Hip-Hop Europe: A Particular Odyssey

Editor’s Note: This is a piece I wrote for a magazine that (I guess) folded. They never ran it. Kate, who accompanied me on this trip to Europe some time ago, was asking me about it recently. Without reading it, she suggested I stick it on the blog. I hope the links still work. Here [...]

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Music Trivia – Public Enemy

Hard to believe that Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing” is 20 years old this month, but it is. Two decades since Sal and the pizza and Radio Raheem and a hot day in Brooklyn.
I watched the first bit of the movie some time last year and still got chills from the opening credits rolling [...]

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Sonic Youth – Sloss Furnace, Birmingham Alabama (7/12/09)

It was an evening about mortality. At least, that’s the way it seemed while driving north to Birmingham with Sonic Youth’s album Daydream Nation cranked to unprecedented (at least for our new car) volumes.
The sun was doing that “don’t forget about me” thing, where it wedges itself behind a bank of clouds and turns a [...]

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The King Is Dead

I don’t have a whole lot to add to the staggering onslaught of information and reflection about yesterday’s death of Michael Jackson. I, like so many people my age, had Thriller on vinyl and came of age as “The King of Pop” was making his MTV-fueled leap to global iconography. His talent was as undeniable [...]

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Kanye West benefit show – 6/11/09

I won’t deny that I’m a lucky guy. Sometimes things just fall into my lap.
Thus it was that I was in Chicago last week for a work conference and discovered myself with VIP tickets to a Kanye West concert at the historic Chicago Theater (unofficial retail value: $500). 1) It’s Kanye. 2) It’s in his [...]

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Mourning City Stages

In the morass of municipal and other music festivals, Birmingham’s City Stages has been solidly in the Not So Good category for many years. But last year there was a miraculous turn-around. After some years flirting with total bankruptcy (and perpetrating the fraud discussed here), the festival emerged from asking “Anyone want to sponsor this [...]

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Chuck D Speaks – Tuscaloosa, 2/11/09

One day, when I finish writing a review of every album I own in alphabetical order, I will have fully articulated my feelings about Public Enemy. I will perfectly explain both the tremendous social implications of that group, but also explain how they impacted my personal life. I will draw on existing social histories, the [...]

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