YOU'RE STILL WRONG..
Think about George Orwell's two-minutes hate from the novel '1984' and how that left everyone sort of exhausted and able to live their boring humdrum lives. If our lives are going to continue being unfulfilled and boring, perhaps we do need some sort of short-term violent chaos incorporated into them, to make them more palatable. --Chuck Palahniuk
Bebop and hip-hop, in so many ways, they're connected. A lot of rappers remind me so much of bebop guys in terms of improvisation, beats and rhymes. My dream is to see hip-hop incorporated in education. You've got the youth of the world in the palm of your hand. --Quincy Jones
Once upon a time, there was a king who had a ruby ring… but the ruby was scratched. A single line… down the middle of the jewel. The king called on all the grinders and polishers in the kingdom to remove the scratch. None could do it. An etcher approached the king. “I can fix your jewel,” he said. The king shrugged. No one else could do anything. What’s to lose? The etcher etched a rose into the ruby. The scratch became the stem of the rose. – Fairy tale told me more than once by my one-armed father.
Maybe it’s the Jew in me. Whenever I get one of those mailings for a FREE SUBSCRIPTION to anything… as long as I don’t have to pay “a fee” or “for postage and handling”… I’m there!
Flash to 1975. I’m living in my new apartment on 90th Street on the Upper East Side. The Ruppert Beer Brewery on Third Ave disappeared ten years ago. A few ugly new buildings appeared in the rubble. The neighborhood is “changing.” I live in a railroad flat that used to house brewery workers. These tenements are called railroad flats because the rooms are all in a row… one into the other... like cars on a train…no hallway. You just go through... room to room.. until you get to yours.
In the mail… in a kind of corporate hip envelope… comes an offer to subscribe to INC. magazine. It seems like it’s written for budding entrepreneurs. I’m as budding as a blade, as entrepreneurial as Mahatma Gandhi. I am slightly more Jewish than Gandhi… and it’s 6 months FREE!
I send in my Sure, sign me up reply card… and before I know it, I get this magazine of people whose American dream is an office with big windows and nothing on the walls.
I can’t tell you one thing I read in that magazine. I can’t give you an iota of an idea inspired by that magazine… but I come back to it now, because I’ve come to LOVE the idea of incorporate.
On
my couch for a month is Gavin Mendonca. We met in Guyana… where
he’s from. Gavin has been touring the jungles of Guyana to learn
indigenous music and INCORPORATE it into rock. He calls it Creole
Rock.
It’s
a shake and bake of everything together. Sure there are punk purist.
Race purists. Libertarian purists. Homo and het purists. And those
guys are missing out on something… something? Everything!
[Aside]
For me, jazz is like toenails on a blackboard. I’m not talking
about Dixieland Jazz with clarinets blowing music from old cartoons.
That stuff makes me smile. I love it.
I’m talking about a quartet where every instrument is playing a different non-tune… they fight each other for a while… then one instrument screeches a solo… the audience applauds… then another instrument screeches a solo… more applause… then they fight each other with rising volume, until it’s over… and the audience applauds even more loudly.
I’d rather listen to Josh Groban than listen to that.
FLASH
TO RIGHT NOW: Here I am, at a free (okay, okay, I know) outdoor
concert. Locals from the neighborhood sit on folding chairs set up in
front of a makeshift stage. A little boy, about 6 years old, and his
sister, about two years older, run frantically back and forth in
front of the stage as little kids are wont to do.
The
group I came to see plays Zimbabwean music, with authentic African
instruments… all the players are white. They’re quite amazing.
Nora, the woman who invited me, has spent a long time in Africa
learning the music and the culture. I love the way it looks... like
Elvis singing “that black music.”
After them, come a jazz ensemble: guitar, synth, conga drum, bass. As they play, the little kids stop running back and forth. They look at the musicians on the stage. They freeze for a bit, then they walk. Not wondering, but heading right for the stage.
The boy stops in front of the drummer… a big black guy with a huge chest and arms like baobab trees. The boy watches him pounding a rhythm on the edge of the drum. Then the kid starts pounding… whacking away… on the other edge of the drum. I wait for someone from the audience to pick the kid up and take him off stage. No one does. Then, I wait for the drummer to brush the kid aside, maybe using a leg to push him away. It doesn’t happen. Slowly, the band incorporates the kid’s wild drumming into what they are playing.
