Beat Authority playlist: 8/29/08

Here's the playlist for today's show.

Remember, you can still send me an answer to win a bachata CD! See the previous entry...

Contest: Bachatamania!

Santo Domingo, capital of the Dominican Republic, is a bold, brashy, "movida" place. People are selling everything at every turn. The preferred mode of transportation is the "carro publico", basically someone's private car, often with bumper and car doors literally held together by string. They're usually operated by two guys - one drives, the other beckons you in from the street, packs you into the car with up to 10 other passengers, and collects the $$. Frequently, the electric guitar of the bachata blares from a tinny stereo. This is my lasting image of a visit to the DR several years.

Bachata Roja: Acoustic Bachata from the Cabaret Era is a compilation that sounds nothing like that grinding, sometimes grating, bachata of the city. It's a country sound, as you can hear in this profile on NPR.

I have a copy to give away! Just e-mail me with the correct answer to this (pretty easy) question:

Bachata is probably the second most popular musical style in the DR, although it's growing fast. What is traditionally considered the national musical style of the DR?

The winner will be the fifth e-mail with the correct answer.

My e-mail is david-at-ncpr-dot-org.

Good luck!

Down the Stretch

Baseball's going deep into the pennant races. Woe are the Yankees.

But gracias a Dios there's Ozomatli to keep our Friday fresh.

A New Zeptember Dawning?

Could there really be new Led Zeppelin songs for Zeptember? Probably not this Zeptember (can you believe it's just four days away? Dust off your vinyl.), but the BBC reports the band is in the studio.

Well, sort of. Jimmy and John Paul? Presente! Son of John? Presente! Robert? Robert? Robert?

It's not easy being Robert Plant.

Hat tip to dedicated BA listeners, Carol Sue in Philly and Jilly P in Baltimore, for the heads up.

Beck on NPR

Very nice, human interview with Beck on Morning Edition this am. Odelay is one of my favorite albums of the 1990s, and still stands the test of time enormously well. It also has one of the best album covers ever.

I've been playing the new one, Modern Guilt, on the Beat Authority lately. I'm warming up to it. It's more angular, less funky than some of his earlier stuff. Still dense, thanks to production by Danger Mouse (of Gnarls Barkley fame), but I miss those little bits and pieces of samples/found sound that made Odelay such a pleasure to listen to.

Election 2008: Big Boi v. Daddy Yankee

My plan this weekend was to write about Obama and the hip-hop community. How he must already have the record for Shout-outs to Elected Officeholder. How people like Big Boi and Mary J. Blige (in "Sumthin' Gotta Give", which I played last Friday) see Obama as their first hope in presidential politics in a very long time, if not the first time...

Single mother in a struggle and it's no fun. But you don't really understand until you are one. A child's hide and seek game is losing it's endurance, she want to fix it but she 'aint got no insurance. Now we don't even want to talk about the man's plight. Out on parol with the promise that he'll do right. But a felon has no chance for a new start. So it's back to doing hand to hand on his own plight. That night went all the same, and I know you feel my pain. And the only hope I have to help me deal with the Drama, is that baby in November I'll be cheering for Obama. - Mary J. Blige

And remember how Russell Simmons criticized Obama for taking aim on hip-hop's shadier lyrics? Now hip-hoppers at the Democratic convention in Denver are sporting Obama T-shirts instead of Tupac or Biggie. Hombre, even Obama has his own reggaeton song (which you can download for free here).

So I was thinking about writing about all this. And then, I was thinking, how to balance this with the Beat-Authority-esque community for McCain? Damn, tough one, right?

NO! Daddy Yankee comes through! El Big Boss endorsed "Juan" McCain today in Phoenix. I have to say, it is amazing that reggaeton stars can actually endorse presidential candidates.

Como a Juan MC le gusta la gasolina!

Beat Authority playlist: 8/22/08

I didn't like the way the playlist looks on the page when I posted last week, so I think I'd rather link to it from here on out. Here 'tis.

Levez-vous!

Doesn't take long for James to bring the francophones to their feet. I think the subtitles helped.



Use this entry to post comments about today's Beat Authority, coming up in less than an hour...

Succulent studio time

I know a lot of artists listen to the Beat Authority while they're working in their studios. Thought you might be interested in this very cool multimedia presentation from NPR. It features one warehouse in DC that's filled with artists' studios. You click on each window of the building for a different artists' story. Kudos to NPR Online for the slick work. And kudos to the artist in the top right window, Andrea Haffner, a dear friend from college!

