Nobody Beats The Biz...in all his forms.

He's 24" of funky de-vaporized amazing rapping crowd pleaser. Biz Markie is now posable.

Includes a japanese advert for said posable item:



And for all y'all neophytes:

R.I.P. Arif Mardin

It is really weird, as I went and looked up the UK band Loose Ends on a lark (I was trrying to determine who sang Hanging on a String (Contemplating) after years of never really knowing), which through te convoluted magic of musical online digging I came to Chaka Khan on wikipedia, who then led me to Arif Mardin, a name I am quite familiar with.

Yesterday he had passed away.

Now, outside of the sheer creepiness of the timing, I do have to say it is a sad event. Mardin was a jazz and pop wunderkind producer of sorts. And while I did not like all of the horses he backed (i.e. Jewell, Leo Sayer, Najee) he did some fine work with the aforementioned Khan, Scritti Politti, David Bowie, Hank Crawford, Willie Nelson, and the Drums Unlimited album for Max Roach.

Thanks Arif for all the work.

videos: Jody Watley

I admit I actually was a fan of Jody Watley, both in Shalamar and especially during her early solo releases. She was at the time a much more glamorous and self-assured performer than many of her contemporaries in the then prominent New Jack Swing period. I think she intentionally set herself apart, and it worked.



This video is for Most of All, which while not her most edgy work, as videos go still stands up well. Which is not to say that all of them do, such as:



...which looks and sounds very 1990 in a rather flat way.

From what I hear she has continued to sell well in foreign markets, and is slated to try again stateside with a soul version of Madonna's Borderline. While I certainly wish her luck, I do not see that working. She is not skanky enough to make it in todays substance bereft and style impaired R&B soundscape.

Saga - Trust

Saga

Trust
2006 Inside-Out/SPV
(CD/DVD special edition)

If I had guilty musical pleasures (which I don't because I freely admit to listening to a lot of random stuff), Saga would be one of them. A weird solution of neo-prog and AOR, Saga is where Mr. Mister, 80s period Rush & Yes, Asia and Queensryche all commingle. It is shamelessly accessible, yet overwrought in all the ways that annoy hipsters and casual pop monkey fans (i.e. top 40). We are talking masses of sequencers and keyboards, guitar pyrotechnics that pull from Satriani to Holdsworth, and overdubs galore in a glossy production shell (the group has worked with knob-twiddlers like Rupert Hine and Keith Olsen).1

After a few albums in a holding pattern (with the last studio album, Network, being not particularly memorable) , and a rather odd double live concept album, this is probably the most impressive studio release since the return in 1991 of keyboardist Jim Gilmour.2

It is a melodic, riff-happy album, and very much a direct update of their early 80s sound. Ian Crichton's guitar tone is still a balance of clean metallic ring and distorted crunch. His solos are inventive, and his regular use of false/pinched harmonics and sustain is very evident. A very underrated player. The keyboards are dense (as one would expect from a band that live sometimes has Gilmour and vocalist Michael Sadler on side by side, and bassist Jim Crichton on bass synths), but not in the Rick Wakeman tradition of overbearing solos. Gilmour is an accompanist, and works with textures and sequences most of the time.

Lyrically they are still not going to be a challenge to Bob Dylan or Fish anytime soon, but still are not as pompous and asinine as Dream Theater. Saga still keeps most of their content rooted in the personal.

Stand out cuts would be I'm OK, Time To Play, Footsteps in the Hall and album closer On The Other Side.

There are two versions, a single cd version and a cd with bonus "making of" dvd (a tad short, but it only adds a few dollars to the cost, so could be arguably worth it), both sporting a decent cd package/design. Their last several albums also had been suffering from a very dated looking art direction, and this is just one of those other improvements that leaves a better overall feeling about buying this.

1. Rupert Hine made his name with The Fixx, Rush and Suzanne Vega, as well as his own project, Thinkman. Olsen has worked with bands like the Scorpions, Fleetwood Mac and Whitesnake).

