Style Has Its Limitations

Ya’ll should check out Witchdoctor. He is a forgotten member of the Dungeon Family, which is the crew Outkast is part of. You can find his shit on napster and, like almost everyone these days, he has a myspace page. Other than that I never had any luck tracking his released output down before. His vibe has some real similarities to Andre’s solo disc, The Love Below, although I believe that his albums were out well before The Love Below.

www.myspace.com/ejthewitchdoctor

John Hartford

John Hartford is another musical favorite and heroes. He was a master of the fiddle & banjo and inspired the newgrass movement. Hartford put his own twist on bluegrass music, known for its traditionalism, which he was able to do due to success of “Gentle on My Mind” which gave him a financial safety net. Aero-plain, recorded in 1971 with some legends of bluegrass, was a far out bluegrass album that has been credited as the inspiration for the newgrass movement, which includes such beasts as Bela Fleck, Sam Bush and Yonder Mountain String Band . He also did some interesting covers on a couple of albums. A tradition that Yonder has taken to a different level during their live sets.

Despite pushing the limits of bluegrass, Hartford also strongly loved the traditional form of the music and continued playing it alongside his eccentric bluegrass. His knowledge of traditional bluegrass and American folk music was extensive, partly due to his youthful work on the Mississippi River. Even more badass was the fact that Hartford continued to work on the Mississippi River even after his musical career took off.

Eddie Hazel

Eddie Hazel is a legend of psychedelic funk guitar. As a member of the Parliafundelicment Empire he was responsible for numerous classic guitar riffs & the funk opus “Maggot Brain.” Many think of Jimi Hendrix & Lenny Kravitz as the only famous black guitarists, but that view is insultingly wrong.  This view not only ignores Eddie and all the other black guitar players in the PFunk army,  but also the numerous other black guitar players from Chuck Berry to the cats who play on Outkast’s records. Eddie Hazel was essentially a peer of Jimi Hendrix, although they never met to my knowledge. His work within P-Funk and his solo work confirm his mastery of the guitar.

Architecture in Helsinki’s newest album is dope. There is some earthquake bass to be heard, especially on track 2. I have not listened to that much of their work, but they love layering but keep it sounding clean. It is a very bouncy, happy, electronic sounding album. Groove is of high importance and there are moments when you can hear Prince’s influence. “Lazy” has a real nice acoustic guitar groove and an amazing ending jam.

With Christmas break coming up I will not be commuting so far for work, so I will have more time around the abode and hope to start posting at least two songs a week, one of which will always be funk, but I would love to have a separate category for Hip Hop, Funk, Dub, and a wild card. Write a little sumthin sumthin for each track.

Do yourself a favor and don’t be trusting the establishment papers. Lies and half-truths only existing for the purpose of advertising.

But I would recommend a magazine to any of those looking for the insanely awesome waxpoetics. For anyone with interest in hip hop, soul, jazz, funk, and even more styles of music (reggae, afrobeat, etc), amazing photography, articles, interviews, and just straight up knowledge GET waxpoetics. It is straight, unkut dope! Anyone who loves history should eat this shit up, it is a treasure trove for research purposes. Even the ads are amazing. I have never had such love for a magazine. It is expensive and only comes out 6 times a year, but each issue is well down and it is worth the price alone for the visual pleasures within.

One last note, Trailer Park Boys is the shit bomb-diggity. It is television at its best. Raw, whitetrash getto faux-reality show, soap opera. Just check it out for real or a shit snare may trap you while the shit zombies approach bringing their shit plague leading to shitpocalypse of ID4 standards. It is readily found online even at google video, through bittorrent or streaming sites, and is also on netflix.

If you don’t already know of it, learn Google’s amazing search capabilities specifically the blog searching feature. Amazing musical treats abound for those willing to do battle against the forces of internet addiction, carpal tunnel and the pandora’s box that is the information superhighway.

One more thing, check out Mistah F.A.B., the man, the myth, the legend behind ghostridin’ the yellow bus. Just type his name in on youtube and check out the ill video for the track ghostride, watch both versions. His other stuff is semi-tight, booming bass. He also explores different, deeper if you will, aspects of his personality that is not obvious based upon his club tracks, which BANG…hard.

One Be Lo put on a decent show, but again he put the crowd through the usual standing around bullshit. Instead of two sets of One and several other local hip hop acts all we got was like 35 minutes of One Be Lo and like 25 minutes (don’t really remember except that except for one track the rest sucked hard) of some local group. At least it went until 2 AM, a time when catching the bus on a Sunday morning is near impossible. I had to wait until 4:18 AM to catch a bus to downtown Seattle and then was going to have to wait for like an hour an a half to catch a bus home. Instead I walked home like 7 miles and got home at 7 AM. I am not sure if I can ever shell out money for One Be Lo’s live performances again due to the standing around forever that is commonplace at any event he puts on.

I will be posting more tonight and tomorrow I am sure. We are having a Trailer Park Boy Christmas in Seattle. O.E., High Life, Gin, Brandy and pepperoni. I am the liquor. Spaghetto.