Earlier this week upon hearing the news involving the highly emotional but equally ridiculous actions of hip-hopper Papoose, the fiancé of jailed rapper Remy Ma, the voice of Dr. Phil popped into my head and I could just hear the TV psychologist uttering his trademark words to the "Mix Tape King" Papoose: "What were you thinking?" 

Really though! On Monday when he was scheduled to wed his lady behind bars, Papoose (born Shamele Mackie) attempted to sneak a skeleton handcuff key into Rikers Island where he was headed to the New York City jail's altar.

Once guards found the key on him he got ejected from Rikers and banned from the facility for six months.  What a dummy!  Everyone (especially gangsta rap aficionados) should know that whenever you go visit someone in jail or prison that they search you thoroughly from head to toe, and often beyond. What were you thinking, Papoose? 

And if that ain't enough, then the following day when Remy Ma (born Reminisce Smith), who was arrested for last summer outside a downtown NYC club allegedly shooting her former friend Makeda Barnes-Joseph (who she said robbed $3000 cash out of her purse), got sentenced in the New York Supreme Court to eight years in prison, Papoose was in the (court) house and was not happy. "Fuck you. Put me in jail muthafuckers!" and "Lock me up! Fuckin lock me up" were among the impassioned wishes the visibly emotional Papoose shouted towards court officers upon Remy's sentencing.

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With gas prices going through the roof and environmental issues on the rise in most peoples' minds, riding one's bike to work/school/store etc. now makes more sense than ever.

And as you probably already know, this month is 'bike month,' with this week (May 12 - May 16th) being bike-to-work week with different regions recognizing different days as "bike to work day" this week. Today (May 16th) is bike to work day in New York City.

Yesterday, Thursday May 15th, was the official ride-to-work-day in many other places, including San Francisco, where many people cycled to and from their respective places of employment with many coordinated events taking place.  One such event was organized by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, who yesterday had their Bike Away from Work Party centered at The Rickshaw Stop, where bikers on their commute home could stop and unwind (they even had valet bike parking provided) and share stories and biking tips with fellow cyclists.

But really any day is a good day to ride a bike (with helmet of course). It is healthy and cheap and even if you work or go to school an impossible cycling distance from your home you can always cycle part of the way and either A) lock up your bike where you board a bus or train or B) bring the bike with you on the bus or train or C) throw the bike in the back of your car, drive most of the long distance, and cycle the last few miles to your destination. One interesting statistic posted this week by the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition on their website is that almost 40% of Bay Area commuters live within five miles of their workplace -- which is the ideal distance for a bicycle commute. 

The fine organization Walk Oakland Bike Oakland (WOBO) is meeting up at 6PM today (May 16th) at Mama Buzz Cafe at 2318 Telegraph Avenue in Oakland for an all-volunteer bicycle and pedestrian advocacy group with music and beverages and lots of information on bike and pedestrian projects in Oakland.  Meanwhile, up in Seattle, today Starbucks (who, remember, were once a small hometown coffee business in the north west town) are organizing a bike to work day today (May 16th)  Info
For information on other bike events this month in places in and beyond California, check out the League of American Bicyclists website.  Meanwhile, the Bike Month NYC group is really well organized with lots of great events -- you can find more info here.

Reading about East L.A. punk while in high school was inspiration. I had known about Los Lobos and knew about the 60’s Chicano bands like El Chicano and Tierra. However, these punk bands were Chicanos and around my age, playing music that I was into. It made me feel less like a freak to know there were others just like me somewhere in the barrios of East Los Angeles. Hippies wanted to move to San Francisco, rockers to the Sunset Strip and I wanted to move to East L.A.

On Saturday, The Claremont Museum of Art will present Vexing: Female Voices from East LA Punk, which will run from May 18 to August 31, 2008. There will be live performances by Vexing artists Teresa Covarrubias (Lead Singer from The Brat) Angela Vogel, Lysa Flores and Alice Bag. I have been looking forward to this exhibit since I heard about it a few months back. The women that are featured in this exhibit were the pioneers of a thriving women's art movement that is happening now in East L.A.

2008 has been turning out to be the year for Retro-Chicano art. LACMA’s Phantom Sightings: Art After The Chicano Movement is currently showing and starting June 15th, LACMA will also feature Los Angelenos/Chicano Painters of L.A.: Selections from the Cheech Marin Collection.

