Space and Time

Like the infinite questions that our own time and space in the universe bring up I ponder what to do for my space, and my time.

I've been out of the house a little under a month now, and I can say that I am going insane. I don't mean to make it sound like this house is full of law pushing parentals or anything. It's just so insane here all at once. I love my mom, my sister, and her son, but I can't stand to be around them for more than a little at a time. I have good times when they're all in a good mood and we're, say, eating breakfast on Sunday. No problems there.

It seems my mom walks around half the time giving me dirty looks. I'm not sure why or if maybe this is just the way she was I just forgot, but it's annoying as hell. Half the time she gives me looks like I shouldn't be doing what I am planning on doing. I don't ask for much, and I don't take what is not mine, so it's not like I'm a big hassle.

My sister on the other hand seems to be okay with everything. She seems to be 'okay' with her lack of free time, her lack of money, her sons lack of a mother. I know she is not really feeling that way, but she likes to make it seems every things okay. And if it is not okay, she'd rather not tell anyone about it.

As for me, I'm losing my fucking head. In between the periods of me driving back down to costa mesa and the time I spend here I'm at work, exercising, or just sitting in my car avoiding this place. I feel like I'm invading their space, and it feels like I have no space to call my own. It's sort of depressing me, and I can see why I used to be depressed with no real outlet for emotions. I'm trying to better manage my time to not have to run around for work, because I figure the whole point of getting one of these 9-5ers is to get into that daily grind of making it a process. I failed this morning to wake up at 8:30, my alarm didn't go off or something. Who knows really, I have to get back to work, but I really need to figure out my space and time.

-rod

The Hard Sell

Yesterday turned out to be more of an event then I had previously thought.

I had nothing to do yesterday, but I ended up going to a concert with jules:

DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist: The Hard Sell - 7 inches of funk

It was an introduction to turntablism and the creation of modern DJing. That's the best I could describe it, amidst all their chaotic cutting and scratching, they would play samples and demonstrate different techniques and styles. It was pretty impressive to say the least, DJ shadow and Cut Chemist both had 4 tables running at once and the only other equipment besides the sound stuff that they had was a guitar pedal to loop sounds and a soundbox to add effects like Echo. They played tons of great stuff - Digable Planets, The Doors, Miles Davis, Outkast, DooWop groups from the 50's, and many more.

They had some really cool things going on while the concert went on. The lighting was way cool, they had these little boxes that held parts of images, and there was 3-4 on each side stacked randomly each providing a little bit of the image but still not the whole picture. Also they had the roof of the Hollywood bowl sparkling bright white lights, giving off a star like sky. They had a cool little camera attached to the wrist of Shadow, it gave a really neat view of his hands and how fast they move to catch the records, scratch them, and cut them. The only disappointing part was that they didn't really show the crossfader much. And as anybody who knows about DJing can tell you the crossfader takes tons of dexterity and precision and is almost just as impressive to watch as the records themselves.

The hall was mostly filled with "subscription" owners. People who buy season passes to all the concerts. It was pretty cool because you could bring in a meal in a basket and alcohol and just eat and drink away. Unfortunately I wasn't aware of that otherwise I would have planned something a little more special, but we where already late to the concert and such.

Once the lights went off though, it smelled like weed. haha.

The most impressive part of the night wasn't the concert to me. I got a strange feeling while sitting in section J1, Row 6, seat 18. While I sat stoned watching the lights flash and the dj cut my arm hung around my girl I felt good and wanted that moment to go on forever. Yeah, it was that good.

I haven't had a good day in a long time. Something always fucks it up, but if I had not gotten us lost(or the navigator depends who you ask) it would have been pretty damn close to a good day. It was surprising to feel so comfortable in that moment but it was indescribable - the music was loud making my ears feel "full" of sound, the warmth of her body crawled onto mine, the air cool but electrified by the crowd in the hollywood bowl - hey I can try though...

Thank you.

-rod

"The clever nerd / the best m.c. with no chain ya ever heard."

