Library Of Vinyl Experience

Lecco's Lemma at Beat Research

2008-10-02T14:04:00.001-07:00

As many of you know, I've been workin' on an article about the history of Boston's early rap scene for better than a year now. Its finally off to the press and I'll certainly post it as soon as it hits the streets (if not sooner). A big part of the project was locating (and visiting!) the legendary Lecco's Lemma tapes.

Back in the fall of 1985, DJ/painter and local music legend Magnus started a rap and electronic music show on Saturday afternoons at WMBR in Cambridge, MA. In addition to being one of the earliest rap shows in the country (which puts him in the company of folks like Mr. Magic and Red Alert), it was the first in the Bean to feature local artists regularly. As a result, it was the hub of the Hub's earliest rap scene. Shows like Beat Street were soon to follow, but Magnus was a critical pioneer and superfan who helped to launch the careers of artists like Gangstarr, The Almighty RSO, Edo G, Big Chuck, etc. To this day, he refers to the regular attendees as "the kids" and he loved them like an older brother. Based on the interviews I did, the love and respect still flows back to Magnus from everyone who remembers the show.

According to folks like Rusty Pendleton (whose legendary Funky Fresh Records is in danger of closing - so go by a cd y'all!!!), the Lecco's Lemma show was THE SPOT to be back in the day. He should know. After all, he was rocking the decks with his TOES back at the Talent Nights while the New Kids took notes in the background!

Still don't believe a PhDJ/professor of management? (I don't blame you really). Check out D. Scribe's words on the matter from back in 2005. Or how 'bout a post from my very own early bloggy days with critical history from Type 4 and Magnus himself chiming in. For that matter, head on over to the Lecco's Lemma page Matt put up with streamin audio and all!

The amazing thing about Magnus is that he saves everything (everything good that is). Over the years, whispered words of a lost Lecco's Lemma tape archive were passed around among Boston hip hop junkies but no one had ever seen them or knew whether they existed for sure...until now.

Last year I was honored to visit my old friend Magnus in his lab in rural Maine and see the Lecco's Lemma tapes. (More on the visit soon as its a story in itself). Sitting above his equally legendary collection of reggae 45's, the three wooden wine boxes contained a litteral treasure trove of early Boston rap tapes! The first one I opened knocked me off my chair.

That hand written tape on the top says "This one's called she's a mutt by Edo Rock of the FTI crew". OMG! There was Guru's "For Magnus" tape when he was just back from college and appearing as MC Kiethy E. Right up front was Malden's Top Choice, there was TDS Mob's whole TAPE (!?!) on Race Records, a hand made demo tape of Boston Goes Def...and on...and on...until the break of dawn. I spent a sleepless night surrounded by Magnus's psychedelic bio-mechanical paintings taping everything I could in 12 hours. (If you look below, you might notice that my portable protools rig is connected to...what's that? No, no, not the cool ass reel to reel. Try the 1/8" jack of the ca. 1989 "all in one" stereo Magnus pulled out for the purpose! More on that later)

I'll be sharing some of the gems in all their hiss and glory this Monday night at Beat Research at the Enormous Room in Cambridge, MA.(567 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA)

The Lecco's Lemma listening party goes from 9:30-10:00 at which point, Flack, Wayne and I will trade sets. You can be sure mine's gonna have plenty of classic Beantown tracks in it (along with a healthy dose of the random dancefloor killers I have collected over the years).

I Love Pop Music

2008-09-09T10:52:00.000-07:00

Thanks to a little birdie, I recently got a copy of the famed Whitburn data. Like others, I could not resist posting the results of some explorations. The beautiful Wordle visualization below shows the word frequency of all the words in pop song titles from 1890-2008. Interactive visualizations c/o the ever-amazing ManyEyes.

Iraqi Metal and MUM Movie

2008-08-29T18:52:00.000-07:00

As promised, MUM ripped a hole in the funkiverse last Saturday night. My favorite moment? A toss up between Todd showing up in a space suit with a can of Tang (?) and the bikers showing up late night with a chopper rigged up with a disco ball on a rotating 10" high pole.

There is a short video here.

Keeping in the video domain, there is a Scion-sponsored screening of the new documentary Heavy Metal in Baghdad this Tues Sep 2 from 9pm-12am at the Coolidge Corner Cinema in Brookline. A documentary on an Iraqi heavy metal band complete with a DJ (the ever ill Jayceeoh), drinks and free admission with just an RSVP to Scion. Can you beat it?

Project MUM Aug 23, 2008

2008-08-18T11:11:00.001-07:00

Mum_lo_rez, originally uploaded by libraryofvinyl.

Beantown Boogie

2008-08-13T13:05:00.001-07:00

With the 1980's in full comeback mode people seem to be feelin' the vocoder, synth bass and double claps again. What they may not remember is that back in the early 1980's Boston was a hotbed of synth-driven funk with groups like the Jonzun Crew, Dwayne Omarr and Starr's Computer Band pumping out heavy electro grooves. (That's not even mentioning Planet Patrol and Boston native Arthur Baker's collaboration with Afrika Bambaataa on the seminal b-boy anthem Planet Rock). In honor of all the Beantown funk originators, I give you the Beantown Boogie Mix - a collection of (mostly) 1980's Boston electrofunk, boogie and breaks that is sure to get the party movin'. All the labels are up at my flickr site if you want to see what's in there. Of course, if you want to do an 1980's mix, you are gonna get some cheeze in there. All I can tell you is that this is a funkalicious dish of historical Boston synth-funk that's loaded with plenty of the vocoder, synth bass and hand claps that made the 80's so special. The mix ends with a little something special from my man Mc Spice from WAY back in the day! Yes TOUCH fans, Spice was rockin the mic back in the Bean in 1986. Stay tuned for more Boston rap history...but for now, Let's Boogie!

I'll be dropping some of these tracks at the upcoming Project MUM party in Somerville, MA on August 23 along with a bunch of dirty disco, electroclash and whatever other space age funk I dig out of the crates. Get your shiny track suit out of the closet and come pop and lock your way back to the future with myself, DJ Flack, Yamin and Axel Foley. That's just outside Union Square under the McGrath O'Brien bridge in Somerville, MA.

Comments on

2008-07-24T10:36:00.000-07:00

I had turned them off while the blog mouldered for 2 years. I just turned them back on in case anyone out there on the interwebs has info on these strange Boston 78s - or anything else they want to squawk about. Bring it viagra bots. I got word completion on!

Quincy 78 Haul

2008-07-20T14:33:00.000-07:00

Last week I brought Chalfen some 78s that washed up in a Quincy yard sale (thanks for the tip Franc). His first e-mail after the fact concluded "thanx for the wild-ass stash of wax obscuranta; i hope you realize you've revolutionized the field of Boston proto-jass". Wha?
His latest continues...
"dr. so far no mention of The Ormsby Disc or Boston Talking Machine Exchange,
but both songs are dated 1904 and by known ragtime era composers:
Make A Fuss Over Me
Music: Theodore f. Morse
Words: Edw. Madden
Madden was later busted for a 'song-poem' scam where submitted 'lyrics' were added to music, for a price - there's a whole website dedicated to the form
"What's the Matter With the Mail?"
Music: Percy Wenrich
Words: Fred J. Hamill (also the publisher)
Wenrich was known as 'the Ragtime Kid' and wrote Put On Your Old Grey Bonnet and other hits. so far no boston connection to either tune or composer."

Mysterious. Boston. Ragtime??

He's referring to this rather mysterious pair of 78's that turned up at a garage sale in Quincy. The elderly gentleman having it was some kind of collector finally ridding himself of the detritus of his career. Of course, I asked if he had any records. After producing a smattering of random rock 45"s, I asked if he had any older records. "You mean 78's? Someone took a hundred yesterday." Not expecting to find anything left, I had to give one look and found an apparently untouched stash in the garage, well out of reach. These (apparently) rare discs contain Ragtime from Boston in the (last) oughts. More on this one as it emerges. For now, check the audio (click the records above) and the pics from the night we first heard them.

Europe's Society Orchestra Animation!

2006-04-13T05:59:00.000-07:00

Yup. You read it right. Another incredible find from Rob Chalfen (local archivist and itinerant Jazz historian). This one is so amazing, I could not sleep on it.

James Resse Europe was one of the first African American musicians on record and was a critical link in the transition from Ragtime to Jazz in the early part of the last century. A less well known fact is how two ragtime dancers, Irene and Vernon Castle, contributed to the development of Jazz by broadly exposing Europe's music to white society audiences.

Reading Eileen Southern's foundational The Music of Black Americans, it becomes clear that African American bands were the performers of choice for dance parties starting at the very beginning of the republic. Nothing much had changed by the time the Castles got back from Europe where they had been performing their diluted, African American derived Ragtime dances to society audiences in 1911-12. Upon returning to the states and hearing James Reese Europe's unique brand of stompin' and swerving ragtime (aka proto Jazz) in 1913, they decided to team up. This combination of high society dancers performing "cleaned up" African American derived dances to the stomp and swerve of Europe's Society Orcestra was to become an irresistable combination. It led to national tours and the first recording of an African American Orchestra by a major record label among other important firsts.