Behind the Curve

In the "I'm not cool as all that" category, great tip from listener Eliza for this bit... You have to look for season 5's episode 11 (Jan 15, 2008) "Mercer: Last guy to get his own blog".

I'm only half a year after Mercer. Not bad.

Beat Authority playlist: 8/15/08

Artist Dave Cortez vs. DJ Format	Song Happy Soul With a Hook	Album I Like It Like That	Year 2008	Label Fania
Pistolera	Nuevos Ojos	En este Camino	2008	Luchadora
Gnarls Barkley	Going On	The Odd Couple	2008	Downtown
Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah band	Sunshower	Going Places: The August Darnall years (1976-1983)	2008	Strut
Forro in the Dark	Chororo	Dia de Roda EP	2008	Nublu
Casxio	Seventeen	Four Songs by Casxio EP	2008	Casxio.com
Issa Bagayogo	Dibi	Mali Koura	2008	Six Degrees
Orlando Conga	Se Me Fue	Single	??	??
Torpedo Boyz	Around Da Corner	Cum on Feel the Boyz	2008	Sounds From the Roof
Michael Franti & Spearhead	A Little Bit of Riddim	All rebel Rockers	2008	Anti-
Nortec Collective	Mama Loves Nortec	Tijuana Sound Machine	2008	Nacional
Jackson Conti	Amazon Stroll	Sujinho	2008	Mochilla
Shirati Jazz	Dr. Binol	World Circuit Presents…	2006	World Circuit
Jackson 5 vs. Z-Trip	I Want You Back	Motown Remixed	2005	Motown
Digital Underground	Underwater Rimes	Sex Packets	1990	Tommy Boy
Fred Wesley & the JBs	Watermelon Man	Funky Good Time	1995	Polydor
Bossacucanova	Eu Quiero Um Samba	Traveler ‘06	2006	Six Degrees
Yoshida Brothers	A Hill With No name	Best of…	2008	Domo
Bajofondo	Infiltrado	Mardulce	2008	Surco
Alla	Golpes de Sol	Es Tiempo	2008	Crammed

Podcast spotlight: Global Hit

The lion's share of my radio life has been lived in the digital age. I'm way more comfortable with multi-tracks than a razor and tape. But my very first job in public radio entailed producing and mixing a series of profiles of jazz musicians. I had a mixing board, a couple CD players, and three reel-to-reel machines. Mixing down the narration, music samples, and interviews with artists was a frenetic dance with the audio devil. I'd break a sweat jumping from machine to machine, cuing the tracks, riding the faders, all the while following along on the script like a haggard third violinist for a two-bit orchestra. One mistake...and I started from the top.

So it makes what dubbers in the 1960s did in Jamaica so amazing to me. Dub was created by looping tracks one on top of another, then rapping over it. If you messed up, you had to start over. DJ Spooky explains it in a tremendous story about Jamaican dub by The World's Marco Werman. Werman's the guy who's managed to feature a different artist or musical happening somewhere in the world every weekday now for years on his feature, Global Hit.

I get tons of leads for new music from the Global Hit. I listen daily to the podcast. Do yourself a favor and do the same. You won't be disappointed.

Taco Bell Offers $$$ for 50 Cent to Become 89 Cent

I don't think a day goes by when I don't try to think up my own Onion headlines. Thing is, this one's for real.

A World of His Own

Have you ever checked out Kanye West's website? The NYT mentioned it Sunday in an article about musicians bloggin straight to the public. Slicker than toast, with the cool animation from the "Graduation" record, and everything from a discount travel site to blog posts about ecologically-friendly tables.

Better. Faster. Stronger.

Chocolate Salty Balls

Will Isaac Hayes be remembered as Hot Buttered Soul singer #1? Or a baritone, not-so-subtly sex crazed, soul food dishing cartoon character? Guess it depends on how old you are. Either way, rock the shmoove sounds of Isaac Hayes today and remember a soulful life.

Shocking the Digital Monkey

Last week, I wrote about Peter Gabriel's new project to sell high-quality music downloads online. Today the NYT fills out the story with an article about his growing digital empire. Nice factoid: 1982's "Shock the Monkey", a song I loved, was one of the first completely digital recordings. Not bad for a guy who used to dress like this.

Podcast spotlight: Gilles Peterson

Gilles Peterson is a crate-digger extraordinaire from London who drops jazzy beats from the studios of the BBC and in clubs all over the place. Recently, he's curated remixes from the Fania Records catalog, THE salsa sound from New York City in the 1970s. I'll be playing some of that on today's show.

