge. He can fit snuggly into a theme, flawlessly programming appropriate but thoughtful music for a gallery opening, an experimental dance company, or opening slots for the likes of DJ Shadow, Kool Keith, and Bonobo. But it’s most interesting when there is no event category or constraint, allowing Nigel to let loose throughout his exhaustive influences.

The Kurt Rambus project is like this. With no heed paid to sonic boundaries, Kurt (as we’ll call Nigel in this guise) mashes up styles and glues together influences that some might find conflicting. “Genre never mattered,” Kurt tells me. He then rattles off some early records from formative years: Ohio Players, KISS, Peter Tosh, Thompson Twins, King Curtis, calypso (his family’s roots are Trinidadian), Run DMC, Art of Noise. John Zorn and Bill Laswell eventually found him, too. 

Kurt then mentions Night Flight, the USA Network cable show that aired overnight on weekends throughout the ’80s. “It made a huge impact on me.” Me, too! Night Flight regularly featured films and programs like New Wave Theater, Urgh! A Music War, and early music videos from weird (for the time) labels like Some Bizarre. Speaking for myself, seeing (and hearing) these from the isolation of Central Louisiana shattered any notions of musical or artistic restraint.

The new EP from Kurt Rambus adds some other influences to the mix: “Bass music DJ mixes from my friend Professor Goat, ’90s hip hop and glitch, and traditional Arabic and Andalusian music.” You can hear these aural references peppered over the EP’s tracks. Not as apparent are the non-musical inspirations for the project. Kurt identifies “history, political philosophy, sociopolitics. The novel Don Quixote. B-movies.” And in case you suspected our current American situation plays a part, Kurt adds, “I realize another major influence is watching that silly fascist ritual of 45 tear-gassing people so he can get a photo of himself in front of a church looking stupid holding a bible.”

Unsurprisingly, the music is urgent. “Hayek and His Black Friend” launches the EP at an ominous 80 beats-per-minute. Bass rhythms and dramatic strings punctuate a flurry of vocal scowls and insinuations. Serious synths appear two-and-a-half-minutes in, and then they’re outta there. “Envy of Thee” sounds like Throbbing Gristle growing up in Miami, and “Entstehung” could inspire revolution from the backroom of a dubstep rave. Then there’s the closing “One Salt, Too Many Swift,” my personal favorite of the set. “It’s inspired by my wife’s background, which is Bedouin Egyptian and Spanish Gypsy,” says Kurt. “I originally scrapped it before reviving it with the ‘Impeach the President’ breakbeat.”

You may have noticed I haven’t mentioned the name of Kurt Rambus’s EP. I was saving it until I explained the music, the tension, and the tug-of-war of influences. The title is a curiosity that adds its own significant amount of weight. It hides and reveals the concept at the same time. Ladies and gentlemen, The Misadventures of Hayek Von Pinochet and his Men Of Action. I’ll close this piece with Kurt Rambus laying it out:

The title of the EP is the name of an imaginary gothic horror flick. The main character, Hayek, is a combination of two men: Friedrich Von Hayek, a “pioneering” neoliberal economic theorist, and Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean dictator. Friedrich’s economic philosophy revolved around freedom being the highest ideal. Yet he associated, supported, and consulted with Pinochet, a fascist military dictator whose regime was responsible for murdering and torturing.

I incorporated the plot of Don Quixote into this imaginary film. Alonzo Quixano reads so many books about romantic chivalry that he loses his mind. He becomes a knight, aiming to revive chivalry and serve his nation. And Hayek’s claim to fame was that he believed that the only way for society to progress was for human beings to be selfish, to return to the golden age of 19th-century feudalism. These elements are combined because they’re all delusional. At least, to Don Quixano’s credit, his madness was in dedication to a noble cause of chivalry. Hayek was just an elitist asshole who had a very childish world view. Many others hold this view now.

The “men of action” is based on Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground. The concept of a man, or men, who are impulsive and possessed by feelings of revenge — these men don’t think about repercussions. They only act upon irrational thoughts and feelings. That’s who Hayek Von P rolls with. They are all delusional barbarians. 

You’ve Got To Hear Silver Apples

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My first exposure to Silver Apples was through Howie B. Howie came to Orlando on holiday around 1994 and wandered into my record shop. We hit it off, and he joined me for a few drinks that evening. At one point, Howie asked, “Have you heard of Silver Apples?” I said no and, shocked, Howie stood up and enthusiastically commanded, “Well, you’ve got to hear Silver Apples!”