I found some great articles on East L.A. Punk, Vex era and Beyond. The first one is written by Josh Kun and is the story of the Vex. The second one comes from Jimmy Alvarado, who wrote about the history of all the EAST L.A. punk bands that not many have heard about. In this article originally written for Razorcake Magazine. Jimmy covers the minions of pre and post Vex bands as well as all the backyard party giants that were huge in the East Los backyard scene.

Ahhh, my favorite LP oddity. The Mercury/Wing/Emarcy shellac ghosting effect. It seems that something in the printing process that this family of labels used for their 50's sleeves lent itself to clouding up underneath the shellac. You occasionally see it on other releases, but most often it's the Mercury and related LP's that have the best "ghosting."  Truly stunning!

I have been really obsessed with My Morning Jacket lately. We still have a couple weeks to wait for the new album, but I get more and more excited as the weeks go on. I picked up most of their albums last year after I got obsessed with them, and it was all because of that little Bob Dylan movie called I'm Not There. It just came out on DVD last week and I really recommend that you check it out if you have not done so yet. Most people who have seen it either love it or hate it -- there is not much in between. I really loved it, which says a a lot since I am not really a big fan of Bob Dylan. I respect the man and am glad that he exists and I understand his effect on millions of people, he is just not really my kind of musician. But I am a big fan of the biopic. Maybe I am just too lazy to read that many books, but I love learning about musicians lives and seeing their stories up on the big screen, even if it is just narrowly based on some sort of reality. But the movie did really get me into My Morning Jacket, which is great. I always worry that I have already discovered and gotten into all the bands that I am going to like. I know that there will always be young new bands that I like, but it is just a different feeling to find some band that has already been around for 5 or 10 years. I don't really feel like I should of liked them earlier. I don't feel embarrassed or get mad at myself that I didn't like them right away. There are simply too many bands out there to like them all at once. I listen to a lot of music but still do not have the time to devote to everything that I might like. Some bands fall through the cracks, but it almost makes it more exciting to go back and explore their old albums. It is sort of like intentionally missing a whole season of a TV show just so you can look forward to watching the entire thing when it comes out on DVD. The anticipation somehow makes it better.

The Black Angels are another one of those bands. Their second album comes out this week. It is called Directions to See a Ghost. I didn't really intentionally wait until now to listen to them. It just sort of happened that way. I can't really remember if I ever listened to their first album Passover which came out in 2006. It may have been playing at work when I was in the room but I don't remember paying attention or ever intentionally listening to them, so I was not really expecting to like this new album when I put it on a couple of weeks ago. I just had it in my head that they were a band that I was not going to like. I really was surprised and was immediately a brand new fan of The Black Angles. They had quickly converted me by the second song on the album. It is always a little humorous to me when you first get into a band, because I really knew nothing about them. I knew they were somewhat popular but didn't really know anyone personally who was a fan. I knew they were on the label Light in the Attic, but that was about it. I had never seen pictures of the band and I had no idea they were from Texas-- and by the time I was done listening to this new album, I was convinced the lead singer was a woman. It really was not a very typically feminine voice but I still pictured a woman singing all the songs. I thought her voice was really unique and sort of dark and deep. I didn't really ever question myself and think that it might be a man. Of course, I was wrong. I had to go watch some videos and actually see Alex Mass singing to be fully convinced that he was indeed a man. It sort of makes more sense now.

This Nakba Day (which means "Day of the Catastrophe") marks the 60th anniversary of the Palestinian people's expulsion and dispossession of their homelands. According to the UN, an estimated 711,000 Palestinians fled their homes and 160,000 stayed behind to become internal refugees in the newly formed state of Israel.



Situated at one of those great crossroads of civilizations, the Palestinian populace reflects the diverse cultural imprint in their ancient ancestors. Genetic evidence shows the Palestinians are descended from Amorites, Anatolians, Arabs, Arameans, Canaanites, Edomites, European crusaders, Hebrews, Jebusites, Lydian Greeks, Philistines and Romans. They practice various faiths like Christianity, Druze, and Islam. When Ahmad Sa'adat, the leader of the PFLP (Popular Front For the Liberation of Palestine) was arrested, the news described his organization as "Islamic Fundamentalists" even though it is secular, Marxist-Leninist and was created by George Habbash, a Palestinian Christian.