It also led to a film reel made in 1914 called Social and Theatrical Dancing and the publication of a dance instruction book called Modern Dancing later that year. As ever, Europe's Society Orchestra provided the music. Just a little while ago, Chalfen found the book. In it are plates of the Castles doing some of their famous dances, including the Castle Walk. In the background is Europe's Society Orchestra.

Ever the Ragtime Quasi-Experimentalists, we realized that if we animated these plates, we could create a short film of Europe's Society Orchestra performing in 1914. And that's just what we did friends! While its kind of badly registered, the animation below gives you some feel for the vibe in the room. Amazingly, you can even see the fiddle player bowing. If you listen to this Europe's Society Orchestra Castle Twofer.mp3 which contains two songs Europe wrote for the Castles around that time ("Castle House Rag - The Castle's in Europe" and "Castle Walk"), you get an even better sense.

I hope to do more with these plates soon (like scan them properly rather than photograph them with my little digital camera). But for now, enjoy this rare look at one of the most important musical/dance combos in history.

Record stores are so 20th century

2006-04-10T06:58:00.000-07:00

Being a data junkie, I decided to do a little more research on what appears to be a national trend in record store closings. No big surprise, but the news is not good.

Here's a chart I made from some data I dug up in Plunkett's Entertainment and Media Industry Almanac (Jan 17, 2002).

The chart looks at the changes in where people purchased music over the last decade of the 20th century. Notice that the trend line for record stores is dramatically down. I find it particularly interesting that the trend began well before the internet crept in in the late 1990's. Looking at the growth of the "other stores" category, it makes me think that there are actually two intersecting trends going on. One is the general trend toward buying everything at big megastores and the other is the gradual decline of record sales generally. While much more data is required to draw any conclusions about causality, the basic trend looks pretty undeniable to me.

Luckily, none of this will affect the hardcore diggers who seem to find piles where none should exist.

Mashistory Vol. 2.: The Sour Cream Control Committee

2006-04-07T09:32:00.000-07:00

Sorry I have been so sour of late. Let me lighten the mood with a little thing I have been thinkin about for a while. Of course, it has a Mojo connection too. So let me start there.

Bhind the counter on the wall, Mojo used to have a great collection of Whipped Cream and Other Delights knockoff records. The original Herb Albert album has become iconic among record people, partly because of its omnipresence and partly because, well, it has the super sexy picture of Dolores Erikson covered in whipped cream on the front. This is the record that is virtually guaranteed to appear in every pile of records that you ever encounter. From the sheer frequency of its appearance, it seems that everyone in the 1960's must have had a copy (if not two). According to this chronology, not everyone bought it, but a whole lot did. In 1966, "Herb Alpert sold 13.7 million albums in a 12-month period, an unprecedented achievement."

Perhaps as a result of its iconic status, but certainly reiforcing it, there have been innumerable remixes, knock offs and other homages to this record over the years. Here are delicious tags for some of the ones I found.

Mojo had all of them it seemed. All but this one. I had always wanted to give it to them, but frankly, I just couldn't part with it. Can you blame me? Maybe you will after you hear the first track on this SourCreamControlCommitteeTwofer.mp3. It's the signature, Alpert tune "A Taste of Honey", but tortured and Klezmerized in a way that seems almost too perfectly terrible to be accidental. Come on, listen to that modulation again, Peter.

I follow the Sour Cream with another of my favorite Alpert mashups. This one by the Evolution Control Committee was originally released on the 1994 Gunderphonics casette and then came out on a 1996 7" as "The Whipped Cream Mixes". Widely regarded as one of the first A+B mashups, this bastard pop classic set the standard for genre the blending hillarity of the mashup craze to come. According to info available at ECC site, Rebel Wihtout A Pause mashes Public Enemy, "The Rhythm, The Rebel", Prophets Of Rage EP with Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, "Bittersweet Samba", Whipped Cream and Other Delights. My favorite thing about this track is how the juxtapositon recontextualizes the "break" in Bittersweet Samba with Flav's introduction somehow making its squareness seem super hip.

I have always wondered how they actually constructed the track. I sat with a guitar and plunked along to see if the pitch changes, and it doesn't. That means it was not done live on two decks. They must have used some kind of editing system. Was it digital? I'd love any more info anyone finds on the method behind this madness.

Either way. I think these two tracks belong together somehow. Enjoy.

Long live the death of vinyl

2006-04-05T15:30:00.000-07:00

As it turned out, I was a week early. Mojo survived well into the week of March 20, 2006. After lumbering along like a wounded analog Kong valiantly battling the digital biplanes, Mojo finally closed its doors on Friday, March 24, 2006. I had planned to document the moment of its official demise. But as one day bled into the next, it became clear that there was not going to be "a moment". There were a whole series of them. Some were more hillarious than poignant, but they were all tinged with sadness and the kind of frenzy you get when there are too many records to take but the prices are too great to pass up. Here's my haul from Day 1. Those crates are all dancehall 45's.

I was there more often than not that last week. Luckily, I took to bringing my camera and wound up getting some great footage, along with all the wax. I also met some local dudes who had already documented two closings and are working on a movie. I'd love to see that footage, so get in touch if you read this.

Amazingly, there were still gems turning up late into that week. Several boxes of 45s from some 1980's wedding DJ appeared. As I flipped through, I noticed Blondie's "Rapture" because of the picture sleve. What do you think came next? Yup. Queen, "Another one bites the dust". Having just spent a week putting together a lecture/demo on The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steels, I knew I had to look at every 45 in there. (Not to mention the double coincidence of finding "Another one bites the dust" at the Mojo sale). Even though I have both tracks, it seemed wrong to separate these old friends after so many years together. I took them both. Now they can hang together in my 45 box for another few decades.

I guess the absence of heavy diggin surprised me more than anything else. I mean, I was pulling James Brown records on King out of that pile on Tues and Wed. And new stuff seemd to titrate out all week as the final solution settled. With all that, it felt like there was less interest overall than you might expect. Even on the last day, there were Sly and Robbie picture discs on the wall. (Where did those wind up Mike?)

I was able to hang out long enough to get priceless footage of the last days of Mojo. There was the race between Billy and the Goodwill dudes cleaning out the dollar bins. There was the ubiquitous (and mysterious) Folk Man. There was the soundtrack to "How to succeed in business without really trying" in the window, right under the "going out of business" signs. There were the demolition dudes cutting up the bins themselves. I got it all on my mini DV. Witness.

http://static.flickr.com/56/124247362_7926b1625b.jpg?v=0" border="0" />
I even traced the records to their semi-final resting places in Goodwill stores across greater Boston. I felt like some kind of ecologist, mapping the vinyl ecosystem. As in most novel field studies, some amazing things emerged. First, it seems clear that the market for vinyl is more like an ecosystem than a real market. More on that soon. Second, there are paradoxical flows of information and material through this system.

While it made me a little sad to see the records at Goodwill, by the time I got to the one in Davis Sq. only a few days later, 5 bins (like the ones above) had disappeared. Amazing, that with DJ culture goin strong and enough people willing to buy THREE BINS of records in as many days, its hard to make a go of it as a storefront. Yet with pressures from E-bay and other online outlets, it is inevitable. Everyone is feeling the pressure to go online. But as we do, local ecologies suffer in strange ways.

I get the sense from my travels that used record stores are closing everywhere. Either that, or becoming Amoebas. I'd be curious how the trend looks to others, but to me, it seems that the days of diggin in the new arrivals bins are limited. At least around here. Keep the faith Loony Tunes, Mystery Train, Nuggets, Cheapo and all you other wax preservationists out there.

Most of all, thanks to David, Mike and all the Mojo patrons who put up with me that last week. I am gonna miss the Mojo. Not to mention the records.

The last days of Mojo Music

2006-03-19T04:48:00.000-08:00

Today, another name is added to the growing list of used record stores that have closed in Boston over the last few years. Remember these?

Disc Diggers, Mars Records, Phase 4 Records, Record Hog, Smash City Records, Mystery Train. Not to mention Biscuit Head, Calabash, and all the other small independent stores that come and go (but seem to go more than come).

Yup. Mojo music is closing today. While it is just one more in a long series of used record store closings in the area, this one hits close to home for me (figuratively and literally). Mojo has been a favorite stop on my route since it opened in the (mid?) 1990's. From their extensive dollar and inexpensive new arrival bins to their listening station and crates of 1980's reggae singles, this has long been a local mecca for me. Reorganizing my records recently, it seemed that every 5th one had a Mojo label on it. This is where I got my Winston's "Amen" single and the Chakacha's classic "Jungle Fever". I can't even count the blissful Sundays spent diggin through the dollar bins downstairs.