Silver Apples keep popping in and out of consciousness. They were so weird, so ahead of their time, it’s easy to doubt they ever existed. Silver Apples reemerged last March when the excellent YouTube channel Bandsplaining spotlighted the band in this video:

Simeon Coxe of Silver Apples

That video has well over a million plays, an extreme case of unexpected virality for Silver Apples. Outside of getting name-checked by the likes of Stereolab and Portishead’s Geoff Barrow, this might be their most significant moment of exposure. There’s a lot of fresh groovin’ to “Oscillations” going on.

I bring up Silver Apples as Simeon Coxe, the last remaining member of the original duo, passed away this week. The Guardian has a glowing obituary which features this historical note on the Simeon’s sizable innovation: 

In the late 60s, Coxe introduced a 1940s audio oscillator into his group, the Overland Stage Electric Band. “Besides the drummer Danny [Taylor] who later joined me, no one in the band was amused,” he said in 2012. The change in direction prompted the departure of his band members until only he and Taylor remained. They changed the band’s name to Silver Apples and established their pioneering, proto-synthesiser setup: nine audio oscillators and 96 manual controllers – pieced together in part from discarded second world war equipment, Coxe once said – fondly known as “the Simeon”.

Simeon had a loose Orlando connection, collaborating with local art-punks Obliterati and playing the city regularly. About three years ago, I saw him perform with his longtime companion and musical partner Lydia Winn LeVert. He was in his late-70s then (he was 82 when he died this week), and it was remarkable how experimental and ambitious his performance was. But it wasn’t a throwback — Simeon accompanied Lydia with electronics and samples from his laptop. Apparently, some of the samples were the drums of his late bandmate, Danny Taylor. 

I was lucky to have a short conversation with Simeon afterward. He was fun to talk to. I remember thinking, “I wouldn’t mind doing what he’s doing when I’m in my ’70s.” And I’d like to believe, if not for his passing, he’d be back and enthusiastically continuing his sonic experiments into his ’80s and beyond. 

🔗→ Silver Apples synth pioneer Simeon Coxe dies aged 82

A Lot of Honking: The Age of Social Distanced Concerts

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I expect a lot of honking. Ray, a longtime friend, alerted me to The Road Rave, an event billed as “North America’s first-ever drive-in festival of the COVID era.” The festival is led by EDM sensation and Ultra Music Festival veteran Carnage, performing alongside at least four other acts. A maximum of 500 cars will line up in formation, facing the stage, each with two to six inhabitants encouraged to stay seated during the event. “Roaming golf carts” will take concession orders.

The Road Rave takes place Saturday, June 20 (postponed from the original date of June 6), about six miles from my house. It’s sold out. No, I’m not going, but thanks for the invite. That said, I’m close enough that I’m sure the not-too-distant sound of 500 cars honking will echo over Lake Holden and into my eardrums throughout the evening. Every bass drop — honk honk honk. Every on-stage glitter explosion —- honk honk honk. Every DJ raising his hands in the air — honk honk honk. There will be a lot of honking.

We’re now in the phase of The Strange Times where watching a concert from the seat of a car seems attractive. I get it — we’re making our way through this any way we can. And even a glimmer of normality that’s not normal at all can provide reassurance. But, man — all those cars.

In the last several months, there was a push to explore the idea of environmentally-conscious, carbon-neutral touring. Massive Attack and Coldplay were high-profile advocates of the concept. So it’s ironic concert-goers are now encouraged to lean into the fossil-fuels, idling their automobiles as a festival broadcasts over an FM signal, and a guy in a golf cart takes another nacho order.

It’s not only The Road Rave. The concert promoting Borg, known as Live Nation, is planning nationwide ‘drive-in concert’ tours this summer, taking place in the various parking lots of its 40 amphitheaters. And for promoters who don’t own stadiums, drive-in theaters are a no-brainer for events. However, most existing drive-ins are far outside of bigger cities, and the owners would rather show movies. Says one proprietor, “We don’t mind doing one-off special events, but most of us feel we’re here to show movies.” Less hassle, less honking.

In an article about the absence of live music, the drive-in theater aspect inspired Rolling Stone contributing editor Rob Sheffield to remember a scene from ’70s movie dystopia:

There’s a scene I keep re-watching from the Seventies sci-fi zombie trash classic, The Omega Man. Charlton Heston is the last human left alive in LA after the plague. He drives out to the empty theater that’s still showing the “Woodstock” documentary. He sits alone in the dark, a ritual he’s done many times before, watching the hippie tribes onscreen boogie to Country Joe and the Fish. “This is really beautiful, man,” a dazed flower child tells the camera. Heston recites every word along with him. “The fact is if we can’t all live together and be happy, if you have to be afraid to walk out in the street, if you have to be afraid to smile at somebody, right—what kind of a way is that to go through this life?”