I like to think that I am creative and that I have a good taste in music. Everyone seemed to agree until I turned my ears to Independent Hip Hop. Most people seriously though I went crazy, I wasn't surprised after years of tearing up hip-hop for it's untalentless synthesizer keyboard sounds that barely pass for music. M.C.'s too busy with themselves to really break the mold, M.C.'s too busy enjoying their wealth they forget what go them their. Mainstream sucks.

It's true.

Most hip-hop artists are talentless ass clowns. Busy rapping about champagne, mercedes, and fat asses. Oh wait sorry, phat.

The first time I heard the creative rhymes of Del The Funky Homosapien on the debut Gorillaz - Rock The House I knew there had to be some kind of hip hop with that structure. Samples, clever rhymes, and up-beat creative melodies. I had always liked Hip Hop ever since I can remember, my brother grew up listening to Snoop Dogg, Warren G, and Dr. Dre. I can't help it, sometimes it's just catchy. But when I immersed myself in Del's first album "Future Development" I was hooked, forever and ever I would be a fan of Hip Hop, or at least Del I though. The deeper I went though, the more surprised I was at the level of creativity these guys went.

Thing is, there's something brewing in the underground. The one thing that I find most intriguing is the philisophy taken to create these tracks, as the article below says, everything should be made with 2 turntables and a microphone. Samples and beats should be what you rap over, not homemade synthesized beats. Because of this it seems that there is more creativity going into the music, the way you have to cleaverly sync yourself to abstract beats and tempos. I love it. I find a lot of these artists just as creative as other musicians. So without further ado I present an article with more detail and truth than I can present.

-rod

First appearing in The New Yorker in the month of April on the 22nd of 2004.

DOOM’S DAY
by SASHA FRERE-JONES
Madvillain redeems the pretensions of independent hip-hop.

In the early nineties, thanks to performers like Dr. Dre and his muse Snoop Doggy Dog, hip-hop became geometrically more popular than it had ever been. In the mid-nineties, multitasking figures like Puff Daddy helped make it a brand. As this happened, hip-hop gained a self-consciousness, as all successful art forms do, and a set of beliefs: hip-hop, sayeth the faithful, is made with two turntables and a microphone; graffiti and break dancing are the appropriate activities if you aren’t rapping or d.j.ing. And with Scripture comes orthodoxy: parvenu superstars rapping about guns and women and sampling popular songs are somehow betraying the original ideals; these new popular artists are “rap,” not hip-hop; hip-hop isn’t about sampling well-known songs like Rick James’s “Super Freak” and talking about champagne—it involves “skills” and an affinity for the “truth.” It sounds, in short, like Sunday school.

Hip-hop, of course, did start with people rhyming over well-known songs, and very few hip-hop records have actually been produced with only two turntables and a microphone. This fact hasn’t stopped the revisionists. As hip-hop became the lingua franca of youth all over the world and artists like Jay-Z and Eminem made remarkable and remarkably popular records, a parallel subculture of independent labels and artists grew up around a doctrine that was almost puritan. These independent artists rue the perfidy of apostate millionaires, and moan about pop stars who abandoned the true faith. Wanna-be prophets dream of chasing the moneylenders out of the temple, even though the moneylenders built the place.

Some independent acts prove their devotion by exulting in musical and linguistic obscurity, like slightly hipper stamp collectors. Some m.c.s spend so much time scolding the popular m.c.s that they come across as schoolmarms, switches in hand. Others are so committed to resurrecting various “golden ages” of hip-hop—1979, 1988, 1993—that their work is not much different from that of Renaissance-fair revivalists dancing around the maypole. Independent pop—not just hip-hop—has in many ways become a version of graduate school, a safe zone where artists can eke out a living, take their time doing specialized work. In most cases, this is the last thing a popular musician should be doing. But on “Madvillainy” (Stones Throw) the duo Madvillain—the m.c. MF Doom and the producer Madlib—demonstrate that hiding out can be the right move. Madvillain’s music is accessible but idiosyncratic, catchy but soaked in noise, lighthearted but full of abstractions. Madvillain is why independent hip-hop isn’t such a bad idea; this group needed breathing space.