Needless to say, I have spent a lot of time in there lately. Just recently, I had arrived early enough that no one noticed me slip down into the dusty basement. Some two hours later, I staggered up the stairs, bleary eyed and clutching some strange disco and kids records. Taking one look at me (and not realizing I had come in earlier), David hollered from behind the counter: "Just waking up there, Pace?". We had a good laugh, but I might as well have slept over these last few weeks. When their 50% off sale hit, I probably looked through half the records in there. The other half? I saw those when they came in ;-)

Those younger folks among you might be laughing at this point. "Dude, you can get all those records on line now. Helooooo." Yeah, I know you can get almost any record you want on E-bay and Gemm (if not on a brand new compilation at Dusty Groove). Guess what? It’s not the same. Sorry. As more and more of our media consumption becomes computer mediated and collaboratively filtered, we loose something unique and irreplaceable (even as we gain variety along with a repetitive stress injury).

Since the beginning of the record industry, small local stores have served as watering holes for local musicians, collectors, audiophiles, vinly junkies and other music obsessives (and just plain wierdos). In their capacity to attract people seeking information (customers) and people seeking to dispense it (often too much of it, for too long, when you didn't even ask for it) used record stores are places where the very threads that make up the fabric of musical culture are woven.

Just a few weeks ago, I was in Mojo’s and Peter Wolfe wandered in. As he laughed with David about some inside joke only two local music mavens would understand, I realized how big a hole Mojo is going to leave in the social and cultural fabric of Cambridge.

At least the Plough is back. I'll be there later, trying to drown out the echo of the sound of the lock closing on the Mojo door this one last time. (If I am lucky, maybe they'll lock me in there!)

We'll miss you Mojo.

Vinyl Junkies Hall of Fame Vol 1: 石岡市の旧家　（指南オーディオ道場）　青柳邸の門構え

2006-03-19T02:43:00.000-08:00

This is the first of reoccurring set of entries giving respect to the most inspired and committed vinyl junkies and record obsessives among us. And there are lots to choose from. Believe me. But why try the rest, when you can start with the best?

Allow me to set the scene:

The e-mail subject line caught my eye right away. "The most astoundingly beautiful audio pictures..." Audio pictures?!?!? Man, what's next? Movies with little scratch and sniff cards? (Of course, there is even a copyright battle going on about odorama, it turns out.) Being a big fan of synesthesia myself, I opened it with glee.

"...I've ever seen."

As I read on, it dawned on me.

"Take a few minutes out of your busy day to drool -- especially if, like myself, you're into the, ah, older stuff."

Knowing Clark, I quickly realized that this was going to be some high grade product. Audio product that is. As in gear. Well, see for yourself.

http://shu-ks.com/zakki/0aoyagitei.html

Thanks CJ! (and most of all...Mr. Aoyagi!!)

Fickr webs

2006-02-23T10:38:00.000-08:00

Riddimmethod-flickr graph c/o the nice people at flickr graph

From recent developments over at the Forest and the Trees blog, it feels as if the semantic web is just around the corner.

Doug has written an amazing new program called Findr, that searches through Flickr tags to find sets of photos representing the intersection of multiple tags. Doug describes it as Folksonomy + Interesection = Taxonomy. While he immediately downplays it, I think he is right on. His view is congruent with research in cognitive anthropology, and in particular, cognitive views of cultural meaning. In “A cognitive theory of cultural meaning” Strauss and Quinn (1997) argue that a cognitive/connectionist theory of meaning resolves long standing debates in cultural theory about the relationship between individual meaning making and culture (e.g., the age old debate between agency and structure). Strauss and Quinn (1997:82) define cultural meaning as follows:

"The meaning of an object or event for a person at a given time is the output of something like a connectionist network. The 'cultural meaning' of an object or event is the typical output of the networks of people who have similar histories"

While they have a specific idea in mind when they talk about a connectionist network, flickr/findr is “something like it” indeed. What makes Doug’s AP so fun is that it lets you play with groups of cultural categories (e.g., the collective output of individual mental models). Let me be more specific. When people tag things (in this case, photos), they are marking associations between the items and cognitive-cultural schemata. While these schemata are represented in individual minds, they are influenced by the experiences the individual has had in particular cultures/settings up to that point (as well as more idiosyncratic things like his/her mood, level of intoxication, activation level at the time, etc.). When you sort by tags, you are sorting by the collective output of a “kind of connectionist network”. If so, you should be able to learn something about the culture by playing with the associations among items.

I was pleasantly surprised when I started experimenting. Doing a general search like “people”, you can narrow down to smaller subsets by adding tags. For example, “people+clown+blackandwhite” gives predictable results. While this is cool (and better than flickr’s advanced search options due to the great visual interface, what is more interesting (and sometimes surprising) is the list of associated tags that appears below your current search. This list gives a flavor for the associated items in the cognitive schema most closely associated with the current search term/s.

However, it also works in reverse. You can learn something about the meaning of search terms by looking at the images associated with them. I tried putting in some descriptive, and slightly unusual words. “Dribble” for example, pulls up lots of pictures of babies, which tells you something about how that word gets associated with items at this time in the “culture” of flickr taggers. Because of Doug’s amazing graphical interface, it is easy to see patterns as they emerge. E.g., it’s easy to see the outlines of schemata emerge, and when they do, boy is it fun. It’s that process of intuitive, schema based exploration (paired with a nice graphical interface) that makes cognitive network data so sticky (e.g., fun). Don't believe me? Try flickr graph.

Mashistory Vol 1: Stairway to Gilligan

2005-11-21T07:06:00.000-08:00

"Gilligan's Island (Stairway)" Mp3

I have been planning a series of shorter posts on the history of the Mashup (the musical craze that has been raging in the DJ world for several years now). If you want to check it out "live" head down to the now infamous Mash Ave party with residents DJ BC and Lenow. As someone who has been drifting back and forth between DJ and rock band worlds for some time now, I find it amusing that this musical form has been heralded as the new new thing. In fact, people have been at this for quite some time. What really changed is that digital technology has finally made it possible for everyone to mix and mash. (Note that this article makes the claim that "Mashups first appeared on the pop-culture radar screen earlier this year with the release of The Grey Album"). Others have suggested connections between mashups and the cut up record, plunderphonics, sample based music and even the audio collage work of John Cage. But really, these things are all very different.

Wayne does a super job juggling the nuances of mashup politics in his summer '05 post Mashpolitik. I am going to take a slightly different approach by occasionally featuring tracks and ideas related to the history of the mashup. My first selection was inspired by a recent e-mail from Franc Graham. Her reference to Little Roger and the Goosebumps' 1978 song "Gilligan's Island (Stairway)" reminded me that this was my first encounter with a "mashup".

I won't try to recreate the history of this song (which was penned by Little Roger's late guitarist John Shield). Suffice it to say that the track features the music of Stairway to Heaven with the lyrics and melody of the Gilligan Island theme on top. Not only is it hillarious (methinks), the specific format (instrumentals of one song with vocals from another) make it a good candidate for an early Mashup. This form distinguishes it from related musical parody work of folks like Wierd Al who sing goofy lyrics over familiar tunes. Not only that, but Little Roger and the GB's were even sued by Led Zep and forced to stop selling the single. This outlaw status strengthens its connection to more recent illegal art forms like the mashup. Luckily, it was finally re-released on a 2000 compilation called Laguna Tunes, which features the work of Kenny Laguna, who produced the band.

You have to give respect to Little Roger and the Goosebumps for doing it all on guitars and stuff. 'Member those?

Finally, here is a nice little blurb about the band I found at a site on the Sacramento music scene.

"Little Roger & The Goosebumps - Their one single didn't quite climb the charts nationally in 1978 because it was pre-empted by a lawsuit while the song was steadily gaining airplay around the country. The song was called "Stairway To Gilligan's Island," (ed note: the actual title appears to have been "Gilligan's Island - Stairway" judging from the 45 below) which was a novelty featuring the lyrics of the Gilligan's Island Theme set to the music of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven." It was Led Zeppelin's publishing company who kept the song from growing into a hit due to Little Roger's failure to seek permission prior to releasing the record. The plaintiffs ordered the record to be taken off the market and all copies destroyed. The band was formed in the mid-seventies and became well-known in the Davis scene before spreading to Sacramento and ultimately gaining more popularity in the Bay Area. It was fronted by Roger Clark, who teamed up with San Francisco band Earthquake to record the instrumentation in London at Pete Townshend's studio. Other members included the late guitarist John Shield, who came up with the idea of mixing the two songs together, and violinist Dick Bright, who became an accomplished orchestra leader in the Bay Area and backed artists like Santana and Bonnie Raitt. After the smoke had cleared, the recording later appeared on a Blackheart/Mercury Records compilation called Laguna Tunes, compiled by producer Kenny Laguna."

And a picture of the orignal 45 (reposted here from the nice folks at www.gilligansisle.com).

And the funkiest year ever was...