Charlton Heston gives a sardonic smirk. “Yup—they sure don’t make pictures like that anymore.”

On the other hand, there are approaches to social distanced gatherings that border on performance art. For example, the restaurant outfitted with mannequins and the TV show with an audience of balloon people. A precursor to social distanced performance art might be 2018’s Mile-Long Opera, where listeners walked along NYC’s High Line. Singers were encountered along the path, each singing in tandem, and, as an ‘audience member,’ you are encouraged to keep moving. It’s a compelling idea, but nowadays, even a performance in motion has its COVID-19 dangers. Jane Moss of The Lincoln Center, considering the option, worries about transfixed groups stopping to watch in a virus-spreading bottleneck: “The more ingenious and intriguing you get, the more people want to come together to see what you’ve done.”

Performance art directly inspired one daring concert experience. Marina Abramovic’s exhibition (and terrific documentary film) The Artist Is Present featured the artist sitting across from a stranger in silence. The simple act of this face-to-face meeting — at about a socially distanced six feet — caused intense feelings of intimacy in many participants. Some of the seated museum-goers broke into tears during their sittings. From this idea came performances at the dormant airport in Stuttgart, Germany. A musician from the local orchestra gave a series of ten-minute ‘concerts’ to solitary audience members. They faced each other at a short length, with no conversation and no applause. In a NY Times piece covering the event, listeners spoke about the same sort of intimacy that Abramovic’s temporary partners felt.

This intimacy is unexpected, but innovative answers to the live-music-under-COVID problem will produce unexpected results. That’s the subtext of all performance art — experiment with people’s expectations and things will happen. And the further away we get from a traditional live performance, the less it looks and feels like a concert. Understandably, that worries a lot of people.

Others have attempted to zero-in on the center of the Venn diagram linking live music and COVID-19 safety. There was this small event in Münster that featured famed DJ Gerd Jansen, social distanced dancing (in theory), a 100-person limit, and €70 tickets to break even. And in Arkansas, blues-rock singer Travis McCready played to a sold-out — but still smattering — crowd who were temperature-checked before entering:

On the surface, the concert had all the makings of a typical rock & roll show. Stage lights set the mood. The audience clapped along, with some even dancing in their “fan pod” seats (tickets were sold in blocks to keep groups six feet apart). But when the bank of floodlights at the front of the stage illuminated a nearly empty 1,100-seat theater during Travis McCready’s set, the reality of the situation was clear. The first socially distanced concert in the US felt more like a dress rehearsal than a typical concert experience.

It’s something, but is it helping? And by that, I mean, helping us cope or return to something like our ordinary lives? Since reading the Vulture piece I linked to above I think a lot about this paragraph:

The first fallback options—play to an empty house (as a small sub-ensemble of the Berlin Philharmonic has done) or distribute a few hundred listeners around a hall that could seat 2,000—would only emphasize the melancholy weirdness. That kind of event can have an impact as a ritual of mourning, a dramatization of all we’ve lost. But it’s no way to lose ourselves in some alternate, virus-free world of the imagination.

The music is only one reason we go to concerts, festivals, nightclubs, or raves. We also go for the community, to connect with (as Seth Godin says), “People like us who do things like this.” We’ve all forged at least one friendship with someone we saw at ‘all the same shows.’ Many of us even met our future life partners at a club or concert. These solutions I pointed out — attending in cars, listening alone to a flute player, or boogying at a distance in a near-empty club — only solve the ‘music’ part of the equation. It’s true that we miss and crave the rush of volume, performance, and the live music experience. But until we regain the electricity of community that accompanies it, we’ve, so far, only captured the facsimile.

This post was adapted from Ringo Dreams of Lawn Care, a weekly newsletter loosely about music-making, music-listening, and how technology changes the culture around those things. Click here to check out the latest issue and subscribe.

Tornadoes

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Do you get tornadoes? I’ve always lived in towns where tornadoes happen when you least expect it. Once, while at college in North Louisiana, a tornado passed through as I walked back to the dorm from a class. I hid under an open stairwell as nature wreaked havoc around me. And then my house here in Orlando had its top ripped off during Hurricane Irma — the roofers told me that a hurricane-wind inspired tornado hit my home. So I’m no stranger to tornadoes.