Meanwhile, his sister is fascinated by the guitar. She sits in front of the guitar player, and watches him screech up and down on the fretboard. Occasionally, the musician steps on a pedal to add distortion, wah wah or some other effect. The foot motion draws the attention of the little girl. She watches the dance of the pedals. Then she reaches for the little knobs on those pedals… and turns them…. playing with them like they’re a toy. Turning one, twisting another, doing two at one time.
Does someone from the audience come to claim the little monster? Does the guitar player use her pedal foot to kick away the juvenile vermin? You guessed it. No! The guitar player and the entire band incorporate the freakish sounds into what they’re playing. They work around it... building on it... using it. I’ve never seen anything like it.
When they finish, I come away still not liking the sound of jazz… but loving the hell out of INCORPORATION.
- end -
ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at god@mykelboard.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available. Send me an email with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line. Back blogs and columns are at https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com
→ Guyanese Incorporation Dept: You can hear some of Gavin’s fine work at these places. First, a Kaieteur Falls video where he sings in Patamona, an indigenous language. Then, a YouTuber with Sugar Cane, a multi Caribbean punkrock band incorporating everything! And finally a mixed version of a traditional Guyanese folk song.
→ My kind of humor dept: Reuters reports that ever since Covid-19 reached Cuba, a tall cardboard box with arms and legs totters around a Havana suburb, popping into the bakery or butchers, or browsing the newspaper stand.
This is Feridia Rojas, 82, who decided to build and wear mobile housing to shield herself from the virus.
“I
am at home, what about you?” reads a message on her box, a nod to
Cuba’s government slogan “Stay at home.”
82 years old????
Yes! It gives me hope.
→ Duh dept: The Washington DC health website has a special page on sex during the panic. On the page they list various sex acts and how they can spread the disease. Among their tips:
Kissing can pass COVID-19. Consider not kissing anyone you do not know or who you are not sure has been isolated for 14 days.
Rimming, or any sexual activity that involves putting the mouth on the butt/anus, might pass COVID-19. The virus has been found in feces.
Condoms and dental dams may reduce contact with saliva or feces during oral or anal sex.
masturbation is always safe sex.
Apparently,
these guys don’t cruise the internet enough. You can read the whole
cringeworthy report here.
Masturbation ISN’T always safe sex.
--See you in hell!
LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:
I read that the search engines like lots of links... and it's also nice to support my friends and enemies in their blogs. So facebook me or email me if you have a blog, webpage or something else to connect to. I add you. You add me.
Here's
a start:
Here’s Richard Goldberg: goldberg.wordpress.com
Poetry and humor fans will like Justin Martin in The Latency
And my friend Mike R has a nice site with recipe hits from the past! (He cooked for me once... great stuff.) Check out Yesterday's Recipes.
And here's one by a member of ANTI-SEEN... a tour diary of sorts.
Andy Shelton has an interesting blog here.
Savage Hippie is a guy who has been YouTubing for a long time. Our opinions largely overlap... but he complains that I'm a Communist. I'm not! I'm a communist.
Chris Stecher publishes a zine called PRECIS. You can see the back issue links there... and he promises a new issue soon.
George Fertakis has a very nice graphics-heavy blog... with music and books featured prominently. If there’s no link here (I can’t find it temporarily), then Google… er… Duckduckgo him for information.
And
my long-term pal Sid Yiddish contributes with his Mishegas
Master Blog.
And connect to TRUST Zine, a long-running German punk zine… that STILL PRINTS!!! Yeah, they have a website too… of course! It’s here.
Here are a couple video links.
This from Jon Cox https://squelchchamber1.bandcamp.com/album/down-so-low
And this one from my very long-time friend Roger Armstrong.
Kyle Nonneman is in prison in Portland. At least he can’t be kidnapped by the secret police… I think. I post his blog for him, he can’t do it from the klink. Lots of stuff about noise metal… and some very weird politics that will either fascinate or repulse you… or both.
Oh yeah, then there’s me. I have a blog of stuff I’ve written mostly from last century. You might enjoy it. Then again, you might not. It’s here.
Let
me know if you have a blog… or a print zine… or a YouTube and
want to be added to the list. You show me yours… you’ve already
seen mine. god@mykelboard.com
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