2. The band had 2 albums in the late 90s as a trio, with a more guitar oriented fusion sound, with The Beginners Guide to Throwing Shapes being a highlight and possibly their best album overall. The doubl concept album was a collection of tracks from all their previous albums that were based on an extended storyline, told initially out of sequence. All of the cuts have the subtitle of Chapter with a numerical designation.

documentary: Bim Sherman and On-U

And so I found this little gem looking for On-U Sound related material. It is a documentary about the pairing of On-U Sound empresario Adrian Sherwood with the late Bim Sherman, a reggae star known little outside of Jamaica and the UK, but revered in roots circles. He did an album called Miracle with an accompanying remix project involving folks like Steve Osbourne (Curve, Depeche Mode), and his sound is brilliant. Both albums are beautiful, and the footage here includes interviews with the various players (which includes Skip McDonald and Talvin Singh) as well as Massive Attack vocalist Shara Nelson.

video: Regina - Baby Love

Irony....

....or hapless chicanery.

Hilary Rosen. Hilary, Hilary, Hilary. What expletive to use to describe her convenient about-face since her exit from the RIAA? How about just say that she has a marked resemblance to Janus.

The woman, while advocating a newfound intelligence never apparent in her prior life as a shill for a borderline criminal extortion group, now finds the wave of lawsuits against general consumers to be possibly counterproductive. What I find staggering is her shifty

I do share a concern that the lawsuits have outlived most of their usefulness and that the record companies need to work harder to implemnt a strategy that legitimizes more p2p sites and expands the download and subscription pool by working harder with the tech community to get devices and music services to work better together

Most? How great is it thatyou can evade any culpa for what is very much something you articulated, advocated, and in essence architected as a standard operating procedure for your former employer.

Those lawsuits served no usefulness save as a negative PR move and as a beacon to draw scrutiny upon the practices of a largely outmoded and shamelessly corrupt institution. But to show how much she has changed, and is now committed to a position:

Speaking of DRM, it is time to rethink that strategy as well......... At some point, I will write more comprehensively about those years and these issues....then again, maybe not.

Then again, maybe she is just hedging her bets in case her next position offers her a different platform to showhorn down our throats and pocketbooks.

video: Buggles - Living in the Plastic Age

They may have lamented the demise of the radio star, but few recall what the Buggles did for an encore. This is it.

And while they did make a second album, Trevor Horn will still be mostly remembered for his production skills (Seal, Rod Stewart, Yes, Art of Noise, Frankie Goes to Hollywood) and Geoff Downes will mostly be for helming Asia long past its shelf life, and male hair extensions.

Bruford/Borstlap - Every Step a Dance Every Word a Song

Bruford/Borstlap
Every Step a Dance Every Word a Song

Michiel Borstlap -piano, keyboards
Bill Bruford - drums, percussion, logdrum

2004 Summerfold Records

So this is not the first time Bruford has worked in a duo setting with a keyboardist. He made two albums in the mid 80s with Patrick Moraz, but neither is quite as satisfying as this. Much of this album shows how 2 people can really create a full sound, unadorned by overdubs or gimmickry.

Bearing a striking throwback to the muscularity of his U.K. sound with the adroit character of the early Earthwork's period, only no electronic drums are to be found anywhere. There is some wicked logdrum, and a lot of his trademarks; a cracking rimshot, dense cymbalwork and heaps of odd meter. Borstlap jumps between Weather Report style keyboard vamps and shifty piano runs. I have no familiarity with Borstlap prior to this, but I can say he is more than capable as a player. He has a commanding touch, which compliments Bruford.

The busy opener, The 16 Kingdoms of the 5 Barbarians, while sporting the dumbest title, is a pretty adventurous cut that features numerous thematic changes in its near 9 minutes, and some of the busiest drumming of Bruford's career.

The pair take one two covers, both of them Thelonius Monk tunes. The first, Bemsha Swing, stays pretty true to its source, with the piano melody from and center. Both Bemsha and 'Round Midnight are interpreted true to the spirit of Monk, which is about the best compliment you can give their attempts I suppose. This is probably due to the inherent orientation of the pair -- one of heavy improvisation. This gives the focus to spontenaity and taking risks, which Monk's music takes to well...if you know how to play (which these two do).

The overall vibe of this album really is adventurous, but sound-wise falls between the acoustic Earthwork's or recent past, and the more adventurous side of ECM label acts. The production is really grounded and pared down to essential elements without being lo-fi.

Parts of this album reflect the jazz-rock past of at least Bruford, but the result is something a bit more like his previous piano/drum duets in that it ends up like post-bop meets post-rock. You can hear this particularly on the melancholy tail end of Inhaling Shade and the drum solo to whacked pulse of One Big Vamp.