2005-11-17T07:43:00.000-08:00

Warning. This post has a terribly high geek quotient. If plotting the frequencies of data about hip hop offends you in any way, please do not read on. OK. I warned you. Now I will tell you what the funkiest year ever was. (If you want to guess first, it might be more fun. Post your guess at the Riddim Method)

I recently returned to the data I culled from the The Sample FAQ to answer a question I have long pondered: "What was the funkiest year ever?" Because the Sample FAQ lists the year of the original songs that have been sampled by hip hop producers, we can construct a simple frequency count of the number of samples that used material from a given year. All I did was add up the number of times that people sampled songs in each year and plotted the frequencies in Excel so that the categories are years and the values for each category are the number of times songs from that year were sampled. If none of this makes any sense to you, just think of this as "freq.-ing the funk".

The resulting distribution will not surprise people familiar with hip hop, sampling or the explosion of amazingly funky music in the early 1970's. As you can see, the most heavily sampled period (represented by the peak in the distribution) occurred between 1970 and 1975. But the actual peak occurs with 872 different songs that sampled material released in 1973. So that's it. According to this source at least, 1973 was THE FUNKIEST YEAR EVER! (If you accept a few conditions and caveats - see below).

As I looked at this distribution, I noticed a few things. While the historgram has the shape of a normal distribution, it is probably not when viewed properly (See comment below). While normal distributions are characteristic of random occurrences, hip hop producers' choices of samples are anything but. It is not as if people randomly selected old songs to sample. Just the opposite; they sampled a very small subset of the very funkiest old songs (particularly those with open drum breaks). As a result, this distribution is perhaps better thought of as a series of votes. In this election of sorts, the underlying dimension being voted on is something abstract like "songs that have funky breaks" or "funky ass songs".

Thinking of the distribution this way makes sense to me. Its like each time someone wants to sample something, they go wading into the records looking for a break, stab, slice or some other crazy sound to use in their own music. Each time they sample something, that thing gets a vote. Over time, some things tend to get more votes than others.

Note that if we think of it this way, it seems likely that the distribution has a long tail. James Brown gets the lion's share of votes (along with a few other bands like Parliament), but most get only one or two. (Phew, glad to see that long tail back).

But that is not quite right either, because what determines what people are looking for to begin with? Other people. If it were just funky breaks that people were looking for, the curve above would be a line going straight up to the right. There are plenty of breaks in hip hop. If you are looking for the funkiest stuff, why not just sample the samples, and so on? That would give you an increasing pool of stuff to sample and thus the line going up and right. Well, there are rules against that you see. Cultural rules. This might be of interest to my ethno pals who are sometimes asked to defend methods that start by asking people what rules they use.

Methodological musings aside, as I looked more closely at the distribution, I noticed something really strange: The peak in 1986. "Why," I asked, "were there so many samples of songs released in 1986 when clearly the 'best' sample source material was released in the early 1970's?" And then it dawned on me, "The funky drummer" break.

Although the most heavily sampled drum break of all time was actually released in 1970 on a King 45 (6290), it was re-issued (along with a lot of other classic JB material on the now infamous In the Jungle Groove LP. Guess when. Yup. 1986.
Of course, it was a heavily sampled and played record.
Now this is pretty interesting on its own (the fact that a single re-release can make such an impact on a cultural practice). I also wondered if it might reflect some error in the data. Since the sample FAQ includes tracks made by some of the biggest collectors and beat junkies in the world, I figured a bunch of them would have sampled the original 45 and went to check that this was reflected in the data. When I looked back, I realized the sample FAQ listed every instance of the Funky Drummer (and a few other tracks from the comp) as 1986. Acording to this, not one person sampled the original 45. It seems unlikely that in a list that includes all best producers in the history of hip hop not one would have sampled the original. Being a good riddim methodist (I thought B.C. was a Jesuit school), I decided to correct the data.

Making the conservative guess that half these producers would have used the original, I went back and adjusted the frequencies by allocating half of each track that was on the 1986 "In the Jungle Groove" comp to its original year. That gives us a very slightly more normal distribution.

In addition to being a hell of a lot of fun, I hope this little post points out the value of having ethnographic knowledge about your data. If all we know is the distribution of something in a population, we can do lots of cool things (like finding out what else it is correlated with). Without some ethnographic knowledge too, its harder to make claims about why.

This also points out that the data at the sample FAQ contains some potential gaps and omissions (raising concerns about others who may want to use it for academic research). On that point, let me offer another caveat. This distribution was based on the data on Funk and Soul at the Sample FAQ and might look somewhat different if it included the Jazz and Rock data. Feel free to use this data and my graphs freely in your work. If you do, just cite me. Something like this would be nice.

Foster, P. (2005) Hip hop samples by source year. Data published at http://www.libraryofvinyl.blogspot.com.

Or cite the Sample Faq. They are the ones to thank anyway.

Here's the data in Excel format

Last week a DJ saved my dissertation

2005-11-14T06:14:00.000-08:00

Last week on an early morning walk through Central Sq., who should I run into but MAGNUS! (As some of you may remember from earlier posts, Magnus is the former WZBC/WMBR DJ and Boston musical Svengali who has served as an inspiration for me and so many others over the years.) Now on any morning, running into Magnus would be a rare treat (given that he currently resides in ME and rarely appears in the Bean). But on this morning, our meeting seemed to overflow with signs and portents. I had gotten up early filled with the kind of self doubt that only a week of academic job searching and dissertation wordsmithing can create. Through a series of short holdups (like lack of cash in my wallet), I was on my way back from the bank to pick up my coffee (which sat cooling on the counter at the 1369 coffee shop). As I considered my need for a complete attitude adjustment, I practically walked into Magnus.

As it happens, he had run into a similar set of small holdups and was on his way to South Station to catch a bus back to ME. As I pondered the odds of our meeting and when chance occurrences begin to seem like fate, he explained that he had had come to town to do a yearly DJ battle for the WMBR fund drive. As we stood chatting, my eyes kept drifting to the vaguely square canvas backpacks that hung heavily off his shoulders. "What you got in there, records?" I asked (only half believing that he would drag two huge sacks of records on a 5 hour bus ride from ME to play a college radio show from 2-6 AM). His elfin eyes lit up and his face broke out in a wicked smile. "Dude, dude, dude" he kept saying as he dropped his burden on a bench. "You are not gonna believe this."

Of course, it was some of the most incredible music I had never heard. As it turns out he had assembled a pile of his most precious "skinhead ska" records for the show. It was not long before we sat at my house a few blocks away listening to one of his most precious records. Thankfully, I was able to get the pro tools rig running and ripped it as we listened. I have been listening to it obsessively since then.

Jerry Jones at the Kingston Hotel is a rare 1971 Studio One release that documents the permeable boundary between American and Jamaican music in the late 1960's. The PK / Blood And Fire compilation Darker Than Blue: Soul from Jamdown (1973-1980) picks up the story slightly later, focusing on Jamaican versions of American funk songs and taking us up to the beginning of hip hop with the inclusion of Welton Irie's Hotter Reggae Music.

Jerry Jones at the Kingston Hotel reflects a slightly older connection between late 1960's Soul music and Jamaican Ska. However, the inclusion of such tracks like the classic Les McCann penned "Compared to What?" suggests the strength of the musical tributaries linking hip hop, jazz funk, soul and Jamaican music of all kinds.

Frustratingly, there is relatively little information out there about this gem of a record. While it has apparently never been re-released, some of the tracks have appeared on compilations like Studio One Soul (Soul Jazz) and Feel Like Jumping: The Best of Studio One Women (Rounder).

There is also some confusing information out there as well. For example, roots-archives.com says that Jerry Jones at the Kingston Hotel was the alternate title of "Compared to what?" (pictured above) which they list as Studio 1 LP #SOLP 9019. They list the catalog number for Jerry Jones at the Kingston Hotel (the record I saw) as Bamboo LP #BDLPS213 1971. But this information does not match the title and catalog number of the record Magnus showed me which was Jerry Jones at the Kingston Hotel, Studio 1 LP #SOLP 9019 and had a picture of Jerry at the said hotel (as described below).

The best information I was able to find about the record appears in the liner notes of Feel Like Jumping (reposted here c/o niceup.com).

Jerry Jones was an American singer who had come to Jamaica to perform at a show produced by Alty East at the Regal Theater. Mr. Dodd was one of the audience members. Jerry originally hailed from Birmingham, Alabama and moved to Canton, Ohio where she performed at amateur talent shows. She started performing throughout Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York State and as far north as Toronto and Montreal, appearing with top Motown and soul stars. In the mid sixties she moved to Miami where one of her bookings brought her to Jamaica. After Mr. Dodd saw her at the Regal, he invited her to record for Studio One, releasing a number of singles and the Jerry Jones at the Hotel Kingston album. The Hotel Kingston was located on Half Way Tree Road across from the Jamaica Telephone Company and now houses some government offices. Mr. Dodd and Alty East produced a series of shows for Jerry that were held at the hotel and which led to the title of the album, but the songs were all recorded at the studio on Brentford Road. "Compared to What" (1970) was a cover of the Les McCann and Eddie Harris collaboration that was a hit off the 1969 Swiss Movement album done for Atlantic. Jerry Jones had other Studio One releases like "Still Waters" (1970) and "Honey Come Back" (1971) that were also quite popular when released.