Last night I was preparing dinner, and, out of our large window that looks over Lake Holden, I caught a weird blue flash. I was already on edge due to a ‘tornado warning’ in effect and incredibly ominous low-hanging inky clouds on the horizon. So I looked up and just past the lake I saw a huge tornado funnel traveling north.

For context, here’s one of my daily dawn photos of the lake to give you my vantage. And now here’s a video someone took of the very tornado I saw. Luckily, I wasn’t as close as the person who made that video, but I was close enough.

About a quarter-of-a-mile away from me, there’s a lot of damage. Fortunately, there are no reports of fatalities or even injuries. I’m unnerved and in awe. That tornado funnel on the horizon — with occasional blue sparks and flashes lighting its interior — is an image that will stick in my head for a while.

I woke up this morning with the Butthole Surfers’ “Tornadoes” in my head. The song really does sound like getting swept away by a tornado.

Foreign Dissent: International Punk Rock in a Digital Age

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Craig Mazer frequented Bad Mood Records, the rag-tag record store I owned 25-ish years ago. He was active and instrumental in Florida’s punk rock scene and published a slick-but-not-too-slick newsprint fanzine called IMPACT. Decades later, and here I am doing my thing in music-land, and Craig’s still championing the local punk rock scene. Give some credit to the lifers.

For six consecutive years, Craig’s promoted an Orlando event that might’ve been unimaginable without the internet. It’s called Foreign Dissent, and the idea is to showcase mostly undiscovered punk rock bands from all over the world to Orlando’s scenesters. It’s a diplomatic gesture from a group of fans that often get misconstrued as antagonistic and uncompromising. But punk rock is a welcoming tribe. It’s always fostered connections and curiosity among its global family. For example, my punk rock adolescence involved trading fanzines and cassettes across the ocean to addresses in exotic places like Croatia and Poland, usually copied from the classifieds in Maximum Rocknroll.

This year’s Foreign Dissent — held Monday, October 28 at the respected local venue Will’s Pub — features five countries across eight raucous bands. Denmark, Canada, Northern Ireland, Italy, and England are present, their representatives united by independence, rebellion, and a love for this music and lifestyle. Here’s the flyer:

We know that punk rock is the most DIY of music genres, its historic DIY-ness an unspoken influence on today’s shift to self-release and toward self-reliance. But punk rock was doing this when the internet was basically two guys at a military base sending chess moves to each other. How has the scene adapted to an age where the idea of DIY promotion only conjures social media tactics? Are ‘the old ways’ of punk rock word-of-mouth, city-to-city networking, and flyer slinging still in the mix?

I’m curious, and Craig Mazer — whose promotion of Foreign Dissent happens under the punkily named Punching Babies — obliged my question. “I don’t see too many people handing out flyers. I think it has largely moved to social media as the main avenue for promoting. I do still see posters put up, and I’m sure that word of mouth is still important, but social media, to me, is the main avenue.”

He continues: “Social media is where so many people are. Between Facebook and Instagram, you have a huge audience right there. Now, the question of how effective it is is debatable, but it’s undoubtedly effective to some extent. Personally, I still love the DIY aspect, so I still put up posters and flyers at shows.”

It’s interesting because promoting punk rock was once different than promoting rock n’ roll or bands of other music genres. Just as the internet has lowered the barriers of musical preferences, it’s somewhat homogenized how we promote music. But how does social media — run by corporations of a size that would make Jello Biafra have a seizure back in the day — fit into punk rock?

Craig: “Man, that’s a tough one. I don’t know that it fits into punk rock as much as punk rock has had to give in to it. Social media is so pervasive. And it’s free (putting aside the idea of buying ads on social media), so it would be foolish not to have some amount of promotional presence on it for an event. It also allows for the ease of sharing and spreading the promotion, which can help a lot.”

But there is an upside that enhances punk rock’s tight, idealistic community. Craig adds: “I think that elements of the punk ethos have ‘weaponized’ social media by calling out abusers in the scene, exposing shitty booking practices or venues that are discriminatory.”

I remember local fanzines serving that purpose. People would even make one-off fanzines to expose certain undesirable elements in the scene. It seems that sort of scene networking has moved onto social media spaces.

Craig: “Yeah, definitely. That said, i don’t remember at any time in the ’90s that there was a means (or even much of a chorus of voices) for exposing that kind of stuff. There has been a huge wave of empowerment around it in the last 5-10 years.”

