As reported  by the BBC the popular torrent-sharing network OiNK has been shut down in a joint operation by the British and Dutch police. The home of a 24-year-old IT worker from Middlesbrough, England  plus his father's home were raided, as was his place of employment. Meanwhile OiNK's Amsterdam based  servers were also seized by the Dutch authorities. The BBC report speculated that OiNK was responsible for leaking 60 major pre-release albums this year to date and many stateside fans, that flooded message boards today, speculated that it was because of the more mainstream artists available on the network that led to the popular and high-fidelity network being busted.

According to  the BBC report the IT worker, allegedly the mastermind of the operation, "is being questioned on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and infringement of copyright law."  As explained in a report on the bust by PitchForkMedia OiNK was an invitation-only service in which "membership was maintained by
the consistent sharing of new music torrents. The more tunes you uploaded, the better your standing. Monetary donations were also encouraged."



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Rest in peace to Italian-American Napa Valley resident Vincent DeDomenico who was the inventor of the "San Francisco treat"  RIce-A-Roni and who died in his sleep last Thursday at age 92. But DeDomenico's legacy will live on forever and Rice-A-Roni is something that will always be synonymous with cable cars and San Francisco, California. Vincent was born in San Francisco in 1915 to Sicily, Italian immigrants who had moved to California and set up the family business in San Francisco's Mission District - the very successful Gragnano Products, Inc which supplied pasta to Italian stores and restaurants all around San Francisco and which by the mid 1930's changed its name  to the Golden Grain Macaroni Company.  A couple of decades later the invention of Rice-A-Roni would come about when in 1958, apparently inspired by the pilaf recipe of mxing rice and macaroni with some chicken broth,  Vincent mixed all the ingrediants together dry: rice and macaroni plus a dry chicken soup mix and voila "The San Francisco Treat" (its registered trademark) was born. Within four years Rice-A-Roni went national and just took off from there. By the 1960's it had become a cooking staple of US households and is still extremely popular to this day.  In 1986 the Quaker Oats Company purchased the family business from the Golden Grain Company and has continued to expand its product line.

The catchy Rice-A-Roni advertising jingle is one that everyone seems to know and has become synonymous with the City by the Bay - especially to outsiders/tourists - because it repeatedly identifies with San Francisco imagery (including the sound of cable car bells).  Additionally the jingle has been sampled in many hip-hop releases and also the words "Rice-A-Roni" have been included in rap lyrics by both Bay Area and non Bay rap artists.  Some rap songs over the years  that have included the words "rice-a-roni" in their lyrics include Timbaland And Magoo's  "Up Jumps Da Boogie" from Welcome To Our World  featuring Missy when Magoo raps " Eating Rice-A-Roni with Toni Toni Tone/Keep Cindy Crawford, to me she's to boney" and by the 2Live Crew in their take on Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman"  (the one that got Luther Campbell in a high profile lawsuit) with the lyrics  Ya know what I'm saying you look better than rice a roni. 

The image to the left is the album cover art from the soundtrack to the film "Juice" that starred Tupac Shakur as the crazy & wild, revolver-carrying character Bishop (one of a group of Harlem teenagers) and - at the time of its release in 1992 - stirred up quite a controversy over said gun in the artwork that was also used in the movie's advertising campaign.  I remember back then, as you probably do too, seeing in magazines, on big billboards and also AC Transit buses driving by - advertising for the film with the image identical to the one left with a gun-toting Pac.  But soon-after a heated controversy arose over the inclusion of the gun in the movie poster   the artwork was altered - with the gun being airbrushed out of the image altogether.

The whole controversy over the Juice advertising campaign was instigated by reporter Anita Busch at the Hollywood Reporter  when she wrote a critical article about Paramount Pictures'  advertising campaign for the movie which, she wrote, some people feared would lead  to violence around the movie theaters. The article triggered a landslide of bad publicity, which in turn triggered fear, that ultimately led to the studios/producers of the film to alter the artwork and remove the gun (a revolver) from all movie related materials - as in the DVD cover art opposite right.  

Among shocked rap fans at the time (myself included) the feeling was that it was a bullshit censorship move; with the real irony being that Hollywood was not airbrushing out guns from other (non rap related) movies.  Clearly it came off at the time as a double-standard targeted at black youth and at a music that was prone to controversy - this being the time of Ice T's "Cop Killer" and other hot-button controversies.  In fact just a year earlier Vice President Dan Quayle used his high-profile position to slam Tupac's  first album, "2Pacalypse Now.  "There is absolutely no reason for a record like this to be published … It has no place in our society." was what Quayle said at the time of the rap album by the former Digital Underground member.

Last night (10/19) I went to check out Z-Trip, who sold out Studio B in Brooklyn during busy CMJ week, and the DJ totally rocked it. As with his San Francisco concert a couple of months back at the Independent he again broke out the drum kit and between DJ'ing played some mean drums on the full drum kit - with a set,  in the true Z-Trip tradition, that was as much (if not more) classic rock than  hip-hop  including his  ever popular rendition of Rush's Tom Sawyer remix (included on the recent Z-Trip All Pro Soundtrack- Decon) .

But the classic rock track that Z-Trip dug up and remixed live for the energetic twenty-something crowd that got everyone going the most crazy was Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody  - which got everyone going audibly wild to the point that it was like he was breaking out the hottest new record of the moment ; amazing considering the Freddie Mercury-penned song was released (on the 1975 album A Night At The Opera) before most in the house were even born.  Of course the song never really went away - constantly popping up in pop culture including back in the 90's in Wayne's World and on jukeboxes and radio stations to this day. 

Bohemian Rhapsody is a truly brilliant piece of music: one that can transcend time and genres and always remain fresh sounding - even if it is the Manualist doing his (fart sounding) microphone rigged sweaty-hand version (below along with Waynes World plus  an a capella rendition by the UC Men's Octet. 

R.I.P. to reggae great and South African musician Lucky Dube who yesterday evening around 8:20PM (October 18rh) was gunned down and killed, reportedly in front of his own kids, in  the Johannesburg, SA suburb of Rosettenville.  Police are calling the murder part of  a botched hijacking in which the artist was reportedly dropping off his son and daughter at another family member's home.   Reportedly two gunmen approached Dube's car and opened fire killing the artist but not harming his children - both who apparently had already just exited the vehicle, then running to get help after witnessing the shooting from afar.

Lucky Dube was one of South Africa's most successful reggae recording artists and started out his career doing traditional African Zulu music as a Mbaqanga  artist in the eighties before switching up and doing reggae music fulltime.  Lucky Dube, whose rich catalog includes 21 albums - both Mbaqanga  and reggae including last year's reggae album "Respect" , was only 43 years old and is survived by seven children and his wife Zanele. His full name was Lucky Philip Dube (pronounced doobay) and his mother named him Lucky apparently because he was born in poor health, yet survived.