Other than this plurb, there is relatively little information out there on this record or on Jerry Jones herself. She appears to have been a member of the Philly soul group Brenda and the Tabulations but other than that, it is hard to find any other information about Jerry Jones on the web. Any info about her and or this record would be greatly appreciated.

I post this ~~MP3 of Jerry Jones Side A~~ hoping that it may encourage a rerelease of the record and generate more recognition for Jerry Jones.

Jerry Jones at the Kingston Hotel:
~~Side A~~ Track List
*Common People
*There's A Chance For Me
*Honey Come Back
*Compared To What
*Oh Me Oh My
*Let It Be

In addition to the amazing "Compared to What?", check out the soulful skank of the next track "Oh Me Oh My" (the first one Magnus played for me). I never did pick up that coffee, but I am well on the way toward having a full first draft of the dissertation, so I guess that attitude adjustment worked after all.

Here's the Side B Track list
*Freedom Train
*All In The Game
*Trying Times
*Hold On
*I Found That Someone
*If I Only Had Time

Thanks again Magnus.

Love is...

2005-11-12T06:14:00.000-08:00

...mix (36 meg mp3!!!)

After a long hiatus, I am finally back on line with a revised template (thanks Becca) a flickr feed (so cool), some new online collaboration over at the Riddim Method and a new/old mix from the vault.

I had to take some time off to do a few things (like getting engaged to this gal) and getting some work done on my back (which finally caved in after years of lugging junk around)! Sorry for the long silence.

More recently, I have been planning the wedding and doing a lot of thinking about the meaning of LOVE. One of my best ruminations on the topic has to be a mix I did for Carey's birthday just after we met. It documents the circumstances of our meeting and courtship. Its a mix about the interconnected web of dance, rhythm and LOVE that joined us. Once called the Blue Moon Tango (the "title" of an early date we had), I recently changed the name to "Love is.." when I realized that I had been trying to answer the question posed by the strange male voice in the Deee-Lite track, "What is love?" (B side from the "Groove is in the Heart" single pictured above).

The mix begins with a selection from an amazing Folkways Release called The Rhythms of the World narrated by Langston Hughes. (Some of this later appeared on a Smithsonian CD compilation called "The Voice of Langston Hughes"). Throughout the mix, I include lots of other strange spoken word (and sung) elements that ruminate on the endless connections between music, rhythm, dance and imagination. It took a fair bit of pre-production work to get all the elements together (figuring out keys and tempos and spoken word pieces) but then I basically just did it live in a couple of chunks. (As usual, I have included all the wacky blends and cuts that naturally occur when you are winging it.)

The mix itself is pretty ecclectic (including Thomas Dolby, Deee Lite, Mr. Scruff, Cheech and Chong, among others). If there is interest, I could try to recreate the track list (which somehow never got recorded). When I was working on it (Aug '04) I was certainly thinking of the abstract side of the "experimental party" vibe made famous by my beat research colleagues and other members of the Toneburst diaspora.

I hope you like listening to it as much as I liked making it.

Tubular dude...

2005-08-19T09:56:00.000-07:00

...was the title of an e-mail from Rob that awaited me upon my return from a two week vacation. It turns out that Rob's impeccable digging skills, honed over years of record and book collecting, serve him just as well on the internet. Here is a link to an absolutely amazing collection of Edison cylinder recordings hosted by the University of California at Santa Barbara. Despite being transferred from Edison wax cylinders from the early part of last century (e.g., 1900-1920), these recordings sound amazingly clear (even in MP3 format). Perhaps most importantly, because they are so old, they are not covered by any copyright. You can download them, post them yourself, cut them up, paste them over your favorite beat, make a collage out of them, or just listen to them without fear of litigation. (Of course, since I am not a lawyer and probably could not offer legal advice here even if I was AND it is quite possible that the recording industry could push back the length of copyright protection even further - Caveat Emptor).

Since this archive contains the 1909 Cal Stewart track Uncle Josh in Society, which I cited in LOVE 1.4 as one possible source for the first use of the term "jazz" on record, I was actually able to confirm that its not in there. Unlike academic researchers, beat researchers are interested in null results (e.g., not finding a musical source you expect) as much as they are in positive ones. The value of these null results is that it helps us define boundaries, limits of theories, ends of musical tributaries, gaps in the transmission of memes. I guess I gotta just keep diggin.

pace

Love and respect due!

2005-08-01T11:16:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who participated in making the LOVE Hip Hop History JAM this Sat a success. If I thanked everyone individually, there would not be enough room on the Internet. I'll be doing some more extensive documentation here and feel blessed to have worked with (and met) so many incredible folks along the way!

We had students, teachers, elders, youngsters, breakdancers, writers, MCs, DJs, b-boys, b-girls, families and the whole community out having fun in the sun! Community style.

Respect to all the incredible talent that came through including members of the Floor Lords and Losst Unnown, Urban Arts, Biz and all the other writers, b-boys, b-girls, dj's and mcs that made the event so great.

Thanks again. I am off to get a little R&R in the woods and will be off the grid til later this month! Peace and stay tuned for fall events!

pace

Boston Rocks the Commons

2005-07-21T15:44:00.000-07:00

While my comrades have been mashing up Boston music, I have been diagramming the networks of ties among Boston Nightclubs. For anyone who missed it (e.g., almost everyone), I have been participating in/studying this market for quite some time. While it's increasingly common to see ethnographic approaches in organizational research, often this comes in the form of a few days of participant observation. A new crop of Chicago School urban ethnographers are demonstrating how more active involvement allows for deeper understanding.

This is particularly true if you want to get a deep understanding of the tacit rules, relationships and meanings that organize art worlds. For me and my colleagues, blurring the lines between insider/outsider, research/practitioner is critical for understanding cultural phenomena in a way that participants themselves will recognize. I think this is even MORE important when you are doing network analysis, because the "instant face validity" of the drawings can mislead you into thinking you really understand mechanisms. For that (at least in art worlds), you gotta get your hands dirty and stay up late. Since many of my music friends and colleagues asked for a less academic summary of some of my research, I thought I'd try to provide it.

Just recently I drew some network diagrams that demonstrate how the market for bands in Boston operates more like a creative commons than a traditional competitive market. What you see above is a diagram that shows all the nightclubs that booked the same bands in Boston over 18 months (+/- a few weeks). Clubs that booked one or more of the same bands are tied. (Ethics note: These diagrams were made from publicly available data so there are no confidentiality issues here). Using the "Clubs-by-night" Nightclub listings from the Boston Phoenix, I was able to generate a nice bird's-eye view of this creative market over almost two years (2001-2002).

The most obvious thing about the diagram is that it seems to have a blue core surrounded by a cloud of red. Blue circles in the middle represent the original clubs (e.g., clubs that book bands that play their own songs) and red circles represent the cover clubs (clubs that book cover bands). Since I was focused on live bands, I basically excluded clubs that had no live music at all. The sizes correspond to the number of different bands that the club booked (so bigger circles booked more different bands than smaller ones) and relate to the different strategies employed by these sectors (consistency vs variety). Distance on the map relates to the similarity between the clubs in terms of their bookings. Clubs that are close together tended to book more of the same bands than clubs that were far apart. (For all you networkers I used MDS in Ucinet - but we are not going into that here. A slightly expanded academic view of all this is at my academic web site).

At a minimum, this diagram again demonstrates that some creative markets contain lots of cooperation among competitors. But as we zoom in, an even more interesting picture emerges. The diagram below shows all the clubs that booked 15 or more bands in common. Line thickness corresponds to the number of bands that played at both clubs. Because the cover clubs all drop out, it means that these clubs tend not to share bands. Now we see that the original market contains even more sharing among "competitors" than the market as a whole. (Although this may be slightly exaggerated because cover clubs may not list as often in the Phoenix as the original clubs).

From an armchair economic perspective, all the clubs in one market should be competitors (e.g., for customers). My data shows that in some settings, buyers actually operate more like partners than competitors.

Another thing that will jump out to people who know this setting is that several of the clubs in this diagram are now out of business (or have reopened under new ownership). Since I stopped collecting this data in 2001, the following original clubs have closed or stopped offering live music for long periods: Lilly's/608, The Linwood, The Kendall Cafe, The House of Blues, The Hideway. Given the recent closing of the Cambridge rock incubator The Plough and Stars (which helped spawn bands like Morphine and G Love and Special Sauce), perhaps it is worth examining this apparent spate of club closings. On the other hand, a number of original rock clubs have also opened and/or started during this time (e.g., PA's lounge, The Independent, The Overdruaght) so perhaps its just volatility rather than a downward trend.

Thanks to everyone out there who put up with my badgering over the years. You know who you are. If anyone still wants to participate in this study or has comments, I am still actively exploring all this and am interested in any refinements, clarifications or additions you may have.

LOVE Quiz

2005-07-16T21:17:00.000-07:00

I just got through checkin out the latest at Soul Imperialist. I love Joe's ocassional quizes and challenges, not to mention his insight and research/freezes. (Speaking of which, will the NSF fund this? Or this?)

