Rerouting Writing

Hell crooks and grannies friends! For the time being, I've rerouted my writings to two virtual locations.

The Hydra Magazine: I started an online magazine / blog for both my self-published works and those of the Hydra collective.

Digital Deliverance: For my published works, I started a tumblr account (mad cleaner content).

If you were wondering, Granny Wesson and Cyrus the Humble are napping. They will return in the near future!

Show Review: Gil Scott-Heron Today

I tried to curb my anticipation for Gil Scott-Heron’s performance at the recently made over Regency Ballroom last Friday. But how could I? I wanted him to amaze, to enrapture with his musical poetics, and most secretly, to redeem my nebulous view of a 70s era, politicized soulfulness unrivaled by today’s musicianship. It’s an idealistic and surely ridiculous image we children of the 80s have learned of the decade before ours. But it’s one so ingrained and endlessly reminded that we can’t seem to shake it free.

While Los Angeles revival funk band Orgone grooved (peep their solid cover of “Funky Nassau”), singer Fanny Franklin expressed an equal excitement about bearing witness to the legend. And when Scott-Heron finally stepped onto stage, strutting choppily to the microphone, the audience erupted in wailing applause and shouts. He looked older and moved with certain difficulty, his body appearing thin underneath his loose fitting clothes. His face was angular and gaunt with patches of gray hair pouring from the sides of his hat and from his chin. A lady sitting in front of me asked incredulously if that old man indeed was Gil. I nodded with certainty but really had no idea. After all, he’s hardly recognizable compared to his younger self clad with the iconic afro and psychedelic garb. Today, it’s a rare occurrence to see Gil Scott-Heron. He has been in and out of prison for the past decade on drug and parole transgression charges. Some reports imply his suffering from being HIV positive, something Scott-Heron addressed perhaps indirectly when he told the Regency that a media frenzy on the internet continues to concoct all sorts of chimeras about his life.

Ebbing our immediate impressions, Scott-Heron opened with a consciously cheesy comedy routine where he got comfortable with the crowd. It reminded me of the legend’s simple humanity -- like a venerable uncle who still tells bad jokes at a family dinner. As soon as the routine verged on the unbearable, he transitioned into a monologue and solo song in tribute to Sister Fannie Lou Hamer. And when Scott-Heron’s voice boomed forth from his brittle body, everyone immediately felt his unparalleled soulfulness and brilliance. With age, Scott-Heron’s bright voice has gained a hoarse resonance, adding even more layers to his street inspired poetics and wisdom.

Gil Scott-Heron guided his soul-jazz outfit, the Amnesia Express, through some of the strongest moments of his catalogue. The band retained a decidedly solid hold on their expressionistic 70s earthliness but bent towards a lush, jazzy psychedelia. Although technically rusty and hiccuping occasionally with offbeat rhythms, it worked. Scott-Heron bellowed “We Almost Lost Detroit” to set the mood for a conflicted era shaped as much by violence as hope and love. He lamented today’s popular understanding of jazz as a sterile and passive musical style with a charging take on “Is That Jazz?” And in waxing poetic to introduce “Winter In America”, Scott-Heron pondered whether the season’s indifferent coldness might be revenge for us cherishing the other seasons more. A fifteen minute version of “The Bottle” -- sung in a dreamy, melancholic tone -- swept the climax. The performance swayed from lyrical musings to groove laden songs and improvised solos, each song extended into a prolonged and interwoven narrative.

Despite the real possibility of coming off trite, there was a remarkable sincerity to Gil Scott-Heron. His creative expression stemmed from life experience rather than a need to perform a spectacle and preach a message before a crowd. Song reflected life and life in turn was shaped and illuminated by song. For a moment I felt that magnitude of revolutionary spirit burning distant in another hazy generation. It was aged and hardened in one man’s beautiful, gravely voice, and filled the auditorium with its sweetness.

Seattle Slewing It

Montreal-based turntablist and producer Kid Koala (born Eric San) is the type of artist you can expect to take some formidably playful risks. Known for his virtuoso skills scratching and mixing on the wheels of steel, back in 1996 he was the first musician in North America signed to the U.K.'s boundary-busting label Ninja Tunes. Arriving in the wake of a fantastic mixtape, San's debut hip-hop-jazz-funk crossover Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (Ninja Tunes, 2000), featured a video game and a surreal comic book he designed himself. For San, the creative impulse is dedicated to telling a compelling and unlikely story. Free for download at www.nufonia.com, The Slew's 100% — San's self-released fourth effort in collaboration with long time friend Dynomite D — continues this tradition.