In 1919, the First Palestinian Congress issued a statement opposing Zionist immigration but, when speaking of the 10,000 Jews already in Palestine, they stated "they are as we are, and their loyalties are our own."



Even though the Palestinian majority was displaced 60 years ago, the issue remains unresolved. Desmond Tutu, Jimmy Carter and Nelson Mandela have referred to Israel as an apartheid state.

Contrary to popular belief, Mickey Mouse’s film debut was not in Steamboat Willie which was released in November 1928. 80 years ago today, May 15, 1928, the world was introduced to Mickey and Minnie Mouse as they made their first appearance in the silent cartoon short Plane Crazy. In the cartoon Micky tries to become an aviator to impress Minnie-- Charles Lindbergh he is not. Plane Crazy was co-directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, with Iwerks working as the chief animator, a responsibility he would have for all of the early Disney cartoons released in 1928 and ‘29. Who knew by this modest, unassumingly innocent beginning Mickey Mouse would one day rule the world with an iron-fist in a velvet glove!

The Chairman of the Board, ol’ Blue Eyes, the Voice, King of the Rat Pack, King of the Bobby-Sockers, The Pope, The Leader, The Swooner-- there are a lot of nicknames for Frank Sinatra, perhaps the greatest pop star of the 20th century. And ten years ago today, Frankie went to the Big Casino in the sky.

Sinatra had quite a philosophy about life and a set of intricate rules that may seem a bit brash, but hey -- it's Sinatra baby! And like his style, he believed that a living big is in the details. Here are some of the great man’s creeds:

Top your martini with not one, but two olives, and give one to a friend. Yes, a very special friend-- even if you don’t know his/her name.

For flavors in your drink to blend sufficiently, let the ice sink to the bottom of your glass and never, ever drink a drink immediately after its poured-- relax, take your time, enjoy the moment.

Tip big and tip quietly-- fold the bills three times into small squares and pass them in a handshake. Nothing further is needed, no acknowledgment, no glance, no wink-- you’ve already said it all.

Don't wear a brown suit at night, dark gray is better, and better than gray, black. And if black tie is optional, you wear black tie. The only exception to this rule; never wear a tuxedo on Sunday.

“Have fun with everything” was one of his mottoes. Live every moment as it if were your last, and remember, too much thinking isn't necessarily a good thing. “You only live once,'' he liked to say, “and the way I live, once is enough.”

Here above and below are previews from a couple of new DVD documentaries on the topic of Bay Area street culture with an emphasis on rap music (namely hyphy), cars, dance, drugs, fashion etc..  Above is a clip from the forthcoming ILL Trendz production The Un-Told Story which focuses on Oakland, CA and features interviews with the likes of Too $hort, Richie Rich, E40, and Davey D.  Meanwhile below is a clip from the new Ghostride The Whip: The Story of the Hyphy Movement which features many of the major playas from the Bay and is directed by DJ Vlad (Bay Area mixtape master who moved to NYC few years ago) and is executive produced by Peter Spirer (Rhyme & Reason, Tupac Shakur: Thug Angel).

No, we're not talking Fausto Papetti here (uh, he's the "Sax Symbol" to those of us in the know).  This gallery is nothin' but skyclad lads from way back- when hanging around in the nude with your bandmate brethren was a way of life...Maybe all those bar bands that clog up the east side of Sunset should start up with this theme for their album covers, being that the four faces mingling (ala Love) thing is kinda way past its prime. I can see it now, nude bearded guys with poorly chosen fedoras hanging around a fire on a hillside. Behold the future retro...

San Francisco band Vetiver's latest album, consisting entirely of hand-selected covers, Thing of the Past, will be released today, May 13!  I spoke to frontman Andy Cabic about the recording of the album, the frustration of his first guitar, and his new obsession with the mushrooms in his backyard.


M.E:  What is your first musical memory?

Andy Cabic:  I have an odd memory of a large sunlit room with light hardwood floors, very reflective and bright, and a there being a step in front of me, and as I'm crawling towards it, Buddy Holly's "That'll Be The Day" is playing.  I grew up listening to a lot of Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers and stuff like that, so...it's possible this was an early apartment of my parents’ or something, I'm not really sure.  It's one of those weird memories that feels like a dream and I'm not really certain of anything solid about it except for its strength in my mind and how vivid the light and the scene are when I remember it.
 