Anyway, all of Joe's edutainment made me want to post my own quiz. The other night, I snapped this picture of "mista big pants" (who adorns my dashboard). But, there is something wrong with this picture. Can you guess what it is? Post your comments or not. I got a few ideas myself.

Mugglechusetts?

2005-07-16T15:55:00.000-07:00

People in wizard outfits and children too young to be awake clog the midnight sidewalks of Harvard Sq as muggles line up to get copies of the new Harry Potter book (which is already breaking all kinds of sales records). Its great to see people caring so much about books in this age of digital media!

I also love the how these folks are simultaneously inventing and studying a mythical world. As you explore this online world, layers of irony unfold. Here is a group of consumers who are simultaneously breaking sales records for books while celebrating their love of the books using the digital techology that threatens the whole publishing industry according to future histories of the media. Such is the mixed and mashed nature of reality here at the dawn of the digital age. Nothing is as it seems and everything can be what you want it to be.

A final irony in all this is that I am told the hardcore Potter fans call themselves muggles. First off, the multiple meanings of the term suggest some other potential explanations for the obsessions of these Potterheads. Reports from the ground suggest it was a real party. Then again, maybe Rowling just likes Louis Armstrong. Which brings us full circle as Louis made no secret of his love for the muggles himself.

But the strangest thing of all is that the map of Mugglechusetts looks really familiar. Is that what this Red vs. Blue mix up has been all about?!??!

Windowlickin' good!

2005-07-14T18:23:00.000-07:00

Boston seems to be exploding with Mass -hit fever. Being that I am just recovering from a discectomy (caveat emptor: icky/funny image here) and will have to sit out all these windowlickin' good performances by Jake and Wayne, I could not resist weighing in from the sidelines. Also, some dudes came to wash the windows at my house today, which made me think of that Aphex Twin video. (No kidding.)

Wayne makes some great points on his recent post on mashup culture. I wanted to add weight to his observtion that mashups are just the most recent example of a long tradition of reuse and recycling in recorded music . Second, academics aside, it's just plain fun to juxtapose things that didn't originally go together. Third, as a long standing fan of cut ups, plunderphonics and creative recycling in general, I could not resist throwing out a few musical ruinations of my own. Finally, all of t his will provide a nice segue into some dissertation related postings coming up. But first, the music.

OneTingDat is a mashup of the Amerie One Thing (2-3) Instrumental (which itself flipped the Meters Oh Calcutta break) with the future Boston classic A It Dat (acapella).

The inspiration for the track came about in the winter of '05 when Wayne was asked to start a new night at a large college oriented dance club in town. I did the first two nights with him, the second of which, I did with Tony and Jake while Wayne was off galavanting in Jamaica. There were some interesting e-mails that went around back then about how to get college kids essentially dancing to mashups. The idea was to play the instrumental of a familiar "club banger" and layer on some ragamuffin vocals, or an old classic break, or some other madness we might think up. An alternate strategy was to play the instrumental of some lesser known track and layer over a contemporary top 40 vocal. The goal in this was to blend the familiar with the unfamiliar in just the right proportions.

What was even more surprising was that my preliminary dissertation results seemed to be shedding light on some related issues (e.g., rules about competition and reuse can vary from market to market as can norms about interactions among performers and nightclubs). I'll be sharing more of that soon, as I am finalizing some presentations I am doing at the Academy of Management in August.

The second (first chronologically) of my A It Dat mashups, Dolbywaxdat (2) is a mostly live mashup of Thomas Dolby's Dissidents the Search for Truth -- Pt. 1 and Wayne & Wax's DJ C It Dat and acapella, Mashit 005. This track came out just after the release of A It Dat. It was my reaction to the '04 election and an homage to one of my favorite Thomas Dolby tracks of all time. It also affirms my sense that beat research can have political implications (as well as legal and ethical ones).

Note that both tracks have numbers after them signifying how many breaks in the timeline there are in them -- e.g., how edited the original live performance is. While there are lots of ways to make this kind of music, one way is to do it live with two records. This demands lots of attention to microscopic variations in tempos as the two records drift out of time. Given advances in digital sound editing and the frequent intermingling of edited and live performances (e.g., in mixtapes), it seems reasonable to start labeling our tracks so others can know how to read them.

In both of the cases above, the mixes were basicallly created live in several chunks (e.g., part1/cuts/part 2). I think the little errors in my mostly live mashups are nice little artifacts of the technology they were created on. I sometimes leave the super aliased sound of an overly pitched sample in Live tracks for the same reason - so its not some vinyl snobbery. More likely, I am just lazy.

Boston Hip Hop History: Magnus Carta

2005-07-06T02:48:00.000-07:00

Not long ago, I posted a link to some info at WZBC about early hip hop shows (see the bottom of the page) with legendary Boston DJ/Artist Magnus. This generated a conversation with Brian Coleman (another WZBC DJ) about when Magnus started playing hip hop in Boston. We decided to e-mail Magnus for some clarification. Here's a great bit of Boston Hip Hop History from a true pioneer (pictured here with his paintings from a photo at Art Net.)
____
pace- although i've been to a number of blog sites - grime fr' instance- to cull info & ting - i've never blogged myself or ever been to a chat room - not much of a chit chat type - so i'm sending you this in email - you can post it if you like -

in the summer of 85 i had been filling in once a week almost every week on wmbr's nightly black music show "the ghetto". All the other dj's - like ray antoine - who i think is still at wmbr - were playing stuff like the gap band, prince & morris day's the time - i didn't like that shit but i was mad for the emerging hip hop - it got so that by the end of the summer i would get on, not even say anything, play 3 raps in a row & the phones would start ringing - "keep it going magnus! i remember in august i played a new song twice by popular request - the only time before or since- it was "la di da di" by doug e fresh & slick rick- i was having a very good time.

at the same time my regular reggae show- "reggae mukasa" had hit a doldrum- the new music coming out was getting increasingly lame & my enthusiasm was flagging so i decided to give it up. my buddy at wmbr & mit- thomas uebel- alias "thomas alien" a german by way of england student who i had originally produced to start the first african show in the country- "aliens' corner"-(note the placement of the apostrophe) didn't wanna see me give up radio & suggested that since i was so keen on the new digital rythym music- not just rap but other stuff i was into- that i propose a new show to the wmbr program board- he even invented the name- "lecco's lemma". i did & it was accepted & given the 4-6 saturday afternoon spot in september.

as soon as i started though the kids found me & the requests started jamming the phones- all for rap. it got so that as soon as every show started all 3 phone lines would light up- & stay that way- as soon as you'd answer it & put it back down- it would light back up- the energy was incredible & there were no other rap shows anywhere- dj red alert had a late night 1 hour show in nyc- but that was about it.

in fact there was a real antipathy for rap music in the older black audience- mattapan music fr' instance- who were sponsoring my show- took out an ad at the time on WILD- boston's "black" radio that they self produced that included a snippet of rap on it. the owner of the station- joe johnson- a trinidadian- heard it & was furious- called the station & had them yank it. i remember particularly a letter from a black parent & teacher to wmbr accusing the show of promoting regressive language that featured later as a bit of evidence in the show's cancellation at wmbr - many of my fellow (white) dj's couldn't believe that i listened to that music at home- said that i was just doing it to be different & that it wouldn't last -

meanwhile i was soliciting homemade tapes that i was then playing- & then some rappers came down to rap live on the show - this was not such an innovation for me- i had had many jamaican rappers "toast" live over rythyms on my reggae show - but the floodgates soon opened-

before i knew it the studios were inundated with gaggles of aspiring rappers eager to get on live- one saturday i showed up it was standing room only inside-in fact the overflow was packed outside the studios at walker memorial building- some kids had mimeographed flyers announcing a "battle" & invited everybody down.

the powers that be at wmbr however, were becoming concerned that things were getting out of control - & they were not entirely wrong as regards the unintended obscenities getting aout over the air-no matter how much some rappers were asked to obliterate the expletives inevitably the enthusiasms would overwhelm & bad words would happen -

by may of 86 mbr had had enough & canned the show- i was going to leave it at that but the kids wouldn't have it- so i called andrew herman- the pd at wzbc- & he gave me a spot- sunday night at first- then saturday- with the stipulation of no guests- which held to some extent- & also zbc was harder to get to-

by the way pace- i noticed in yr top ten- (ed note: actually a link to someone else's top 10) no grime? no mia no dizzie rascal et al? no reggaeton? no tego calderon no mickey perfecto et al? what' up with that? ok i'm done m
______
Ed note: Despite his claim to be "done", his show The Matrix can be heard on WERU in Blue Hill, ME. For the sake of music, thank god

LOVE Hip Hop History Jam

2005-06-29T07:28:00.000-07:00

Photo of brick casey and pace @ beat research c/o Derek Brain.

