Cure Your Blues with Baby Soda

I first saw Loose Marbles this past May. That day they had two groups of about 10 musicians playing on opposite ends of Washington Square Park, one with a sousaphone, the other a one-string box bass.

The up-tempo New Orleans-inspired jazz drew huge crowds, bigger than I’ve ever seen for a group busking in the park. The clarinet and trumpet solos were intense and energetic, and standards that I’d heard before seemed new and interesting.

Unfortunately, the first time I saw them was also the last time.

It turns out that they’ve mostly relocated to New Orleans. But I recently found out that many members of the band (which is actually a loose collective of many musicians) are a part of another New York-based jazz collective, Baby Soda.

I recently saw them put on a show at the Times Square subway station that was just as engaging as when I saw Loose Marbles in the park, and the crowd was just as large. By the second song of their first set, there must have been 50 some-odd people watching.

Here’s a video below; the sound quality doesn’t do them justice, but you can listen to some of their recorded songs on their myspace. If you see them around, in the park or underground, definitely check them out.

Review: Minty Fresh Beats – Jaydiohead

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I heard about New York DJ and producer Minty Fresh Beats’ Jaydiohead, a mash-up of various Jay-Z and Radiohead songs, I was immediately reminded of DJ Danger Mouse’s 2004 Jay-Z/Beatles mash-up, The Grey Album, and the excitement I felt when I first heard it.

Unfortunately, Jaydiohead isn’t nearly as impressive or enjoyable as The Grey Album. Part of the problem is that five years have past, and the idea of mixing the work of two very different artists is no longer that interesting. If you’re going to do a mash-up, you might as well go balls out, Girl Talk-style, sampling hundreds of artists instead of just two.

But a desensitized audience isn’t Minty Fresh’s only problem. Most of the tracks on Jaydiohead aren’t very creative in the way they utilize Radiohead’s music, and some of them are downright sloppy.

The opening track, “Wrong Prayer” (Radiohead’s “I Might Be Wrong” vs. Jay-Z’s “Pray”) isn’t horrible. It’s quite catchy at first, and the two elements of the song fit well together. But Minty Fresh relies on Radiohead’s guitar hook and Jay-Z’s rhymes to keep the listener’s interest. Even then, the repeating Radiohead sample becomes tiresome after a while. ”No Karma” and “Dirt Off Your Android” have the same problem.

“Fall In Step” (Jay-Z’s “Fallin’” vs. Radiohead’s “15 Step”) is an example of Jaydiohead at its worst. In a hubristic move, Minty Fresh picks a Radiohead song that’s in 5/4, and does a lousy job of cutting it to fit Jay-Z’s vocals. He chops off the last two beats of every second measure, rendering the beat choppy and confusing.

Minty Fresh closes the album with the aptly named “Ignorant Swan” (Jay-z’s “Ignorant Shit” vs. Thom Yorke’s “Black Swan”). From the beginning, it seems that Jay-Z’s vocals aren’t synced up well to the Thom Yorke sample. To cover this up, Minty Fresh throws in a cheesy synthesizer part (apparently an original composition) that overwhelms the mix.

At its best, Jaydiohead relies completely on the quality of the original raw material to catch the listener’s attention. Most of the tracks fail to hold that attention—some due to tiresome repetition, others because of sloppy execution. In the end you’re left with a bastardization of Jay-Z and Radiohead’s art. You’re much better off just listening to the parent tracks individually, in their original, unadulterated form.

Minty Fresh Beats – “No Karma”

Minty Fresh Beats – “Fall In Step”

Highlights from the Inauguration

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday was a great day for everyone who, like myself, has long supported Barack Obama. But I think that any American can be proud that the U.S., despite its long-standing and perhaps permanent racial issues, finally has a black president.

Here’s some highlights for anyone who missed it, or wants to relive it:

1. The Speech

It was a good speech, but I can’t say it was everything I expected. I kept listening for THE sound-byte—Obama’s “We have nothing to fear…” or “Ask not what your country can do for you…” There were a few buildups but that moment never really came.

2. ARETHA’S HAT… and Aretha

LOOK AT THAT THING. It’s glorious. And her performance was really powerful too. In fact, all of the performances I saw yesterday felt really genuine and emotionally charged.

3. The Benediction

This guy is a champion. “We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead man, and when white will embrace what is right.” Not only does he make a thought-provoking statement, but he RHYMES while doing it.

I wondered how long it would be before someone would call him racist for implying that white people don’t always do what’s right when it comes to race relations. Sure enough, when I searched for the prayer on YouTube, someone had posted that part of it, saying, “How many of these racist pastors does Obama have?” When are people going to give up trying to portray whites as victims? The reverend was just spitting the truth.

The Beginning

For a long time, I resisted blogging. I couldn’t shake my five-year-old association of personal blogs with the girls in high school who used LiveJournal to spout about the banal minutia of their everyday lives. Even when I’m writing about things that I know concern a certain number of people besides myself, I can’t help but feel like I’m being boring.

But let’s face it, print is dead. If I want to write, I’m going to have to do it online.

Having warmed up to the idea, the next challenge was picking a name for this thing. Something that sounds good and somehow relates to what I’m going to be talking about. I settled on “Deep-Seeded Urban Decay,” a lyric from The Streets’ “Has It Come to This?” Music is my first love, so it’s likely to be a frequent topic of this blog. An allusion to a song seems only appropriate.

The lyric also makes me think of New York—or at least the romanticized idea I had of it before I actually came here: a place so rich in culture and ideas that it couldn’t help but degrade into disarray. (Of course, what I actually found were yuppies with a Starbucks fetish on one side of the river, and self-obsessed lamé-clad hipsters on the other.) Nevertheless, New York, and the best and worst of its culture and people, is another one of my obsessions that is sure to come up.

So there. It’s done. I’ve done it. Just please, PLEASE shoot me in the face if I ever get a Twitter account.