Archive for December, 2007

This being the end of the year and all (although my personal year started two days ago), I just wanted to make sure I say thanks to everybody who’s been reading and commenting this year. Special, super sofa (sectional, even) shout-outs go to long-time commenters/co-conspirators/inspirations, Chuck F (am i the only one who knows the pseudonyms?), Bijan, and Shay, and LaShawn.

Of course, to close out the year right, even one in which I have posted as sporadically as I did in 7, we need a good playlist. So here goes. As usual, with a thematic playlist such as this, some of the songs are about what happened this year, some are just songs that got a lotta run.

Somebody’s On Your Case – Ann Peebles
Allure – Jay-Z
Stakes Is High (Remix) – De La Soul
Good Mourning – India Arie
Aquarius – Cal Tjader
Funky Drummer – D’Angelo
Sesame Street Pinball Number Count – The Pointer Sisters
Can I Kick It (Spirit Mix) – A Tribe Called Quest
Hard Times – Baby Huey
Bouncy Lady – Pleasure
Dat Dere – Oscar Brown, Jr.
4th Chamber – GZA, f. Ghostface & RZA
Right There – Lisa McClendon
Crown Royal – Jill Scott
Summer Soft – Stevie Wonder
I Got The Blues – Labi Siffre
A Touch of Jazz (Playin Kinda Ruff, Pt. 2) – Zapp
Superwoman (Where Were You When I Needed You – Stevie
Let A Man Come In And Do The Popcorn – James Brown
You’ve Been A Friend – Israel & New Breed
Black Cat – The Ohio Players
Bustin Loose – The Soul Searchers
Sh.Fe.MCs – De La Soul, f. A Tribe Called Quest
Good To Me As I Am To You – Aretha Franklin
Ain’t No Sunshine – Roy Ayers
Breathless – Corinne Bailey Rae
Reset – Big Boi, f. Cee-Lo & Khujo Goodie
This Is The Life – Living Colour

Oscar Peterson, who is right up there with James Brown, or maybe on the tier just below, in terms of musicians who are influential on me, died yesterday. He was 82. It was listening to Oscar Peterson that got me listening to jazz in the first place. When I in 7th grade, I took piano lessons. I didn’t really practice all that much, partially because I didn’t like what I was playing. That’s when my piano teacher, Mr. Hendrix, broke out the Oscar Peterson books and told me that I could play from them if I did well on the other songs I was supposed to be playing. That was all well and good, but it wasn’t until I actually heard Peterson himself play that I was truly motivated to learn his technique. That first song, which still gets me to this day, was Whispering from the album, Benny Carter Meets Oscar Peterson. I was floored. I had never heard anybody play so fast. Granted, I had yet to hear Art Tatum, but still. It was Oscar Peterson who led me to his influences, Art Tatum and Nat King Cole, the pianist. Everybody knows Nat Cole the crooner, but strictly as a pianist, Nat was bad too. And in Oscar Peterson, you could hear them blend, almost like sometimes you can see both parents in a child’s face.

So I guess it’s James Brown and Oscar Peterson week.

“Christmas Spirit,” whatever that is, to the curb, this will be the first anniversary of James Brown’s transition. To commemorate, from this Saturday until next will be James Brown week, both here on Stereo, and in real life. To get us started, here’s a good JB Playlist

Old Landmark
The Boss
If I Ruled The World
Any Day Now
Hot Pants (She Got To Use What She Got To Get What She Wants)
Licking Stick-Licking Stick
There Was A Time (I Got To Move)
Kansas City
Grits
Let A Man Come In And Do The Popcorn
The Payback
The Chicken
Get It Together
Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved
Talkin’ Loud And Sayin’ Nothing
You Mother You
Somebody Done Changed The Lock On My Door
Mind Power

On Friday, I had the opportunity to play the boards as our staff band did a rendition of Bustin Loose in honor of Chuck Brown. I ain’t gon’ lie, I was pretty nervous. Not that he woulda been all able to single me out and say something, but it’s just the point. Bustin Loose is definitely in my 50 favorites, so I would’ve wanted to do it justice if it had just been the students in the audience, but with HIM there? Pssshhhh. But I wasn’t really tryin to crush it, I just wanted to be easy and play my role.

Expanding a little bit, what this really makes me think of is this: I was seriously pressed because the author/composer of a song I really like was there when I played that song, yet it’s sometimes hard to keep that same kind of focus when it comes time to realize that God, the creator of everything, is always there. Hm.

At what point should one act, or set of acts, define a person? I’m thinking specifically of Ike Turner. For the most part, people know Ike as a wife beater. I would even go so far as to say that many people know him primarily as a wife beater, to the exclusion of his prodigious musical talent. All because of that movie.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not sayin that domestic abuse is okay, or downplaying its significance, but I am sayin that Ike the musician doesn’t get the credit that he deserves because all most people know about is Ike the wife beater. Juxtapose that with Miles Davis, who was also known to beat his companions, or James Brown, for that matter. Is Ike more known as a wife beater because he was lesser-known as a musician in the first place, or because the beatings he delivered appeared on the screen and became pop cultural icons?

I stay watchin The Ten Commandments. Especially the 2nd DVD, which is when all the good action takes place, but I like the first DVD too. The best thing about having the DVDs is that I don’t hafta wait until April to see it.

Anyway, a couple thoughts come to mind every single time I watch:

1. It’s a good thing I wasn’t Moses. I like to think I would’ve stood by my people and all that, but to give up being Pharoah to become a slave? Maaannnn….iono. Not to mention having to deal with that dude, Dathan all the time? Uh-uh. That staff would’a split his lip before it split the Red Sea.