On July 30, from 4-8 PM LOVE is throwing a Hip Hop History jam in Union Sq, Somerville, MA (outdoor in the plaza on Somerville Ave). (Mapquest directions here.) Fun-ded by the Somerville Arts Council as part of its Arts Union Series, we will be bringing together some incredible talent to re-present the history of hip hop in an uplifting community celebration. The event will be hosted by Lyrical and Brick Casey and will include demonstrations by the amazing LOSST UNNOWN and members of the Boston hip hop legends the FLOOR LORDS. DJ C and DJ Flack (Beat Research/Mashit), DJ Yamin (Beats Not Bombs), DJ Def Rock (of Monstamind/Megabug fame), DJ Drama (Elemental Compounds) and Wayne & Wax will be providing the beats. The youth/activist collaborative Critical Breakdow and the Massive Records Family will be there too. The evening will include a series of thematic sets revolving around 6 DJ sets representing one era of Hip Hop history each: Funk&Soul, Jamaican Roots, Birth of Hip Hop, Old/Middle School, Golden Age, Back to the Future. During each DJ set, local MC’s, breakdancers, writers and DJ’s will reinterpret these eras thereby uniting the original 4 elements in an evening of uplifting community “edutainment”.

In the words of the Godfather, "Peace, unity, LOVE, and having fun." What more can you say? Here are some links to get you in the mood!

Hip Hop Timelines
Experience Music Project
B-Boys.com
Digital Dream Door

Videos and docs
Boston Beats and Rhymes
Wild Style
Style Wars
Krush Groove

Breakdance
Globaldarkness article 1
Globaldarkness article 2
NPR program with video

Graf
B-boys.com Gallery
149 St.

Mixtapes and Shows
Mastermix.org
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Music Dork Meme

2005-06-23T08:09:00.000-07:00

Looking at Wayne's comments on the Six Degress of Reggae Riddims I realized he tagged me with the music dork meme that is going around (I can't wait to map this!). It seems particularly appropriate given the comment on Blood and Fire about me -- "Too much nerd a gwaan." Alrighty then. Busted. Here is my latest.

The brain: Lovingly adorned with some recent selections.

Total volume of music on my computer: I have not caught the IPod bug yet being a true vinyl junkie, so I actually don't use my computer for playing songs as much as for making them. 13 gigs in my ITunes folder and 4 gigs in my Sounds folder that contains all my samples. Then I have a Lacie 160 gig external hard drive I use for ProTools files which has 127 gigs of various sound files and backups. Call it 150 gigabytes of music files of ALL KINDS but only around 14 of mp3s.

Last CD I bought: Since I mostly buy records, it's somewhat rare, but the last CD I bought was the DJ Wicked wicked mixtape Got Milf? I heard it at new Cambridge hip hop outpost Massive Records (who are poised to blow up with in store visits from KRS-1 etc.) and had to have it!

Song playing right now: The record just ended. So nothing. But just a minute ago, it was Laguna Oreenee by Slim Gaillard. The more I listen, the more I agree that he was one of the first b-boys for sure.

Five things I have been listening too a lot lately:
1. Ever since Amerie's 1 Thing flipped that break from the Meter's track Oh Calcutta, my gal Carey and I have been on a Meter's kick. Their Very Best of the Meters CD has been running in the car going on 2 weeks now.
2. Minute Men. Double Nickels on the Dime. Man, George Hurley's drums on this record were so TIGHT.
3. Rik Rue. Sound Escapes. RRRecords in Lowell, MA. This strange cut up and tape manipulation record is a future scratch classic for sure.
4. Wings. Wild Life. Panned at the time as sloppy and lame. McCartney was apparently influenced by Dylan's fast production and created this sleeping masterpiece of loose 70's rock goop. I have been loving it.
5. Old school hip hop! I have been getting ready for our big hip hop history party on July 30 with Wayne&Wax, DJ Flack, DJ C, Critical Breakdown, DJ Yamin, Brick Casey, Def Rock and others So I have been watching Wild Style, etc a lot. This clip is Cold Crush from the Dixie Scene. Does that sound like a ragamuffin style "get on the mic wit ya rhymes galore" from JDL of Cold Crush at the end there? If so, the oldest commercially released toasting over hip hop beats I have found yet.

So, let's hear from:
Gabriel
Jake
Noneamyotherfriendshaveblogs??

Six Degrees of Reggae Riddims

2005-06-17T06:52:00.000-07:00

Just coming off teaching a 3 day social network analysis (SNA) master class at Boston College (with my fellow PhD student Inga Carboni and professors Steve Borgatti and Bill Torbert), I have networks on the mind. Just before the workshop started, I was finally able to diagram a very large network data set I have been working on for a long time (with the help of programmer pal Stephen Cook and fellow Borgatti student Rich DeJordy). The other night I finally got back to it.

Frequencies of 2o most versioned riddims at reggae-riddims.com.

Ever since reading Howard Becker's (1982) book Art Worlds, I have been interested in using network methods to operationalize Becker's claim that art worlds can be seen as networks of cooperative relations among individuals and orgnizations producing and consuming artistic products (Becker, 1982:x). While network thinking has been a central part of this theory from the beginning, SNA methods have only recently been applied to large data sets on cultural markets. For example, the now familiar Oracle of Kevin Bacon site uses the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB) to create an interface that allows you to play the Gen X parlor game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" (e.g., trying to find an actor that is connected to Kevin Bacon in more than 6 links via co-occurrences in movies with other actors). If you play, you will find that it is hard. That is because Hollywood is a Small World. However, even this site does not really let you visualize the network of ties among actors and movies. Scholarly work on cultural markets is even less likely to do so. This is a shame because SNA is so useful for visualizing patterns in large social systems that are otherwise hard to see.

Using Ucinet and Netdraw to diagram (below) the data at Reggae-riddims.com Becker's (1982) idea comes to life in a new way. In this art world, it is common practice for multiple artists to sing over instrumental "versions" of popular songs (which are called riddims). One of the things that makes this art world particularly interesting from a network perspective is that the same riddims are often used over and over by different artists and producers and released by "competing" labels under different titles. As a result, we can examine cooperative patterns and see what artists appear on what riddims recorded by what producers, etc. It also helps me to find another setting that operates more like a creative commons than a traditional market (as this distinction is also emerging my dissertation). (Note the sneaky nod to the ethnographers in my title which alludes to Gertz's 1978 piece "The Bazaar economy: Information and search in peasant marketing", American Economic Review 68(2):28-32.)

The first thing I did was to generate a frequency list (above) of all the riddims (e.g., the number of times each had been done) and plot the results. Not surprisingly, a small number of riddims get versioned a lot and most get versioned only once or twice. This kind of picture is typical of cultural industries (e.g., a few composers do most of the scores in Hollywood, a few actors do most of the movies, etc.) and is related to the idea of long tails (for anyone who caught the Wired buzz a while back). To keep track of these ideas, check out Chris Anderson's site the Long Tail and his upcoming book. Clearly, the art world of reggae versions is another example of this ubiquitous phenomena. For yet another (that relates to my love of formal field methods in anthropology), see the excellent word count flash site which lets you interact with a frequency list of english words.

Network map of 20 most versioned riddims (blue nodes=riddims, red nodes=artists)

I used this frequency list to select the 20 most versioned riddims for further analysis. (The data set was so large -- e.g., more than 10,000 lines of data), that it became hard to run on my weak machines, let alone visualize. Therefore, for practical reasons, I decided to cut the set down to the top riddims for a first look. The diagram below depict ties between artists (red) and the top 20 most versioned riddims (in blue). It uses an algorithm (called Gower Metric Scaling) that basically puts riddims that were done by many of the same artists near each other on the map.

I have just begun to analyze this data, but already, interesting patterns are emerging. For example, you can see that there are basically four "neighborhoods" of artists. The first cluster (in the middle of the diagram) are all doing many of the same riddims. The second cluster (middle left) is a group of artists associated with the Real Rock riddim. (This is interesting in itself as the Real Rock is the most versioned riddim, so you would expect it to be in the middle of the network.) Another cluster appears in the bottom right around the Stalag riddim. Finally, there is a group of artists (bottom left) that did the Stalag and Real Rock, but not much else. This is already pretty interesting, as it demonstrates the power of network analysis to identify emergent communities in artistic markets (exactly what Becker would have predicted, btw).

While the diagrams tell us something, they are really just the beginning. You see, network analysis is really good at picking out hidden patterns in social systems. But to understand the meaning behind the pattern (e.g., the why), you still need to do good ethnographic work. As far as I can tell, that is still lacking in many quarters of the academy. Moreover, because of the increasing balkanization of the academy, network analysis and ethnography currently occupy separate spheres (despite sharing common intellecual roots).

Luckily, my pal Wayne is doing his dissertation on Jamaican music and I hope we can combine our structural and interpretive approaches to provide a new look at some important cultural practices at the intersection of music and the creative commons.

Onlinebeatmachinemadness

2005-05-26T12:34:00.000-07:00

Have you been wanting to use the Internet to make some funky beats? Now you can. Here are some killer on-line beat boxes to keep you bouncin'.