M.E:  What was the first record that really blew your mind and made you think about making music your life?  What albums formed your young musical mind?

Well, I don't know that any one record made me come to a decision to make music my life.  I just sort of played music, and looked back one day and realized music had become my life and there wasn't a whole lot else I seemed able to do.  Whoops!

 "I work in the gap between art  
    and life."
             -Robert Rauschenberg

As reported in several online outlets this morning, including on the NY Times' website, American artist  Robert Rauschenberg, who helped shape the face of 20th century art, died last night (May 12) at age 82. 

Always prolific and diverse, the Texas born artist worked in numerous mediums throughout his career. He was a  painter, sculptor,  photographer, choreographer, printmaker, stage performer, set designer, and even a composer.

"I think a painting is more like the real world if it's made out of the real world,"  Rauschenberg once said.  He was hailed by London's. Sunday Telegraph early in his career as “The most important American artist since Jackson Pollock."

Perhaps most importantly, Rauschenberg was instrumental in guiding the direction of American art out of Abstract Expressionism, the prevailing art movement in the beginning of the 1950's, when he first emerged.  As accurately noted by the New York Times, he built on "the legacies of Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Cornell and others, he thereby helped to obscure the lines between painting and sculpture, painting and photography, photography and printmaking, sculpture and photography, sculpture and dance, sculpture and technology, technology and performance art — not to mention between art and life."

Twenty years ago today, May 13th, 1988, legendary west coast jazz trumpet player, silky vocalist (has anyone ever sung "My Funny Valentine" better?), and once gorgeous bad boy, Chet Baker, fell to his death in Amsterdam from his hotel room window. Of course, there has been a wide variety of conspiracy theories and speculation regarding the odd nature of his death. Because Baker’s life was so full of mysterious and scandalous details, a life full of intrigue and questions, why shouldn’t his death have a similar story line? I guess there is a possibility of some vendetta at play here-- at least once before in the mid 1960’s he had his teeth knocked out over a drug deal gone awry, why couldn’t another drug dealer, years later, just shove the poor son of a bitch out a window? Well, there were no signs of a struggle in his hotel room and the door was locked from the inside. Then could it have been suicide? Doubtful-- there wasn’t a note, and any person determined to kill themselves probably would have rented a room higher than two stories above the sidewalk. Sadly, Chet's death was an odd, common place accident; it’s just one of those way people accidentally meet their maker. Chet Baker simply fell out of a window. There was heroin in his system, and a considerable amount of cocaine and heroin in his room. He probably went to open the window, and simply leaned a little too far west, and lost his balance. Anyway, it’s been two decades since his death. Right now I have Chet Baker Sings on the turntable; I’m sipping some good Catholic Irish whiskey, hanging out in my new abode. Everything is perfectly copasetic. Thanks.

Forum Home Video FH79003

As a child I spent many of an hour dumpster diving, trash picking and rummaging where I shouldn’t have been rummaging. In my neighborhood, Wednesday was the night-- trash night. I’d sneak off after dinner in search of treasure, check out all the neighbors' garbage cans, boxes of junk curbside, apartment building dumpsters, and I’d be back home an hour or so later, laden with exotic booty from the world over. My mom would usually yell at me to get my latest cache out of the house, “That crap might have bugs in it, for Christ sakes!” But it wasn’t all infested! In fact, I still have some of that ‘crap,' and some of that dumpster swag still decorates my parents' house.

Over the years I’ve lugged home great pieces of furniture, collectible books, pottery, artwork, glass wear, jewelry, you name it … and once I found something that altered and twisted my thinking forever. I found it right there on Franklin Avenue right down the way from the Shakespeare Bridge in the Los Feliz district in Los Angeles. Stuck to the bottom of an empty trash can was an LP from 1963 on Vanguard Records, Fantasias for Guitar and Banjo by Sandy Bull. Back then I was just an innocently corrupt thirteen year old Catholic school boy, but already on the long path I’m still unraveling today-- that of a musician. I had just started taking guitar lessons, and as could be expected, I was struggling with all the important fundamentals: getting the hang of bar chords, finger picking, playing those newbie-guitar standards like “House of The Rising Sun” and “Knocking on Heaven's Door,” and trying to convince my parents to let me grow my hair long. Anyway, I got home, I threw this Sandy Bull record on the turntable, turned it up and it blew my freakin’ pubescent mind.

