Beat Authority playlist: 10/31/08

Happy Halloween!

The Velvety Ones

World music top dawg Banning Eyre reviewed the new Aterciopelados record, "Rio", on All Things Considered a couple nights ago. "Terciopelo" means "velvet" in Spanish, so the band's name basically "velvety ones". It's one of the most appropriate names for a band ever. Andrea Echeverri's voice can only be described as "velvety". I've been playing the new CD the last couple weeks of the Beat Authority. I'll play more on Friday. And if you want to explore their back catalog, "Caribe Atomico", is considered part of the Rock en Espanol canon.

Dig the crate digger

NPR's music site scored big when it enlisted a guy named Egon as a blogger. Egon's general manager of the cutting-edge indy hip-hop label, Stones Throw. It's where Madlib lives with his many projects, and where DJ/producer Rob Swift, funk outfit Breakestra, and late hip hop legend J Dilla released records. Stones Throw was started by hip hop producer Peanut Butter Wolf, who put together what's considered the first DJ-only album, Return of the DJ.

Anyway, it seems every couple of weeks, Egon posts a list of deep, deep tracks, many of which are only on vinyl today. Super fun stuff to listen to: South Korean rock, Brazilian psychedelia, Ethiopian funk, and of course, my favorite, James Brown covers. All must listens. Egon doesn't get a regular page on NPR's site - no RSS feed, either - so you have to search for his latest list. Definitely worth it.

On blogs and James

I've been wrapped up in some other projects and have been a little absent from To the Beat the past couple of weeks so I thought that I'd comment on some of David's recent posts.

I also love that blogs offer the ability cite on the fly with hyperlinks. Add to that the ability to embed media (think of all of the YouTube embeds on this blog) and you clearly have something very attractive. On top of that, they're pretty easy – and cheap, even free – to use, so they've created a complex, multi-media publishing platform that's accessible – for good and bad – to millions, even of people. Blogs seems so commonplace now, a week before election day 2008, that it's easy to forget how revolutionary they are. It's really cool stuff.

But the coolest part of blogging, IMO, are the comments. Think back to a time, long ago, when newspapers were published only in print. A deep thinker, maybe Andrew Sullivan, would write an opinion piece and the next day letters would flood in to the newspaper, commenting on the article. The newspaper would probably choose two or three and print them. End of story. If the article was on a really hot topic, perhaps there'd be a couple of volleys of responses, maybe even, on rare occasions, with the author responding as well. With blogs it can all happen in a flash. The platform is built for dialogue. Nine times out of ten, this is a good thing.

That said, this bozo thinks that blogging is so 2004. He may be right, but I don't think so. I think that what he means is that it's not as easy as it once was to write a blog and get famous. That's probably so, but what's making the internet so much fun in 2008 is that it's allowing hundreds of thousands of subcultures to develop, find an audience, and thrive. It's kind of the same thing with music. Music is cheaper than ever to produce and distribute and as a result many more bands are reaching a wider audience than ever before. Fewer of them are selling more than a million records. I don't think that's a bad thing. I actually think it's pretty good. The music world is getting richer, more multifaceted. Same thing with blogs and journalism. Who knew ten years ago that there was a niche for the musings of a traveling chemist or a novice beekeeper?

But enough about blogs, what about that James Brown, huh? Once again, David's James Brown links have me in awe. He really was bad bad super bad now, wasn't he? Even badder than the baddest bad. And I say that King of Pop's dance steps got nothing on the Godfather of Soul's. Can I get a comment?

Beat Authority playlist: 10/24/08

Celebrating Rocktober, BA-style...

Asi Suena La Frontera

Julieta Venegas and Nortec Collective's Bostich & Fussible opened the MTV Latin America Awards last week with the new sound of greater Aztlan. Julieta looks a little non-plussed, but the phat horns and accordeon are fantasticos...

The Best Music You've Never Heard

The CMJ Music Marathon is on in NYC. The College Music Journal is the trade magazine for college and many public radio stations to find out about (and get free) new music. NCPR sends its playlists to CMJ. Each year, CMJ hosts its big festival for music industry insiders to get a look at the newest talent. 1,100 bands in 5 days. The Times is blogging it. And videos of shows are already showing up on youtube, like newly hot Swede, Lykke Li, singing a Vampire Weekend tune at the Bowery.