Canada's Bad Waitress are playing Foreign Dissent 6 in Orlando
Canada’s Bad Waitress are playing Foreign Dissent 6

I’m sure the internet makes one other thing a lot easier — organizing an international punk rock showcase. Says Craig, “It would have been very difficult 20 years ago. Even ten years ago, maybe. The internet is truly key, both for the organization of it upfront, but then also for the logistics and communications necessary as it gets closer to the day of show. I couldn’t imagine what it would have been like for a foreign band to organize a tour back in the ’90s, like when I booked tours for [legendary Orlando punk band] Shyster and had to use a (gasp) phone.”

But some things haven’t changed despite the internet. Getting punk rock bands into the US is still a hassle. Probably even more of a hassle.

Craig: “When I did the first Foreign Dissent six years ago, I had no idea what I was getting into. I hadn’t considered that these bands generally aren’t traveling with any gear. Getting into the US is hard enough, but if they come with all their gear, they’ll get tagged as coming here to work. And these small bands can’t afford work visas for a trip where they are probably going to lose money as it is. So I had to quickly scramble to find amps, a drum kit, and everything else. Some amazing friends in the music scene now loan their gear for the backline, or the bands borrow from other bands playing or buy something inside the US.”

But for Craig and many other promoters passionately exposing new acts, the hassle is worth it. “For many of these bands, it’s their first time in the US. And for some, Foreign Dissent is literally the first show they’ve ever played over here. That’s such a fulfilling feeling for me, to be able to give them that opportunity.”

An Interview on the This Is Orlando Podcast

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I appeared on the This Is Orlando podcast, interviewed by the affable and capable Rob Coble. It was a terrific discussion and I was able to touch on many of my pet topics including:

• my beginnings with the Eighth Dimension collective
• the importance of the artist’s story and the ‘body of work’ mindset
• trading physical scarcity for streaming’s abundance
• how the diversity of Orlando’s music scene is its advantage and disadvantage
• social media as the hammer, not the house
• why I switched from the artist life to the music business life
• how I find new music and strive to listen with intention

Have a listen on the This Is Orlando page or via Overcast.FM (or download it in your preferred podcast app).

PS – Overcast’s new clip sharing feature is amazing. What a great idea. That above excerpt video won’t be the last you’ll see on this site, I’m sure.

What Am I Doing Now? (May 2019 Recap)

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  • I’m gearing up for a few days at MusicBiz 2019 in Nashville, starting on May 5. I’m expecting terrific panels, productive meetings, new contacts, seeing some old friends, and perhaps an announcement or two from my camp. If you are in Nashville for this conference, then feel free to drop me a line and let’s meet up.
  • The first Q-Burns Abstract Message release since 2011’s “Balearic Chainsaw” is out now on 8D Industries and it’s called AUDIOTOTEMPOLE. This is a special release, and it closes a loop of sorts. These are songs spanning the years. The one with ‘1997’ in the title is that old, and I completed the newest track three months ago. I think that I can now move on to new pastures, new sounds, new — and more frequent — Q-BAM releases.
  • Additionally, on the Q-Burns Abstract Message front, I’m breaking my DJ retirement for one night to play at the Phat N’ Jazzy 25th anniversary party. There are only a few things that would get me to DJ again and this party qualifies. Twenty-five years ago I had a weekly gig playing spacey trip hop records in the backroom of Phat N’ Jazzy at The Beach Club. It was my first residency, and it’s where I honed my DJ craft. I’d probably be in a different place today if the P’n’J crew didn’t trust me to command the backroom vibe. For the May 11 anniversary party I’ll be playing the tunes from that classic era, or at least the ones I still have on vinyl.
  • Consultancy: I’m currently working with Reza of Vexillary, Deepak of Hidden Recordings, and I’ll be advising Snax once again starting next week. A big thanks to my clients for being on board and receptive to some crazy (but effective!) ideas. I’m expanding the consultancy into special one-on-one workshops over the next couple months.
  • Soon you’ll hear me blabbing about music industry stuff on the This Is Orlando and Scotch and Good Conversation podcasts. I also did a long interview with the site MyMusicMoments that I feel good about. I’ll post links to all of these in the blog once they’re online.

Listening (music):

• Simon Scott – Below Sea Level
• Khotin – Beautiful You
• Mary Lattimore & Mac McCaughan – New Rain Duets
• Kankyō Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980-1990
• Helado Negro – This Is How You Smile
• The 180 Gs – Commercial Album
• Revisited Sonic Youth’s Sister and Mission of Burma’s Vs. in a big way.