Sheepbeats is a Flash site created by my pal Becca Nesson. Its Roland 808 programming meats Old McDonald! Baadassss! Baa ram ewe! The Beaterator and Rhymerator from Rockstargames.com let's you make your beats on an old school beat machine and even gives you help with the rhymes. The BBC (oddly enough) has a whole virtual studio including a step sequencer and a Fatboy Slim Remix game. If you want to move into the realm of the 8Bit Peoples (cc) and other gamebeat makers, check out the Beat Machine from Dimmen's Games which seems similarly abstract to me. (Can you imagine making your beats on a Game Boy?)

If you need the real thing, check out The history of the beatbox at Broadway Music (where I lifted the logo above) or the vintage synth explorer for starters. But the ultimate old school beat box site is probably the one at the keyboard museum (an organization after my own heart for sure).

For the final solution, has anyone made a nickelodeon that plays sample triggers? The closest I can think of is the Monkey Drummer video by Chris Cunningham. Let's get on that one people.
_________
Wayne checked in and pointed to some additional info about Sheep Beats etc. on his righteous blog. Get the backstory behind the farm beat flash ap that swept the Internet!

College Radio Rules!

2005-05-25T20:09:00.000-07:00

del.icio.us / tag / vinyl Was sent to me by David Crawford who quickly followed up with http://www.richcolour.com/mastermix which emphasized the connection between Hip Hop and radio archives! Somehow all this reminds me that...college radio rules!

First of all. It was the college friends (and the friends of the college friends -- like David) that really helped many of us lock in our budding high school vinyl addictions. Moreover, college radio remains a bastion of non-commercial broadcasting in the face of increasing media consolidation.

Since I am a graduate student at Boston College, I need to give some respect to my own local station WZBC. Some of their documentation suggests that WZBC was the first station in the country to have a Hip Hop show (???). At the bottom of the page under random factoids they state, "our DJ Magnus (Monday nights 7-10 PM) was the first DJ in Boston to play Hip Hop on the radio, and the first DJ in the country to have a Rap/Hip Hop show". I need to do some beat research here because it seems so strange given the emergence of Hip Hop in NY. But I was reminded that Magnus used to tell me he had the first Hip Hop show in Boston (which I thought was cool enough when I worked with him at an antique store in the late 1980's). Also, Boston was an "early adopter" of Hip Hop and WZBC was always out ahead of the curve so I guess it is possible that no one in NY got a show first. I would love some clarification here if anyone has it.

Later, I wound up playing old school Hip Hop on WZBC on the Beyond the QE2 radio show with DJ Duo "the skipper" and Carlos B "the navigator" (pictured below on left with me at the decks) and remembered Magnus at the helm on Dub Hop with undergrads reading poetry over rare dubsides. Hmm.

Moreover, all the Beat Research kids like DJ Ripley, Wayne and Wax, Flack, etc.////have been on there. While you are at it. What is up with the Book of SFX crew on WZBC? Some mad found sound archivery for sure. Last but not least, WZBC was the one time home of Yamin's Beats Not Bombs show and is the current home to Brian Coleman's killer Funk to the Folks/Schoolbeats show on Mondays. Since Brian is also the author of the new book Rakim Told Me (which is next on my list after Joe Shloss's massive Making Beats) I must give huge respect to WZBC and all college radio for its continuing non commercial potential. Whew.

In any case, the college connection with David is that he and I used to live in Fort Point with this cat Morgan Cohen who went to Hampshire with this dude who does this site www.weirdsville.com (an incredible internet radio archive of audio madness that I have been wanting to share).

Verstehen? Its all about the networks. And media. Don't belive me? Heard of Googlezon?

That ought to convince 'ya.

Reagan Flexi-Jam

2005-05-25T13:17:00.000-07:00

I wanted to see if I could get myself to do a really short post. So here's my new track: The Reagan Flexi-Jam. Its basically a live DJ mix of a classic Reagan cut-up flexi-disk from 1981 called Reagan Speaks for Himself.

Originally created by Douglas Kahn (who is now the Director of the Technocultural Studies Department at U.C. Davis) using plundered Reagan vocal material, this crazy little gem was released in Raw Magazine Vol 1. 4. Here's a cool WFMU blog with more info on this and other Reagan cut ups and an Indy Magazine, Winter 2005 article on the history of Raw Magazine.

Since we seem to be in some dark parallel time warp with Star Wars nostalgia running high and the white collar plunder-thon in full gear, it seemed like a good moment to remix this Reagan cut up. The track here was done live on two decks with a breakbeat record and the Reagan Speaks for Himself flexi-disk. I did edit out a few long sections, so it is not TOTALLY live. But it sounds more edited than it really is because that darn flexi-disk was skipping like crazy (i guess I forgot to put the penny on it). You ever tried cutting with a flexi-disk? It skips like mad, dude.

Enjoy.

Early Radio Space Archive

2005-05-24T09:28:00.000-07:00

This just in from Steve Provizer of the Citizens' Media Corps who found a nice listing/discussion of early radio broadcasts on wax. It is amazing that people were recording radio broadcasts (of Morse code no less) as early as 1913-1915. Some of the recordings are at the Library of Congress. I don't know if there are audio examples on line, but it would be nice to hear them.

Somehow, the idea of sitting and recording radio transmissions seems very "hip hop" to me. Recording them directly onto an acetate seems INCREDIBLY hip hop (whatever that means).

Perhaps this is a form of retrospective sensemaking. Because sampling and scratching with radio and television broadcasts has been a staple of hip hop DJ/production techniques since early on, it goes without saying that the people who recorded them were representing a nacent hip hop aesthetic. Joe Schloss makes a similar point in his amazing book Making Beats about how crate diggers define breaks functionally and even imagine that these pre-existing "breaks" lie buried in layers of musical sediment, just waiting to be unearthed. I certainly do. Thus the desire to archive. Somewhere, in all these hours of radio transmission might lie the "perfect break". (For my take on the evolution of breaks, check out Love 1.3)

If this notion tickles your fancy, have no fear. All the radio broadcasts that have ever been transmitted are archived for all eternity...in space. (While I just realized this myself, my pal Rob Chalfen has log recognized the archival potential of space/time as source for "lost" jazz recordings.) The only hitch is that you need to be able to travel faster than the speed of light and have a super strong directional antenna. In that case, you could get out past the leading edge of the expanding bubble of radio waves representing the date of the first broadcast on planet Earth. Fire up the old sampler (if you can find an AC plug out there) and stay tuned for a real time retransmission of the whole history of broadcasting. How will the RIAA control that one?

The other nice thing about Steve's e-mail is that it reminded me of my personal history of recording the radio. Specifically, I remember spending hours upon hours making pause tape mixes of radio shows as early as grade school. The trick to these mixes was to try to anticipate when the MC was coming back on the air by reading the length of the pause between songs. When you accidentally recorded some talking or a song you didn't like, the goal was to rewind to a good punch in spot and put the machine back in "record/pause" in time to start recording again at the next punch in spot. I remember sitting there, stairing at the radio, waiting for songs I loved. I think these little "radio remixes" were my modest articulation of the universal artistic/romantic desire to remake the world in your own image. To be the DJ.

Do kids still do this? (How do you even record the radio if all you have is an IPod and a laptop?) Has the "mixtape" and podcasting taken over this function? If so, what does it mean that the FBI is busting folks who are distributing mixtapes and that podcasting is probably illegal too? Should I turn in my 1979 (?) tape of Charles Laquidara's madcap "Duane Ingalls Glasscock Instant Radio Spectacular" radio show on WBCN? How about Troy Smith's amazing collection of hip hop tapes? Can we all listen to them?

Welcome

2005-05-23T14:39:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the LOVE BLOG.

I'll be using this spot to post shorter entries, make announcements and generally keep you updated on developments at LOVE. Our permanent digital "stacks of wax" are www.libraryofvinyl.org. There are a few great new developments at LOVE that deserve mention.

Last week we received a grant from the Somerville Arts Council to produce a Hip Hop History (H3) block party. This will be a wonderful kick off event for LOVE as the Hip Hop Nation is one of our core constituencies. The event will feature a series of sets featuring DJs, MCs, dancers, graffiti writers and video artists all collaborating to represent the evolution of Hip Hop. It is also our first grant! Very exciting. Thanks to amazing photographer Robert Rosenheck for letting us use an image from his Love Book. (If you have not seen this book, you need to!)

Equally wonderful, Steve Provizer of The Citizens' Media Corps has agreed to serve as our fiscal agent. We have already received several in-kind contributions of Internet hosting and vinyl. Now we can now offer tax deductions to our contributors. Please contact us if you want to make a donation.

In August, I will be performing under the banner of the Library of Vinyl Experience at the Academy of Management's Fringe Café in Hawaii. I will be talking about how DJs operate as an action research community and using this case to make connections between organizational network and action research theories.

Finally, the latest LOVE website is up including a link to this LOVE Blog and two new pages of "wax". I look forward to hearing your comments and thoughts about any and all of this!

Stay tuned for some new tracks coming soon.