The Ontology of Blogs

I learned that word - ontology - in grad school, and I thought it was really funny. It's the study of the nature of being and existence. What a $1 word for a $.01 concept.

Anyway, Andrew Sullivan, very prominent blogger and former editor of The New Republic wrote a treatise entitled, "Why I Blog", in the new edition of The Atlantic. My favorite part is when he talks about the importance of hyperlinks in blog-writing.

But the superficiality masked considerable depth—greater depth, from one perspective, than the traditional media could offer. The reason was a single technological innovation: the hyperlink. An old-school columnist can write 800 brilliant words analyzing or commenting on, say, a new think-tank report or scientific survey. But in reading it on paper, you have to take the columnist’s presentation of the material on faith, or be convinced by a brief quotation (which can always be misleading out of context). Online, a hyperlink to the original source transforms the experience. Yes, a few sentences of bloggy spin may not be as satisfying as a full column, but the ability to read the primary material instantly—in as careful or shallow a fashion as you choose—can add much greater context than anything on paper. Even a blogger’s chosen pull quote, unlike a columnist’s, can be effortlessly checked against the original. Now this innovation, pre-dating blogs but popularized by them, is increasingly central to mainstream journalism.

It was actually Delaney Flushboy, learning to use "the world-wide web" in the early 90s, who explained to me what a hyperlink was. How you can point to something else for reference, clarification, sarcasm, or just plain fun. Hyperlinks are atomic footnotes, something we've never been able to do before in print.

This is what I love most about the internet, and about reading - and writing - blogs. What do you use blogs for? What do you like most/least about them?

Win 10! Pledge now!

Today's the fundraiser edition of The Beat Authority. The show is absolutely unimaginable on commercial radio, especially comm radio in northern New York. Public radio relies on listeners to pay the bills instead of advertisers, so we're freed from many of the programming constraints of our commercial brethren. And so you can hear funk, latin, hip hop, and world music in the North Country weekly - only on North Country Public Radio. In fact, public radio nationwide (just check out KCRW in LA or XPN in Philly or NPR's new music site) has become the home of so many non-pop or -country genres: jazz, hip hop, folk, much indy rock, and definitely world music.

Take a moment to celebrate this special space on the airwaves by giving a little cash to NCPR's fall fundraiser. Here's the link to the pledge page.

And here's the deal: contact us during the Beat Authority (3-4:45pm ET), and you'll be entered in a drawing to win 10 "Beat Authority approved" CDs - Chiwoniso, Issa Bagayogo, Chris Joss, Charanga Cakewalk, Sierra Leone's Refugee All-Stars among them. Definitely on the Good Foot.

The Godfather of Rock Steady

Rock Steady sounds like you'd think it would - slow and steady, the relentless upbeat of the guitar, an easy cadence that spawned reggae. Ska slowed down and sweetened. The music gets its name from Alton Ellis' song, "Get Ready Rock Steady". Ellis died last weekend. In the NYT obit, a fellow musician's quoted as saying Ellis was bigger than Bob Marley in Jamaica. Now that's big. Que en paz descanse, Alton...

Beat Authority playlist: 10/3/08

To Be a Rock (and not a Roll).

Lips Incorporated

If you ask me, the Rolling Stones are the funkiest members of the classic rock canon. (Please weigh in if you disagree.) Not only do they rock, but they always manage to get you dancing too. Zeppelin makes me want to play air guitar -- The Stones make me want to shake my booty. So here's my question for you all -- what is the absolute funkiest Stones song ever?

For those about to rock, we salute you

Most glorious Rocktober greetings to all Beat Authoritarians.
__________________________

When I was in college I had a friend who thought that the lyrics to the Kiss song were "I want to rock and roll all night, and part of every day." Even today I start to laugh out loud when I think of that, I think because it's a plausible lyric, but a very, very unlikely one. Does anyone else have some funny misunderstood lyrics they'd like to share? It'd be fun to create a list for David to read on the show. Rock on.