stairway to Cleveland

So I spent last night being a dirty hippie in my front yard, hanging out at my favorite record store, and eating popsicles in a Lakewood living room instead of taking in the dulcet sounds of either Great White or Jefferson Starship with an orchestra of teenagers, which I'm assuming is the only reason why it would sell any tickets at all, unless there's some subset of people that I don't know who really like "We Built This City."

Also, I had no idea this song existed. I find the whole anti-establishment stance amusing given that it exemplifies boomerism at its finest, starting out with some good tuneage and fading into complacency and cocaine selling out while espousing Woodstock Platitudes with ever-worsening coiffurage.

Also I had no idea this song existed. One has to ask, does the stairway go up or down?

new adventures in sound...

I spent the afternoon at the radio station hanging out with fellow people who know way too much about music as we did our music refiling, which to some may sound like drudgery but I'm an academic peon so I'm reasonably comfortable with mundane tasks provided that the company is good and I might run across something interesting.

The music director had me organize the new stuff, where I found lots of things I'm going to have to check out, and then me and one of the other world DJs went to work on our world vinyl, which includes mostly roots reggae, overproduced "world beat" from the 80's but also ancient Babylonian chants, field recordings of pygmy music, and loads of polka music from Nebraska (who knew?).

Many of the countries that these records came from now either don't exist or have different names, so we were debating whether or not we should still label Kashmir, Sikkim, Yugoslavia, and Tibet as their own countries for the sake of continuity or not, and now I know that we do indeed have Somali folk, classical Persian works, and Dutch trucker country music. Seriously. Thanks to my Viking ancestors, some of the titles are relatively easy to figure out. And it sounds about what you'd think it'd sound like.





And yes, I am totally giggling in my apartment at this.

bad music Friday

So along with the Best of the Blotter, this might become a new thing.

The previous DJ before me gets ahold of some pretty bad stuff in his "Make It or Break It" segment and I got to come in to the terrible terribleness that is 50 Tyson, who looks and sounds like if 50 Cent and Mike Tyson had a baby together. And, he's born to be a ballplayer evidently.



Also, for the metalheads and rock and/or rollers, we have possibly the worst Guns & Roses cover ever.



Also, we had a debate earlier this week at work over which song is worse: weigh in on this one please, dear readers...

memoria

This weekend...

Watched the 3rd quarter of the Cavs game with the guys downstairs, got depressed, decided to spend all night painting, found out they won the next morning. Did some basic grocery shopping between the West Side Market and La Boricana, which is the best store ever because they have Coca-Cola in glass bottles, beer from Namibia (that I haven't tried), Goya everything, and foods I don't know how to cook and really good plantains and tamarind candy.

One of the ladies shopping there took a look at the contents of my basket and was surprised that I cook Latin food, and I didn't have the heart to tell her that I really don't know what I'm doing, I just kind of mash everything together until it tastes good.

ESL class was cancelled so we picked up Muk and drove out to Whipps Ledges in Hinckley singing along to the Fugees and had a good time just being out in the middle of nature surrounded by huge rocks and lots of trees and vines that we tried to swing from.





It was such a chill weekend spent with good people... did a Saturday night drive to good tunes after the hiking, friends from Ethiopian church made us amazing food and coffee Sunday night, visited my grandparents, gave a friend of mine a crash course in driver's ed in the empty West Side Market parking lot using cardboard boxes and old beer cans as markers before heading up to Edgewater to walk along the beach. I know Edgewater's dirty and everything but it doesn't bother me at all.

Kent came up to the station this morning to play his demo and hang out and while my setlist is pretty scattershot, it was super fun, and evidently my incessant playing of Amadou & Mariam has won them some new fans. My playlist was too jumbled this morning but I can tell you that I played the Clash, the Pixies, Lupe Fiasco, Beck, and Massive Attack.

Someone at the station discovered this gem, the only album by the All Sports Band, which includes the cut "Turn This Game Around," which we dedicated to Lebron James. It sounds like the cover looks, bad 80's rock with guitar solos and lines like "I'll protect you from evil / with my heart of steel."



Not surprisingly, at least 2 of the band members are from our fair city though this is the first I've heard of them probably because we don't want to own up to this.