Some fourteen years ago, MF Doom (Daniel Dumile) signed with a major label, Elektra, as part of the group KMD, which included his brother Subroc. In 1991, KMD put out “Mr. Hood,” a delightful, unusual record that was often lumped with De La Soul’s 1989 album “3 Feet High and Rising.” De La Soul combined playful samples of well-known funk songs and a friendly, Day-Glo graphic sense. KMD was a darker, stranger group, and never quite fit that template. Doom, then known as Zev Love X, has a slightly obstructed voice, as if his tongue were too big for his mouth. KMD’s samples made reference to racial unease. In 1993, Elektra dropped KMD, and refused to release its second album, “Black Bastards,” reportedly because of controversial artwork (a drawing of a Sambo figure hanged on a gallows). Later that year, Subroc was hit and killed by a car.

Doom resurfaced with his new name—from Marvel Comics’ Dr. Doom—in the late nineteen-nineties, releasing a few independent twelve-inch singles and then, in 1999, the full-length album “Operation: Doomsday.” It was a furiously odd thing, assembled from sweet nineteen-eighties R. & B. and nailed shut by Doom’s glottal, pained rhymes. (Doom has since released records under the names Viktor Vaughn and King Geedorah.)

Doom’s partner in Madvillain, the West Coast producer Madlib, was born Otis Jackson, Jr., and emerged in the mid-nineties with the group Lootpack. He established himself in 2000 with “The Unseen,” an album by his alter ego Quasimoto. (He created the character by speeding up his voice slightly.) As hip-hop producers were moving toward keyboards and drum machines and away from samples of records, which are expensive to license, Madlib stuck stubbornly to samples of jazz and rock records—especially jazz records. His sound was distinct enough to avoid anachronism: of a tradition but unique. In 2003, Madlib was given access to the vaults of Blue Note records, and he created a long, effective montage of sixties and seventies jazz called “Shades of Blue.”

Madlib and MF Doom are both comfortable with what might be called the “casual noise” of hip-hop, the sonic by-products of the act: spit hitting a microphone, the crackle of an old record, the sibilant hum of a low-resolution digital sample. The voices and samples on “Madvillainy” sound as if they’d been coated with dust, fried, dropped, rolled around, and then fried again.

But “Madvillainy” is hardly a difficult record. MF (which stands for Metal Face, among other things) Doom, who appears on the cover masked, looking like an extra from “Alexander Nevsky,” takes a deep pleasure in words: alliteration, internal rhymes, and pure sound. The point of “Madvillainy” is largely poetic—celebrating the language of music and the music of language. It’s not hard to quote Doom. From “Money Folder”: “Egads, she got enough style to start three fads.” From “Raid”: “The metal fellow been rippin’ flows / since New York plates were ghetto yellow with broke blue writing.” (Who wouldn’t like to hear more rhymes about license plates?) There are many references to science fiction and TV. Doom can turn a corner with a quote reminiscent of “Star Trek” or “The West Wing” (“Sir, request permission to be candid.” “Granted”), touch on commercials (“Better get Maaco”), and end with an enticing metaphor all his own (“more soul than a sock with a hole”). Thankfully, Madvillain doesn’t define itself against the mainstream. The only reference to popular m.c.s comes in a song called “Figaro”—Mozart’s guy—and it’s deliciously subtle: “The clever nerd / the best m.c. with no chain ya ever heard.”

Most of Madlib’s beats are made from samples of records, though it is hard to say which ones, even in a general way. Is the lovely, decaying piano figure in “All Caps” from a jazz record? An English skiffle record? A documentary about whales? “America’s Most Blunted” begins with a sample of Steve Reich’s “Come Out,” and then stumbles into a swaggering funk pattern. The three instrumental tracks are some of the album’s best moments, brief as they are: “Do Not Fire!” could be the theme of a Cuban kung-fu movie, and “Supervillain Theme” sounds like the work of an accomplished rock band from a country that the United States does not maintain diplomatic relations with.