San and Dynomite (born Dylan Frombach) had discussed collaborating on a full-length project ever since vibing together on a couple spacey jazz singles about a decade ago (peep their "Third World Lover"). Thus, when Frombach was enlisted by his cousin Jay Rowlands to produce the score for a feature documentary on elusive Seattle psych-rock recluse Jack Slew, he brought San along. That was four and a half years ago. The documentary has since fallen through, but the score evolved independently into a masterfully abrasive and chest-rumbling soundscape. "We wanted to do some Black Sabbath meets the Bomb Squad," San tells me, laughing.

Initially the loosely-defined "Black Squad" duo gathered concrete inspiration from Jack Slew's unreleased material — an ample body of work, thick with ferocious dusty breaks, bluesy vocals, and fuzzed-out riffs. Slew has a gravelly yet piercing voice that cuts right through the drums. He sings knowingly of freedom lost and the fragile sentiments of an ape trying to become a man. It's rich material that just begs for sampling. San and Frombach reassemble the parts to produce a fresh perspective on the dangerously free spirit of the outlaw. "We needed a car chase scene, and a jail break scene, and then we ran with it," says San. Indeed, the album roves widely and digs deep, concluding with the epic moral struggle of "A Battle of Heaven & Hell."

Despite a cinematic narrative akin to a rogue spaghetti western, The Slew nearly succumbs to the usual pitfalls faced by turntablist albums. In the aesthetic sphere of turntablism, the scratching and abrupt pattern changes can sound gluttonous and overtly technical, warping the sonic landscape into a show of narcissism. "On the one hand [100%] is super-psychedelic, loud, and banging," San explains. "On the other hand" — he laughs — "it's the most masochistic, purist turntable record I've ever made."

However, what saves the effort from sadism as well is that the Slew's hip-hop inspired pastiche takes cues from authentic recording techniques of early '70s rock. San and Frombach dove into their history books to study the methods for producing the screeching drums and sandblasted guitar riffs of that era. To really polish the coarsely hypnotic sound, they asked Mario Caldato Jr. — the engineering innovator behind the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique (Capitol, 1989) among others — to master the effort. The result is an interweaving of pummeling breaks and wa-wa guitar nastiness fractured by effects modulations and the emboldened seams of mixing and scratching. And it hits loud.

Koala and Dynomite originally entertained the idea of performing 100% live with 14 turntables. Fortunately, they scrapped that idea in favor of working with Chris Ross and Myles Heskett, the former rhythm section of Australia's the Wolfmothers. Ross and Heskett play bass guitars, drums, and organ while Kid Koala and mad scientist partner P-Love (Paolo Kapunan) handle six turntables. San had to build "bass-proof, shock-proof turntables" to face the monster loudness that will ensue on the Slew's two-and-a-half-week North American tour. "We bought spring-loaded tone arms and made custom vinyl to cue faster, so we can just drop the needle and go," he says. "We are going to just cut loose."

also published in SFBG

Confessions of a Download Junkie

I did it again man. I got home from work and locked myself up in my room. I closed the blinds and locked the door with the dead bolt. Not that anyone in San Francisco really cares. Hell I saw some old guy doing it in a cafe last week. No shame. But it's still embarrassing for me. I just prefer to be alone when I do it alright?

Just me and the succulent adrenaline that it brings. Oh I love that rush of blood straight to my eyes, squeezing them big and painting them glossy. Sometimes I don't even mean for it to last more than a couple hours. But then I just keep on digging into the veins. There's all sorts of hidden ones, the virgin, untapped ones. Oh those beauties. No broken links, just pure life and gorgeousness ready for my assault. Begging for my hands to possess it and drink down its love.

If you can hit one of those cavernous forgotten ones, that's when the trip feels real nice. Beautiful. Sublime. A release. When I find those man, I can go for hours, I can go all night fucking long. I pass out for an hour or so as the sun rises, crippled on my chair with a bent back like the letter C. It's still glowing that bluish hue of electronics in my room. The computer is still humming along, ushering my own breath, as if saying it's all going to be OK. Yes computer, we'll make it through.

But I don't know if it will. I keep going back. I keep on wanting more. And more mother fucker I need it. Don't take it away from me. I feel gluttonous. I'm repulsive. This is all so disgusting. I mean at least it doesn't cost me anything. But all that time that I'm just sitting there, whisking my life away into the corrosive depths of blogspots and torrents. Waffles for breakfast and soulseek for dinner. Google blog searches for a snack -- snacks all the time. I mean they're just there to help me right. It's not like they want me to hold onto this addiction.

Are bloggers the new pushers? What the hell am I thinking. This is ridiculous. Yo wait a minute, is it high quality shit man? I'm not fucking with that unless it's at least 320 kilobytes per second. Holy shit, I just found the complete 16 volume Dusty Fingers compilation in FLAC. I'll finish this post later.

