I got off the L train on Jefferson Street yesterday after work and saw nothing but industrial buildings, factories, barbed wire gating. A thick smell of fish carcass hung in the air, and I was the only person on the street as far as I could see. A pick-up drove by slowly, the window rolled down, a catcall yelled. I phoned my friend, cursing when I got his voicemail. Where the hell was I?
A few days ago, fellow Verso intern Colman Durkee, Sara Lawrence '10, had invited me to a show that his house was hosting in Bushwick. His band would be playing, along with a number of other punk bands from Boston, New York, and Seattle. This is not something that I would normally go to. But that's probably becauase I never have. Colman had come to a show of mine earlier this summer and I was sort of fascinated by the scene, the music, his tattoos. So there I was. Walking into a huge red building that looked more like a prison than a coop.
They (nine or ten of them at any given time) live in a vegan, substance-free apartment above what turned out to be an envelope factory with a third floor walk up to the roof. Graffiti covered the building's door, the stairs, the hallways. Inside the apartment, bicycles hung in racks suspended from the ceiling along with beautiful, elaborate, and somewhat disturbing hand-made prints.
As the showtime drew nearer and then passed, the emptied apartment began to fill up. Six bands got ready to play and one dude began stretching in preparation for the mosh pit. If you thought punk died out in the mid-nineties, boy were you were wrong.
After the jump: the music rocks, I bump into Nate Dern - Harvard '07 - of Beauty and the Geek fame, and yeah, shut up, i know my Orientalist theory. Read the rest of this entry »
Hey, there's a great new band that I wonder if any of you have heard of: Vampire Weekend.
Don't worry, I'm totally kidding. And, to make up for that lame attempt at humor, I've made you guys a present: your very own Muxtape.
What's a muxtape? It's a playlist that you stream, rather than download. So for all of you idle Ivy Leaguers hunched over your computers at a miserable unpaid internship, staring mournfully at the clock and dreaming of a cold Corona, here's a little something to make the last few hours before the weekend a little bit more bearable:
So dig out your earbuds and click to listen to an awesome playlist featuring music by Ivy League bands Bishop Allen, Chester French, July Miles, the Kitchen Cabinet, the Sinister Turns, and yes, Vampire Weekend. And, if you like what you hear, check out these (Harvard and Columbia) bands on myspace:
The Ivy League's resident black radical and pop-scholar phenom Cornel West returns to hipster-hop with the release of his second rap album, Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations, featuring the likes of Prince, Talib Kweli, Andre 3000, KRS-One, Jill Scott, Rhymefest, and the late Gerald Levert. Which is impressive and all, but seriously, where's Kanye? This is totally up his alley. They even have the same last name!
Professor West's first album, 2001's Sketches of my Culture, predicated the professor's public spat with Harvard ex-prez Larry Summers and the professor's subsequent break from the university in favor of Princeton. Though his new boss, Princeton president Shirley Tilghman, has yet to comment on Never Forget, West thinks she'll be hipper to the project than Summers was. In a Boston Globe article West speculates,
"I think she'll be much more open than Brother Summers," he says. "The hip-hop scared him. It's a stereotypical reaction."
A vocal opponent of misogyny and hedonism in contemporary hip-hop, West portrays his music as a "danceable education" reaching towards the genre's socially progressive roots. "We'll go from the bling-bling to Let Freedom Ring" Brother West raps in "Bushonomics," before giving a shout-out to militant beat poet Gil Scott-Heron. The track features New York MC and black progressive Talib Kweli denouncing "voter registration with no scope of education," "whore-mongerers," and "war-mongerers" alike. Listen to it, and Prince collaboration "Dear Mr. Man," below. Bushonomics Cornel West and Talib Kweli Dear Mr. Man Cornel West and Prince --MAUREEN O'CONNOR
Admit it: You spent all of sixth grade crouched next to the boom box with "MMMBop" on repeat, getting up only for meals and the occasional bathroom break, during which you transferred the CD to your Taylor Hanson sticker-covered Discman. ...
Anyone? Just us? OK then.
When we heard Hanson had made a pit stop in New Haven for a Master's Tea last week, we pictured three little squirts rollerblading around in plaid shirts and jeans. But then we saw photos of the event, and couldn't believe it: Who are these people and what did they do with Hanson?
Yale security must have had the same question, but, instead of asking for a lock of flaxen hair for DNA testing, demanded that they sing "MMMBop" to prove their identities. The evidence, below:
When we said kids aren't taking Harvard-Yale seriously this year, we hadn't seen these guys. A Yale rap crew called 108 Tongues just released its third annual edition of the call-to-arms anthem, "Fuck Harvard." The song (and its previousversions) gives the Crimson-Bulldog rivalry a Bloods-Crips overlay: "With thousands of pounds I got a mack 10/ Attackin from the front and the sides/ With rims on my ride/ Riding up to Cambridge commitin homicide." Subtle it is not, but times like this don't call for subtlety. They call for gats.
We expect some sort of response from Harvard, even if it's just a Snoop-like call for peace. Either way, good to see the Yale hip-hop tradition that spawned "BK2Nite" is alive and well.
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Read more: Colman Durkee, Harvard, music, Nate Dern, punk
The Ivy League's resident black radical and pop-scholar phenom 
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