                                   


                            




But while Iron Man is undoubtedly simplistic, a light and larky tone carries the movie easily over potential political pitfalls. Stark, a humming dynamo of energy and humour in Downey Jr's delightful performance, is far more appealing that the stodgy, guilt-ridden heroes of Batman and Spider-Man. 
    - excerpt from BBC review          

The world needs another comic book movie like it needs another Bush administration, but if we must have one more (and the Evil Marketing Geniuses at Marvel MegaIndustries will do their utmost to ensure that we always will), Iron Man is a swell one to have.
     - excerpt from Chicago Sun Times review

This could well be the best comic book movie of 2008. Perfect writing, directing, and acting. The casting by director Jon Favreau of Robert Downey Jr. in the lead role was a wise choice.  Lots of action, humor, and the effects, which thankfully are mostly real action rather than computer generated, are incredible. Even the product placement (Burger King) isn't as obnoxious as it could be. Four out of five stars. If you go see it, be sure to wait around til the closing credits roll to a close for a sneak preview of what is to come.
     - excerpt from NY Phil da Thumb's Amoeblog review of  Iron Man.

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To all the mothers, Happy  Mother's Day!  And to all those (including mothers) who might feel that this day, one when flower sales and brunch reservations go through the roof, is way overly commercialized  -- you will appreciate the informative story below titled Mother's Day founder Anna Jarvis opposed to holiday's commercialism. The story was written by John Horton in his Plain Dealer Reporter column in today's Cleveland Plain Dealer (the main daily in Cleveland, Ohio) and was spotted by Amoeba Marc:
 
"Anna Jarvis (left) mothered Mother's Day a century ago. To see what her baby grew into . .. oh, how it would break her heart.  Jarvis despised attempts to commercialize the "holy day" that she launched in 1908
in memory of her mother, Ann. She fought tenaciously until her death to shield Mother's Day from "the hordes of money-schemers" that were hawking flowers, cards and candy.

She didn't exactly hold 'em off. Mother's Day spending on the 100th anniversary of the holiday is expected to reach $15.8 billion in the United States, according to the National Retail Federation. Consumers will spend an average of $138.63 doting on dear old mom during her special day.

Jarvis "is probably spinning in her grave," said Katharine Antolini, a board member and historian for the International Mother's Day Shrine, the church in Grafton, W.Va. That is where the first celebration took place. "What we have today," said Antolini, who grew up in Cuyahoga Falls, "is not what Anna wanted."  Not even close.  Jarvis envisioned a day marked by hymns and prayers.  She called for intimate family gatherings to "revive the dormant love and filial gratitude we owe to those who gave us birth." She wanted the focus and attention on a mother's devotion and sacrifice. It didn't take long, however, before some merchant got the idea of tossing up a SALE sign.  Cha-ching!

If you have read my blogs in the past, you probably noticed I'm a big fan of Cumbia. So low and behold, bubbling in the city of Norwalk of all places, comes a band that sounds like they came straight from Magdalena, Colombia. They are called Buyepongo. Most of the band is very young, yet they have a sound that rivals Cumbia legends such as Andres Landero, Lisadro Meza and Aniceto Molina.

There are many things I love about this band. They are descendants and citizens from Guatamala, El Salvador, Bolivia and Mexico. Still, it seems these guys have Cumbia running through their veins just by the way they play it. It would be easy to mistake Buyepongo for a Colombian band three times their age.

Another thing is that they are a great live band and they write their own songs. I saw them for the first time in a bar in Pasadena on Monday and I could of sworn they were playing obscure Cumbia covers.

And lastly... at last, there is another local Vallenato group that isn't Very Be Careful! I love the VBC, but it's good to have variety and more than one group in L.A. playing this type of music.

I think I mentioned before that I had the good fortune of meeting Joe Strummer a few times. On those occasions we talked about Cumbia and his love for it. I remember turning him on to Very Be Careful and he went gaga over them, so much so that he had VBC open for him during his last L.A. shows. I wish he was around for Buyepongo, he would have dug these guys.

Buyepongo have nothing released yet but you can go to their myspace page to hear some live tracks.