Project Kill Nazi Redemption

Before seeing Quentin Tarantino's alternate World War II story, Inglorious Basterds, I reflected on a few Nazi killing fantasies that have impressed the world's imagination in the past couple decades. The most brilliant I believe is the computer game, Wolfenstein 3d, created by id software initially just for Windows in 1992. Wolfenstein started the 1st person shooter genre in the gaming industry that has now become a multi-billion dollar industry in itself.

As a young Jewish boy growing up in Los Angeles, I was already familiar with playing video games glorifying violence. But I distinctly remember the irreproachable morality of playing Wolfenstein. In other words, my mother did not seem to feel any guilt allowing me to play it. And we offered the game as gifts for the birthdays of many other Jewish boys during my elementary years.

In this alternate world, I took on the avatar of a Polish, perhaps even Jewish soldier, attempting to escape a labyrinthian Nazi castle, killing the bastards along my way. In fact, little did I know that I would eventually be the Rambo-like agent overthrowing the entire Nazi regime, assassinating Hitler -- the final boss. I mean what foresight in 1992, Hitler as the final boss of a shoot 'em up video game. And I killed that mother fucker over and over again.

The dream of reimagining more redemptive ends to World War II run deep in the American collective consciousness. And that ferocious fantasy is exactly what Tarantino taps in Inglorious Basterds. *(Spoiler) The concept of annihilating the most powerful Nazi heads -- including that of Hitler -- within an occupied Paris cinema is Tarrantino's brilliant representation of such a revenge fantasy. While the Nazis watch a self-congratulatory spectacle of their own feats, at least three separate groups of conspirators successfully plot their deaths and thus the end of the war.

The fantastical demise of the Nazis within the French cinema is ultimately the brilliant concept that holds the film together. The cinema -- as repository of chimeras, alternate realities, and the realizations of our most unimaginable dreams -- is the magical setting of this revenge. Perhaps the cinema is the contemporary symbol most capable of vindicating us from our traumatic histories and horrific truths, at least for those sublime moments of experiencing catharsis. And within this particular Parisian cinema, we can obliterate the masturbatory spectacles of Goebbels' Nazi film making with the dramatically explosive, Jewish fueled cinema of modern day America.

And as if burning, shooting, and blowing up all the head Nazis wasn't enough, we also get to dream revenge in the shape of carving a swastika into Hans Landa's head. The act, I know, may seem too ethically abrasive for a Jew. Although if you've ever studied Passover, then you know that atrocities from 4000 years ago still irk us. Ultimately, the swastika carving points out that the identity and moral implications of Nazism goes beyond the typical episodic nature of warring parties. Once the war is over, a Nazi should not so easily shake his or her affiliations with the machine.


So, it seems we've entered a new stage of viewing WW II. One where we rewrite the history and satisfy our inflicted guilt and anxieties, as the last horizon of people holding real memories of the events die off. The said truths shall become legend and in legend we can invent myth.

Unfortunately I could not find a copy of Wolfenstein 3d for Mac OS x as I did want to revisit some of my childhood simulations of Nazi killing catharsis. However, my good friend Adia did draw my attention to a promo "Bear Jew" game posted on Eli Roth's myspace page. I suppose I'm not so far off associating the Wolf with Inglorious.

Intoxicated Rhythms

I wrote a couple drug related music lists for the Guardian. Despite the possible implications of my finding drug use as particularly inspirational, I'd prefer to side with Ice T in his Curtis Mayfield "Pusherman" flip. Music can get you high! Oh the cliche, but what can you do when it's true?

I'm looking to expand these two lists, the first regarding albums made by musicians while under the influence and the second, songs about love interests that are really about drugs. So give me your suggestions!




Albums Recorded By Intoxicated Musicians

I had considerable difficulty in compiling a top ten list of albums recorded by musicians while under the influence. An almost mythological speculation inundates the many so-assumed drug inspired recordings, especially those of the psychedelic 60’s. But most artists do not care to divulge their less than sober stories, or do not quite seem to remember them. For these reasons, I admit my own suspicion of the following list’s indelible accuracy despite my late nights of fuzzy research. I thus advise the reader to measure these drugged-out recordings with the highest dose of skepticism.

Ash Ra Tempel and Timothy Leary — Seven Up (Kosmiche Kuriere, 1973)

While recording, members drink a 7-Up can laced with LSD.

Dr. Dre — The Chronic (Priority, 1992)

The much-imitated and never duplicated source of blunted funk rap.

David Bowie — Station to Station (RCA, 1976)

On a cocaine trip to new-wave space.

Sly and the Family Stone — There's A Riot Goin' On (Epic, 1971)

Famously recorded in Sly's Bel Air drug mansion.

Leak Bro's — Waterworlds (Eastern Conference, 2004)

Get wet with these rhymers on a PCP holiday.

Quasimoto — The Unseen (Stones Throw, 2000)

Madlib gets wicked with psilocybin mushrooms and a voice modulator.

