Some may have just recently come to know of DJ Icewater as the tour DJ for the reunited Pharcyde. Others may long know the skilled Los Angeles born, Bay Area based DJ from his countless, always amazing mixtape CDs, which earned him, along with DJ Cobra, the "Mixtape DJ Of The Year" title at the Tech.nitions Conference in 2003. Some might remember him from his time as a Bay Area college radio DJ, be aware of him from his affiliation with the Solesides/Quannum or the Living Legends crews or maybe from his collaboration with such acts as the Bash Brothers, or from having been the live DJ for Shing02.

Some might even know him from the numerous acts he worked with in an audio engineer's capacity, including Lyrics Born, Jern Eye, and Keelay & Zaire. In sum, odds are that if you are a hip-hop fan, you've most likely stumbled up this talented DJ/producer's work somewhere along the way. He has been putting it down since 1995 and nowadays also does video live mixing. Busy juggling several projects, DJ Icewater recently took time out to chop it up with the Amoeblog.

Amoeblog: How and when exactly did you first get into DJing?

Rickey Vincent literally wrote the book on funk. The college professor, writer, and radio DJ, who resides in Berkeley CA with his wife and two sons, is the author of the acclaimed music history book Funk: The Music, the People, and the Rhythm of The One (St. Martin's Press) which won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award. If you don't already have this book, with a forward by George Clinton, I highly recommended it since it is the most comprehensive study on funk.

In addition to being an author & journalist, Vincent has taught at City College of San Francisco and SF State University where he taught a course entitled Protest Music Since 1965: Funk, Rap and the Black Revolution. Rickey is also a longtime Bay Area radio DJ at stations KALX and KPFA, where he still hosts his popular weekly funk show The History of Funk, Fridays at 10PM on 94.1FM.

The widely respected funkateer's musical knowledge (and music collection) is unmatched. I recently caught up with Vincent to talk about the funk/hip-hop connection and the impact of funk and black music in general on both American and global cultures, among other things. The conversation inevitably turned to godfather of soul / funk pioneer James Brown a few times during the interview. 

Vincent is currently finishing up last minute details on his next book Party Music -- a fascinating historical account of the Black Panther Party's own funk band, Oakland's The Lumpen, who took popular funk songs and rhythms but substituted more revolutionary lyrics. (Look for a future interview with him about this upon its publication.) For more information on the author, you can visit Rickey Vincent's website or his MySpace. You can also read his book or check out his show on KPFA.

Somehow longtime author, punk rock drummer, and self-described "punk anthropologist" Aaron Cometbus (born Aaron Elliot) has managed to stay relatively under the mainstream radar while simultaneously gaining great notoriety and deserved respect among underground punk circles for close to three full decades now -- ever since the beginning of the eighties when, barely a teenager, the highly intelligent and gifted Berkeley youth began writing his seminal punk fanzine Cometbus.

He also played music in many bands from a young age. His second band Crimpshrine, in which he played drums, was the pioneering East Bay punk band which had a major impact on the burgeoning East Bay punk scene, up until their demise in '89. Since then Aaron has continued to consistently make music as a member of, literally, dozens of different bands -- most of them short lived groups. Some, such as Pinhead Gunpowder, which he formed with Billie Joe Armstrong and others in the early nineties, still play occasionally. His most recent band is the Thorns of Life which formed a few months ago in Brooklyn and features Blake Schwarzenbach (of Jets to Brazil & Jawbreaker fame) and bassist Daniela Sea (known for her former membership of the Gr'ups and Cypher in the Snow as well as her acting role in the TV show The L Word). The band, who played their first club date ever on Monday at the Hemlock in SF followed a few days later on Thursday last by a "secret show" at Thrillhouse Records with a reported 100 folks squeezed into the small Mission Street retail space., play 924 Gilman tomorrow (Sat. Jan 31st).

Last Monday (Dec 15) was an important day for both Jesse "Luscious" Townley and the City of Berkeley. It was the date when, immediately before the first Rent Board meeting since the November 4th election in which Townley got elected to office, that the punk rocker-turned-politician got sworn in to his new position as City of Berkeley Rent Board Commissioner. One of five elected to this position, Townley stands out because of his rich and colorful background and unprecedented deep rooted commitment to Berkeley and its citizens.

Townley, who migrated to Berkeley from Philadelphia back in 1989, initially came out West to attend the San Francisco Anarchist Gatheriing -- but he liked it so much in Berkeley that he never left. From 1989 to 1990 he published the punk zine Berkeley Sucks. Over the years he has volunteered countless hours at 924 Gilman Street. He has also played on the stage at Gilman as a member of such East Bay punk bands as Blatz, The Gr'ups, The Criminals, and most recently The Frisk (who appeared on the Amoeba Music Compilation series). Over the years Jesse has also gained invaluable experience putting in time at local punk labels. He has worked at both Lookout Records and Alternative Tentacles (where he still works) and for a time, along with his partner Kamala, ran his own label Zafio Records.

Living Legends, the LA based hip-hop collective with their roots in the Bay Area, have long had a strong bond with Amoeba Music, dating way back to the nineties when Amoeba Berkeley was the first record store to believe in them and carry their underground tapes when they were still a (virtually) unknown crew living in a warehouse deep out in East Oakland. Back in those tough early days, in efforts to make ends meet, the struggling artists used to slang their lo-fi cassettes on the streets of the East Bay, publish the simple but entertaining Xeroxed and stapled rapzine Unsigned & Hella Broke (UHB)* and throw Top Rawmen/99cent "survivor" parties at their community living space. These inspired events not only allowed them to practice their craft but served as a necessary way to buy groceries (noodles galore) and scrape together enough money to pay their overdue PG&E bills.

That seems like a long time ago to the Legends, whose membership includes Mystik Journeymen (consisting of Sunspot Jonz & Luckyiam.PSC -- the two main founding Living Legends once simply known as Tommy & Corey), The Grouch, MURS, Scarub, Eligh, Aesop, and Bicasso. Through all the good times and tough times Amoeba Music has always supported the Legends, and in turn the Legends have always shown much love for Amoeba. At a 2006 instore at the Berkeley Amoeba MURS made mention of the fact that Amoeba was the first record store to sell his music.