After a few repetitions, a sample becomes known but doesn’t necessarily stop being strange. The imperfections in whatever is being sampled are retained, the stresses and flaws and cracks. There is a tactile quality to “Madvillainy,” which leads us to the smoking gun of the record, if there is one: marijuana. There are repeated allusions to weed and several samples of a 1971 record called “A Child’s Garden of Grass: A Pre-Legalization Comedy.” The key sample: “In fact, everyone finds that they’re more creative stoned than straight.”

For most of us, this is poppycock, but Doom and Madlib succeed in translating the heightened physical sensitivity and associative facility of the stoned mind into concrete sound. Madlib, especially, seems able to hide music inside other music. His samples lie on each other like double exposures, or like a cassette tape that allows the previous recording to bleed through the new one. “Strange Ways” sounds like several songs constantly competing to achieve dominance. Doom, happily, is undisturbed. The narcissism of the stoned can be a gift.

But not always. Quasimoto appears as Lord Quas on the mildly philosophical “Shadows of Tomorrow”: “Today is the shadow of tomorrow, today is the present future of yesterday, yesterday is the shadow of today, the darkness of the past is yesterday.” Somewhere, a dorm room is missing its poster.

Madvillain was thinking more clearly when this album was assembled from scenes into narrative. The twenty-two songs on “Madvillainy” cohere and zip by. (Once or twice, Doom drifts over the beat without engaging it.) “Madvillainy” makes a convincing case that, however you choose to pray, two of hip-hop’s many dogmas still obtain: Every sound can make a song. All words make sense.

If I Only...

This next one is just a couple descriptions I tossed together and stringed them sort of nicely. It's an alright piece of practice.



If I Only...

The fire is small as it burns away at an old bike rim, the wood too wet to ignite properly sits around the burning plastic and metal. The light dances in the middle of a circle of chairs, i positioned in the middle accompanied by two other men.
I take out my little smoke stacks and place one between my lips, reach my hand for the a flame of my own, flick and inhale.
It streamed out of my mouth and danced away up towards the sky. I drag and puff. Drag and puff. Watching the smoke play and twirl, twist upon itself to create a more tangible form so that it could exist to entertain my eyes. So that I can view its beautiful entrancing motions that speak to me about the importance of fluidity and motions in beauty.
I watch it go up and up and up until something more catches my eye.
It sat in the ocean of the sky brighter than the light the scattered across the sky in points. "This," I said, "is the moon!" and stared in awe as I realized how infinite and vast the sky is. How puzzling and perplexing yet wholly centered and unified. Like a complex watch with all its gears and springs.
Then you called me, and I heard the distinct song my phone played when such a glorious event happnened. I stared at your name and smiled thinking about us, and how simply complex we are. How our relationship works so well and what little work and fine tuning it takes to make something extraordinary happen when two people who right for each other meet. How your hands perfectly weave in with mine making such simple actions like hand holding a complex skill that we've evolved in an effort to become even more closer.
I flip the phone open, prop it against my ear, and open my mouth.
My lips start to feel numb, and my skin feels warm.
If I only knew how to tell you all of this. The vast complexities of the world so vividly brought to life by my mind, but the semantics to tell you about it are buried deeper in it.
"Hey love." is how I can best sum everything up.

-rod

All Of This Is True

Welcome back.

Thanks, blog.

I've missed you, and your ability to allow me to express myself a little. I love writing as you might or might not have known, so whatever little ideas I get to write down in my 'mooseskin' pocket book I keep with me sometimes stick with me for days. I write little pieces of the story down, sometimes even descriptions I think in my head, but I never get to immerse myself into it fully because I never develop the idea. With a little discipline I think I can do that and you can help.

It's nice to be back.

-Rod