Gilles also hosts a pretty regular podcast. He interviews musicians and producers, most of them inside the cutting-edge beat-creating industry he's a part of. It's a great listen to eavesdrop into a conversation between two artists discussing their craft. And Gilles is careful to play a heavy dose of the music, too. Occasionally the talk can drone on a bit, but you can always fast-forward through it to the music.

The latest to make its way to my iPod (sidenote: this is the cool thing about podcasts. Once you subscribe, little audio gifts make their way directly to your computer, regularly, without you having to do much more than open up your podcasting app, like iTunes) is an interview with Soundway Records owner, Miles Cleret. He combs the four corners of the world for undiscovered artists, from Nigeria to Colombia to Panama. The music and conversation on this podcast were truly a treat...Cleret played some cuts he has yet to release, including one from a band called Keyboard, a soul-funk joint from Lagos, Nigeria, which I'll play on the show today.

If you want to learn how to podcast, check out NCPR's podcasting primer.

If MP3s Could Kill They Probably Will

NCPR's Sound-Daddy #1, Joel Hurd (cool video, Joel!), is going to hate this post.

I'm the anti-sound geek. If it sounds good enough to not bother or distract me, I'm fine. This is probably the product of the "get-the-news-to-air" mentality of reporting. I occasionally use cell phone interviews in my news stories, record my voice tracks in my echoey kitchen late at night, use sound stuttered with blowing wind -- if it'll help me tell the story and get it out quickly to listeners. I try my best to get good sound, but hey, sometimes you just gotta deal. On the Beat Authority, I use my iPod to play lots of songs - can you tell the difference between that and a CD? Joel and Radio Bob say they can.

Peter Gabriel, who, aside from his own musical credentials, owns the groundbreaking world music label Real World, is not happy with the MP3 downloadable world. From an e-newsletter he sent out:

One of the things that's frustrating about the digital revolution of which I am a huge fan is that the audio quality has taken a giant step backwards. A lot of what we hear on iPods and so on is super-compressed and people have got used to this. For those of us who have really worked hard to get things to sound good and full and rich and build landscapes out of sound, it's very frustrating, so I'm very happy that with these Music Club releases are going to be without compression and full quality." Peter Gabriel

He's talking about a collaboration between Real World and B&W Music Club to distribute loss-less audio files of his releases.

Apple launched a similar effort to release higher quality audio files awhile back, too.

Are you an audiophile? A technophile or -phobe? In the digital age, do you care about the quality of your music files? What will your iPod songs sound like 20 years from now? Peter Gabriel's betting you care.

On baseball and beats

I'm a huge baseball fan. A Yankees fan by birth. Blogs have truly changed the sport for fans. (Check out this story I did for NPR on this.)

My favorite Yankees blog is Bronx Banter. My man, Alex Belth, is a tremendous writer, but what makes BB really work is he mixes in his other passions into the baseball mix. I've never met the guy, but I know he's an old school hip hop fan, worked for the Coen Brothers at one point, loves sports journalism, and has a keen eye for New York City street life and food.

Over the weekend he posted a YouTube video of Digital Underground's "Humpty Dance". Aww, yeah, one of the bumpinest jams of the 90s. DU's Shock G had a unique combo of sillyness, sleaziness, and just plain shmoove rapping that made the group special, especially on "Sex Packets" and "Sons of the P". Plus they idolized of George Clinton and Parliament/ Funkadelic, and brought those phat bass lines into their music.

"Humpty Dance" has one hysterical line after another. Check it. And hat tip to Alex B. at Bronx Banter.

Any Dead Is on the One? (UPDATE w/ winner)

The Dark Star Orchestra is not just any Grateful Dead cover band. They actually recreate an entire Dead show, song by song, set by set - drums, space, and encore included - every time they play a show. You can hear them do it in person at the Mountain Music Meltdown in Saranac Lake August 9-10.

As you'll hear on the show today, you'll have a chance to win a pair of tickets if you submit a comment to this question:

What is the FUNKIEST Grateful Dead song? Not your favorite, not the one that holds a soft spot in your heart. Be disciplined. And stay true to the funk.

Submit a comment with your answer...and please include an e-mail address so I can contact you.

UPDATE: I think the tickets go to Dylan Van Cott, so he can take his Dad! Dylan, I hope you read this. Please e-mail me at david@ncpr.org, so I can get in touch with you...