2. That scene with the parting of the Red Sea? For its time, that had to be THE BADDEST special effects job of all time. I still think it’s in the top 10, even with all our advanced technology.

3. With all the movie remakes, this is one that should be done with Black folks as the main characters. Even though I have my questions about the historical veracity of Africentricity, I’d go see that 10 Commandments at least 3 times. Especially if it was big-budget enough to really make the parting of the Red Sea look decent.

Who could we cast at which roles?

Sound of the Zeekers @#^**?! – Leaders of the New School
Share Your Love With Me – Aretha Franklin
Bustin’ Loose – Chuck Brown & The Soul Searchers
Drum Song – Earth, Wind, & Fire
Alone Again – The JB’s
Biological Speculation – Funkadelic
I Might As Well Forget About Loving You – Kinsman Dazz
Olinga – Milt Jackson
The Symphony – Marley Marl f. Masta Ace, Craig G, Kool G Rap, and Big Daddy Kane
Harlem River Drive – Bobbi Humphrey
Beauty – Dru Hill
Different Strokes – Syl Johnson
The Wrong House – Dyke and the Blazers
Ordinary Pain – Stevie Wonder
Maybe The Last Time – James Brown (from Say It Live & Loud)
Celebrate – Brass Construction
Anti Love Song – Betty Davis
Dujii – Kool & The Gang
Terri’s Tune (Stay True) – David Axelrod

EPMD vs. OutKast.

Go.

In doing research for a paper, I came across this TREMENDOUS paper, African American Communicative Practices : Improvisation, Semantic License, and Augmentation by Arthur K. Spears. This is exactly my typea thing right here. I’m not gonna jack the whole thing, but this part is just too good to keep to myself. It’s a formalized version of something I kicked around before.

Ass compounds have a semantically bleached ass in them. The ass in these expressions does not refer to the anatomy; its meaning is grammatical rather than lexical. It is a discourse marker, an expressive element explicitly marking a discourse as direct or heightening the poetic and performance character of what is said or both. Unlike pseudo reflexives and pseudo pronouns, ass compounds 1) allow only the word ass, 2) may have inanimate referents, and 3) must be followed by a noun (including selfselves). The following examples illustrate these points:

9. Get all that ugly-ass junk out of here.
Cf. Get all that ugly junk out of here.

10. a * Get all that ugly-butt junk out of here
b *Get all that ugly asshole junk out ofhere
c *Get all that ugly-behind junk out of here
d. *Get all that ugly-eyed junk out of here

Compound ass is semantically abstract and no longer references the body in any literal way. Indeed, that is one reason why it can be used in referring to inanimate objects. It can also be used in cases where the morpheme(s) with which it is compounded cannot refer to buttocks, e.g.,

11. Look at that smart-ass nigga.

Smart is an adjective that cannot refer to buttocks. However, in the case of adjectives that could refer to anatomical ass, there can be ambiguity:

12. Look at that fat ass idiot.

In the example above, I have not inserted a hyphen, which would indicate the use of compound ass. If compound ass were employed, the sentence could indicate that the individual in question is fat, while expressing nothing concerning his or her posterior specifically. Alternatively, the sentence could also refer to the individual’s buttocks (with anatomical ass). The ambiguity, of cours, stems from the fact that fat can describe the whole body or the body part alone.

…

Ass compounds must be followed by a noun, as illustrated alone.

20. a. *John is trifling-ass.
b. *John is bitch-ass.
c. *John is jive-ass.

21. a. *John is a trifling-ass
b. *John is a bitch-ass
c. *John is a jive-ass

Not than an ass compound cannot be grammatical whether it is constructed as an adjective without any determiners (as in Example 20) or as a noun with a determiner (as in example 21). These examples have an actual adjective in the ass compound, but note that in the following examples, ass is compounded with the noun, bitch. Therefore, the syntactic category (part of speech) of the word in the compound does not affect its grammaticality in cases where no noun follows the compound. Ungrammaticality without a following a noun is quite independent of the parts of speech appearing in the compound.

22. a. John is a trifling-ass idiot
b. John is a bitch-ass idiot
c. John is a jive-ass idiot.

There’s more to it, but man! That’s good readin!

Living in DC, it’s been almost impossible to escape hearing about the shooting death of NFL Pro-Bowl safety, Sean Taylor. After seeing what’s happened, I’m pretty sure of two things. 1) If I were a professional athlete, I’m not sure how much I would trust the media, either; and 2) as somebody whose personal business is public knowledge, I’m not sure anybody would be able to keep me from keeping a gun at home.

The Ravens gave the Patriots much more of a game than I thought they would. With their frequently anemic offense, I thought the Pats were just gonna roll over the Ravens. Not so. At the same time, as I was watching that 4th quarter, when Kyle Boller’s coach turned back to a pumpkin and they couldn’t convert on 3rd down, I knew they weren’t gonna make it. I didn’t think it would take as many coincidental circumstances, like Baltimore calling a timeout as they were about to make a stop on 4th down, but once I saw that? I knew it was a wrap. Next up? The Steelers. I think the Stillers could probably put together a game similar to the one the Colts, Eagles, and Ravens did, only I think that if they have a lead late in the 4th, they’ll be able to salt the game away. Ben will convert a 3rd and 2 for the game.

AJ Feeley is what we thought he is. And I still think Donovan’s gone next year. But if the Bears can’t get a consistent running game, I don’t want him going there either.