Here’s an interesting look at the beginning of hip hop culture.
Martha Cooper was a photo-journalist living in New York City when she first began documenting the origins of B-boy (short for break-boys) and hip hop culture. While other New Yorkers at the time saw this movement as a trite, uninspired or even offensive fad, Martha found a new form of expressing art. Through her camera lens we recount the infancy of hip-hop culture, from the alleys and subways of New York to the masses beyond the boroughs.
A while back I posted the MP3 of M. Ward’s great “Poor Boy, Minor Key”. Here’s someone’s cover of the opening piano piece, which I liked a lot.
Turn down your speakers or stop the video at 1:33, though, as the guy screams into the camera. I nearly fell out of my chair when watching it the first time.
Last night I went over to Vancouver to see Iron Maiden in concert. I didn’t even know they were touring, but my friend Lee-Ann called me before she bought her tickets, and I’m so glad she did. It was amazing.
They sounded as good, if not better, live than in their studio recordings. It’s not just the music, though, it’s the full show: pyrotechnics, smoke, fireworks, giant mummy skeleton, huge walking demon cyborg thing. Everything was over-the-top in a cheesy, but awesome, heavy metal way. It’s the sort of music that just shines live.
Iron Maiden - Phantom of the Opera
It was worth the ticket price, the time off work, the ferry ride to the mainland and back, sitting through Lauren Harris (Steve Harris’s daughter, who opened, and was terrible), and the dodgy hotel room ($120 for four people should probably have tipped us off). Catch them live if you have a chance.
Social software: love it or hate it, it’s here in abundance and isn’t going anywhere.
I personally love the direction web applications have taken in the last few years. I couldn’t have imagined ten years ago everything that’s available online these days. I’m a member of a few of these social websites, so I figured I’d share what I’ve tried.
I’m way behind on this one, as I only just started to use it a couple of weeks ago. It keeps track of every song you play on your computer and MP3 player, displaying them in handy charts. It will also recommend users who have similar tastes to you, so you can pop over to their profile and see their playlists. It even provides samples of most music and will create a ‘radio’ out of your common artists.
It’s a great way to find new and interesting music, so I’m surprised it took me so long to sign up. The only problem I have right now is that my iPod Nano usually doesn’t update my recently played list, so those songs don’t get added to my play count, which is very frustrating. It does work occasionally, just to keep me hoping.
This site lets you broadcast messages to whoever has signed up to listen. The messages have a 140 character limit, so they need to be short and sweet. The neat bit is you can update and receive the messages via text message.
I haven’t decided if this is lame or not. I currently have the messages popping up in Digsby, my instant messaging client, and that’s working quite well. It can be nice to break up those long work days with random messages sometimes.
This is like Twitter, but you can broadcast files as well. I haven’t found much use for this. I get e-mailed right now if there’s any activity on there, but I don’t use it much at all. Apparently, Digsby will be adding support for it eventually, so I might look into it again when that happens.
Everybody loves Flickr. They’re the quintessential example of how to do things right. I bought a Pro account with them when I first signed up, and I haven’t regretted it since. I don’t take nearly enough photos these days, but hopefully that’ll change with the new camera.
I signed up for this a few days ago, and I’ve added about half of my books. I’m really not sure what this is all about yet, but I basically signed up for this because I enjoy lists. Give me a beer, something to snack on, and group of objects that need itemizing, and I’m your man.
Basically you list all of your books, and then other people list their books, and….I’m not really sure what happens then. I guess it’s just interesting to compare libraries with other people. It also gives you recommended books based on what’s in your library, which could be handy.
One neat feature is that they’re adding the libraries of famous readers. I apparently share six books with Ernest Hemingway.
The one thing that worries me about this site is its focus on the books you own rather than what you’ve read. I’m currently trying to wean myself off buying too many books, and this site probably won’t help with that, but I figured I’d sign up and see what all the fuss was about.
Feel free to add me as a contact on any of these or share any sites you’ve been enjoying.
Neil Gaiman mentioned Tim Minchin on his weblog the other day. I’d never heard of him before, but I spent a good chunk of the afternoon perusing his videos on YouTube today. He’s a lot of fun, both a talented pianist and hilarious comedian.
Here’s his solution to the Palestine/Israel conflict:
On having an open mind:
And a love song:
He’s worth checking out. He seems to be most famous in Australia, his homeland, and the UK. I hadn’t heard of him here in Canada yet.
It’s been a good week. I rode my bike to work three times, only missing a day because I had no way to carry my rock climbing stuff with me on Thursday.
The first day of riding nearly killed me, as my legs just weren’t used to it at all. After three days, the trip is already immensely easier, and I’m actually really enjoying myself. It’s nice to get a little bit of exercise before and after work, and I’ve had a lot more energy overall this week. With the traffic I have to go through while driving to and from work, it’s nearly as fast, if not faster at times, to ride a bike, so this is definitely something I’d like to keep up.
I bought a camera a couple of days ago, a Canon SD1100 IS. I haven’t had much of a chance to take it out yet, but I’m quite happy with what I’ve seen. This is the first camera I’ve had with image stabilization, and it seems to be worth the extra cost so far.
Thursday night, a friend and I went to see Wintersleep, an indie rock band from Halifax. It was a fantastic show, even worth standing in a crowd of drunk idiots to watch.
Unfortunately, their opening band, The Most Serene Republic, weren’t great. The lead singer looked like he was trying too hard to be quirky, and they sounded really messy most of the time. I just listened to a few of their studio recordings on their MySpace page, and they actually sound pretty good, so maybe they just have to get their live act together.
I’ve attached “Laser Beams” from Wintersleep’s Welcome To The Night Sky album for your listening pleasure.
Tomorrow night I’ll be flying to Kamloops for work. I’ve extended the stay through Easter weekend, so I can have some time with my family and friends there.
Whenever I’m on a flight, I think of this song. I first heard it while watching Hackers back in 1995 and became obsessed with it. It’s played during the opening scene, when Dade Murphy is flying to New York, and it sets the mood perfectly. Hackers had a lot of cringe-worthy moments, especially for anyone with some knowledge in computing, but it had geeks that weren’t completely socially inept, interesting pop culture and technology references, Angelina Jolie, and great music, so I think that made up for it.
Orbital was a great UK electronica duo, unfortunately now defunct, and this is from their second album Orbital 2, released in 1993.
The Hip Hop Files