Listening (podcasts):

• Cherie Hu’s relatively new Water & Music podcast is great. Stellar music industry commentary. Check out the episode with Amber Horsburgh for starters.
• On Russell Brand’s Under The Skin, I enjoyed the conversations with Douglas Rushkoff and Derren Brown.
• Bob Lefsetz’s podcast is back, and the episode with Billy Bragg is a lot of fun. I especially enjoyed the history lesson on skiffle.
• John Livesay’s appearance on Big Questions With Cal Fussman was super-insightful on the topics of marketing and developing stories.

Watching:

• Cold War
• Free Solo (inspirational)
• Silent Light
• We finished The Americans. I was unsure for the first couple of seasons but we hung in there which paid off … the show got really good (as I’m sure you’ve heard).
• And, sure, we’re watching Game of Thrones. And Gay of Thrones.

Reading:

• Finished Bobby Fischer Goes To War which was fantastic, though it did wind down a bit mid-match (and 3/4 into the book) once it became apparent that Fischer would win. I wholeheartedly recommend it, though. One big complaint: the book mentions throughout that Bobby Fischer often listened to ‘rock n’ roll’ while preparing and practicing, but there’s no mention or clue as to the records of bands he liked. I want to know!
• I’m now halfway through Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash after multiple people coincidentally recommended it to me over the same few weeks. Confession: this is the first fiction book I’ve read since 2001. No idea why I gave up on fiction, but I’ve meant to get back into it. So far so good — I’m enjoying Snow Crash, though I still am not sure what it is about the book (or me) that inspired various friends to point me to it.

Misc:

• I started using Focusmate over the past few weeks. I’m using it right now. It’s a game-changer — expect a blog post about this soon. In the meantime, here’s the article that convinced me to give Focusmate a try.
• Civic Minded 5, my favorite concert promoters, hosted the trio of Nels Cline/Larry Ochs/Gerald Cleaver a couple of weeks back. A mind-blowing show. There were two sets — the second half of set one was explosive and set two was at times drone-y and Krautrock-y. So good. Again, I’ve never been disappointed by a Civic Minded 5 show and am grateful they are here in Orlando. Your city should be jealous.

Hitting The Links

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It’s time for our semi-regular round up of articles and links that we found particularly interesting over the past week. And, yes, I do need a better title for this section.


A History of Female Afrofuturist Fashion

The term Afrofuturism might only have been coined in 1993 by author Mark Dery, but the black cultural experience of freedom achieved through sci-fi, ancient African cosmology and magical realism has been underway since the middle of 20th century. Time, for an Afrofuturist, is a fluid concept, and the terms past, present and future aren’t necessarily linear.


A Plea for Metadata for Music. What’s Wrong with You Label People?

I’ll just be blunt: why can’t you get metadata right? What’s keeping you from tagging digital song files with all the information I and everyone else needs? This is important data. And supplying everyone with this data is your job!


I Accidentally Convinced Voters That Donald Trump Hates Pavement

It’s just funny to imagine Donald Trump listening to Pavement. Trump has written real tweets praising stadium acts like Taylor Swift and Aerosmith. What if he heard Pavement? He probably wouldn’t like them very much! I imagine a man of such extreme wealth and ego being repelled by the uncompromising, lo-fi aesthetic of early Pavement recordings.


Finally, It Will Be Possible To Flip Someone Off Via Emoji

It appears that when Apple ships iOS 9.1, iPhone users will have access to a key symbol of human communication. In a beta posted yesterday, Apple greatly expanded the number of supported emoji, including multiple new hand gestures. Of course, there’s one gesture that all have been waiting for, and it looks like we’ll be getting it at long last.


The 8 Hipster Districts of Orlando to Explore Like a Local

Orlando is known around the world as a theme park playground for children and adults alike. Yet visitors often miss out on the relatively undiscovered sections of Orlando, cherished by locals as up-and-coming cultural havens. In our humble opinion, these neighborhoods—your friends may not have heard of them yet—are a destination vacation in and of themselves.


Chess Player Caught ‘Using Morse Code To Cheat’

Mr Ricciardi did not get up at all during hours of playing and kept his thumb tucked in his armpit. The 37-year-old player was also “batting his eyelids in the most unnatural way”, (referee Jean) Coqueraut said. “Then I understood it. He was deciphering signals in Morse code.”