Veteran Bay Area rapper Too $hort will be one of the five artists honored today, for his contributions to the art form of hip-hop, during music television station VH1's Hip-Hop Honors. The show, which airs tonight (Monday Oct 6th) at 10PM on the cable channel, was taped this past Thursday in New York CIty when the LA born/Oakland rapper, who can be credited (blamed?) for embeddng the B word into hip-hop's vocab,  flew out to NYC for the big awards/performance taping at the Hammerstein Ballroom.

Besides $hort Dog the others lined up to receive awards on tonight''s broadcast are De La Soul, Slick Rick, Cypress Hill, and Naughty By Nature.  All five honorees will perform. So will many others including Wyclef Jean, Lil Jon, Big Boi, Ghostface Killah, Bun B, Q-Tip, MC Lyte, Biz Markie, Busta Rhymes, Chuck D, Flavor Flav, Fat Joe, Cee-Lo, EPMD, Mack 10, Jim Jones, Estelle, rock-rappers Gym Class Heroes, Juelz Santana,  Scarface, and Kid Rock. 

The latter two are expected on-stage during Too $hort's performance. Remember that it was Too $hort who was one of the earliest believers in the artist Kid Rock. He collaborated with young unknown white DJ turned rapper back in 1990 long before anyone really knew who Kid Rock. Around that same time $hort was also instrumental in getting the unknown artist added to the Straight From The Underground Tour bill that featured Yo Yo, Ice Cube, D Nice, and Too $hort.

Also appearing on tonight's hip-hop all star VH1 broadcast, to be hosted by Tracy Morgan, will be Luther Campbell and musician /actress Queen Latifah who did a great job over the weekend on Saturday Night Live's parody on last week's vice-presidential debate in which she played moderator Gwen Ifill opposite Tina Fey's spot-on Sarah Palin and Jason Sudeikis' take on Joe Biden.

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Upon hearing Marvin Santiago’s El Sonero del Pueblo for the first time, I really didn’t know what to make out of it. Marvin’s vocal style is raw, probably too raw for most casual Salsa listeners. But his ability to improvise and to cram every word and syllable in between a choro is hard for anyone to match.  Ruben Blades put it best when describing Marvin Santiago’s style; "Marvin is capable of fitting a Mack truck into a parking space where a Volkswagen Beetle won't fit."  His raspy voice and lyrical improvisational skills are closer to Reggaeton star Tego Calderon than to someone like Eddie Santiago.

El Sonero Del Pueblo (The People’s Sonero, which was also his moniker) originally released in 1985, is a collection of Marvin’s best material that he recorded for the TH Rodven label. His voice, raspy from years of improper vocal training is as Neil Young once put it, “As real as the day was long” The recordings that he made for TH Roven sounds like meters on the recording console are peaking deep in the red. The slightly overdriven sound of the band matches the intensity of Santiago’s voice, which is a good thing. It’s like the Salsa version Black Flag’s The First Four Years. Like that release, El Sonero Del Pueblo is filled with fast songs full of intensity, often layered with humor.

Songs Such as El Pasajero (The Passenger) and Caro Viejo Y Mujer Fea (Old Car And A Ugly Women) were Salsa Dura classics before there was a term for it. On top of that, try to keep up with Marvin’s thick improvised Puerto Rican colloquialisms. This is one for the dance floor as much as for the people that like to sit and enjoy great musicianship and vocal ability.

39 years ago today, light ceased radiating; the World stopped spinning, coughed up a hairball, then turned on its side and attempted to shake loose all the other furry dust berries clinging to its nipple-ly peaks. Fearful of this new creepy darkness, the World tried to catch the tail of a passing comet only to stagger badly and get singed by the fiery interloper.

But seconds before collapsing gloomily into one last catatonic stupor, the World accidentally stepped on the remote control, triggering a channel change and so discovered that there was in fact something worthwhile to watch on television.

October 5^th 1969, Monty Python’s Flying Circus was unleashed onto the airwaves of the BBC … six rather handsome young gents (Terry Jones and Michael Palin from Oxford, Eric Idle, John Cleese and Graham Chapman from Cambridge and American born Terry Gilliam from a little school in Los Angeles called Occidental College) changed history itself by saving the World, and us, from shear utter boredom.