The album is put out on Bruford's Summerfold label (which releases all his new works), and it comes with a bonus cd sampler of his other label, Winterfold (which exists to reissue all his work from the 70s until the early 90s). This little surprise not only has 5 cuts from his seminal 70s fusion work, but a pair of cuts from his Moraz/Bruford days.

Video: Mary Jane Girls - In My House

It takes no real imagination to figure out that the MJG were named after their mentor Rick James's fondness for marijuana. And given the sexual frankness of tracks like this, one can see the parallels to Prince with his band of merry lingerie-clad singers, Vanity 6.

That being said, James did a fair job making several minor hits for them in the early to mid 80s, including this second cut, a cover of Walk Like a Man (and sporting a guest spot with comic Howie Mandel back when he looked like the goober twin of the lead singer for Quiet Riot).

Career Choices of the Really Useless

So the future ex-Mr. Britney Spears, Kevin Federline, was paparazzi'd pumping gas. I am not sure if he was actually lowering himself to the manual task of filling the tank, or if he was preparing for a post musical career follow up.

Normally I do not go for this kind of post, but I detest what the man did to the Portuguese language with that song whose name I will not even mutter, so anything to put his pathetic existence front and center I am up for. I am K-Fed up.

Kings of Convenience - Riot on an Empty Street

Kings of Convenience
Riot on an Empty Street


I reviewed a prior album by KoC, and was not terribly impressed but felt it was not without its strong points. Little has changed, but they are trying with small changes to make this a step up in their quest for indie pop cred.

The opener, Homesick, is like a junior-league 60s folk, as is much of the rest of the album. It's decent, but has the same trappings their last album did; overly earnest or pseudo-ironic meandering. Cayman Islands starts in the same fashion, but improves as the strings kick in, giving some sense of dynamics to what would have been an otherwise pedestrian exercise in melancholy. Know How is a breathy complement to anyones early John Mayer collection (Mayer's latest trio outings show him to be a much different beast -- to everyone's benefit).

The album only really picks up when they get out of their "Tribute To Hello Darkness My Old Friend by way of Oslo" mode, as they do on the track Sorry or Please, which adds strings, piano and drums. Misread starts out as a weak bossa-inflected go, but grows on you. The sole single-ready track is also the premier slice of songcraft; the uptempo, whimsy-filled I'd Rather Dance.

There is a guest spot from Broken Social Scene vocalist Leslie Feist which may interest some.

Still somewhat mediocre, but better than a lot of agit-fluff politifolk and sappy acoustic pop junk (think Jewel's first 3 albums as a cashmere-sweater wearing airhead*)

* (...now she's a full blown pop airhead).

video: John Parr - Stupid Stupid

Really, few videos are as as completly laughable and stupid as this one...even by 80s standards. I personally am amused by the rigidity of the man's mullet even driving in a convertible at high speed. And the dancers...oh, boy. So much coordinated badess.

video: Roni Size double shot

It is a shame his latest album did not get a domestic U.S. release, but while it would appear that Roni Size is not the underground darling he once was, tracks like this show he still knows how to make a track.



Although it still does not quite cut the edgy futurefunk of this cut with vocalist Onallee:

Jello and How to Fake It

First up, some rather amusing musings on Jello Biafra, who sometimes really annoys me, and sometimes I find interesting. I have alwasy thought of Jello as just as much self-inflating wanker as much as punk raconteur.

And next, as borne of my interest in the Monkees (a show I first watched when it was first syndicated on MTV in the 80s of all things), an article that discusses a site for fake bands.

And now, for something completely different:




Sir Elton of Too-Much-Lard Upon Food.

video: Dale Bozzio - Simon Simon

I have the album this song came from on vinyl, and I always thought that Dale Bozzio on Paisley Park Records was not a bad mix. I also thought it was never released stateside.

Having first heard Dale by way of seeing Dale, in various videos with her former band, Missing Persons, I can only say I was not even aware this video existed until today. Dale was quite an inspiration for singers like Gwen Stefani,except Dale has a bit more of promiscuous goofiness to her. She famously said something to the effect of "I always look best naked" and her early carerr showed her trying really hard to get away with exactly that (including the MP video of her wearing nothing but clear PVC brassiere and duct tape and heels).

This video continues in that tradition, with her in some outfits that look like throwouts from a Prince back-up dancer and scenes in back alleys and a gym, I can only describe this as a bit of a car crash to watch. You will laugh and cringe simultaneously.