DJ Screw — 3 N' The Mornin' Pt. 1 (Bigtyme, 1995)

The originator of purple drank (codeine, promethazine, alcohol).

The Cure — Pornography (A&M, 1982)

A dark journey into LSD, cocaine, and alcohol.

Pink Floyd — The Piper at The Gates of Dawn (EMI Columbia, 1967)

This Syd Barrett acid trip will keep you away from drugs forever.


Songs About Love Interests That Are Really About Drugs

I noticed a revealing trend in songs about love interests that are really about drugs. Men enjoy personifying their drug of choice as alluring or mischievous women. Female artists tend to just sing about the drug -- or sometimes mind melting, clouded narratives about white rabbits a la Grace Slick. Despite this disappointing limitation I tried to create a well balanced list by defining love interest in the broadest sense possible. I mean, this is all the many layers of interpretation anyway.

Rick James — "Mary Jane" (Motown, 1985)

Marijuana's classic cut just to get your feet wet.

The Beatles — "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Capitol, 1967)

Heavily debated, but really, is this not about LSD?

Laid Back — "White Horse" (Sire, 1967)

Don't ride heroin, but get up on that white pony!

E-40 — "White Gurl" (My Ghetto Report Card, Reprise, 2006)

Another Yay Area cocaine anthem.

Paper Route Gangstaz — "Keyshia Cole" (Fear and Loathing in Hunts Vegas, Mad Decent, 2008)

Tribute to the Oakland-based singer -- and potent brand of herb.

Don Cherry — "Brown Rice" (Don Cherry, Horizon, 1975)

Oh, seductive golden brown of heroin!

Cab Calloway — "Minnie The Moocher" (Brunswick, 1931)

Save your wallet and stay away from Minnie, that drug fiend inside you!

Steely Dan — "Doctor Wu" (Katy Lied, ABC, 1975)

A tad colonial, but still an insightful meditation on the opiate trade.

New Layout

I made the layout simpler to accommodate my recent abundance of writing. I feel that even though the page might not look quite as stunning, its easier on the eyes for reading. To my loyal readers, what do you think?!

Vacations and Gaslamp Killer

Hey blog world! I've been on vacation up through Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver and then back down the coast to San Francisco. I have some great Vancouver graffiti pics and also a few little timber towns I'd like to write on. But until then, I'll try to satiate my five readers with a piece I wrote on The Gaslamp Killer for the Guardian. It's been my most thought out article yet on music, and I'm quite proud of it, even though somehow along the copy editing way someone got rid of one of my periods and two sentences train wreck! But really, who the hell cares?

I wrote about Gaslamp the first time I saw him DJ at Minna in SF. And I've come to associate Foucault's writing on limit experiences with Gaslamp's turntable performances. A limit experience is the pushing of the self to the limits of its familiar understanding so that the experience itself deforms, mutates, and transforms the self as a result. Foucault reads the notion in the works of Nietzsche and Bataille. It does not have to be quite as disruptive as Gaslamp's performances, which are charged with aggression and loudness; but the effect is always disruptive, jarring, but restorative. In fact the limit experience can be a simple daily exercise, reading a book without preconceptions, training a heightened awareness of one's surroundings so as to develop a less rigid source of knowledge. Anyway, the limit experience is a fascinating concept in Foucault, which he only briefly touches on in a few places a couple years before his death. Here's GLK.


Music can teleport you to far-off lands and spark nostalgia for distant times. It might elicit lost memories or even summon illusions. You may have never visited Istanbul or São Paulo or lived in the 1960s, but music infects the imagination with a visceral experience of the unknown. The effect is uncanny, mesmerizing, beautiful, and even therapeutic.

But what happens when music pushes its ability to displace to an extreme? When music annihilates your familiar sense of space and warp holes your usual expectations of time? Can listening to music transform you? Los Angeles-based beatsmith and DJ the Gaslamp Killer certainly thinks so. "The music I'm looking for is the stuff that will cut through your brain and just make you feel ... almost overwhelmed," Gaslamp slowly explains. Whether arranging cosmic abyss mixtapes like I Spit On Your Grave (Obey, 2008) or crafting his own twisted productions, including his just-released debut solo EP My Troubled Mind (Brainfeeder), Gaslamp displays a developing genius for charting hallucinatory odysseys into vertigo. His haunted, cinematic music unhinges the listener, approaching a surreal dissociation and restoration of the self.

William Benjamin Bensussen didn't identify as the Gaslamp Killer until some time after moving to Los Angeles three years back. He grew up in another troubled Southern California paradise cloaked in its own rusted mythology: San Diego. There, a restless Bensussen was already broadening his musical horizons in the fifth grade, listening to Too Short, Jimmy Hendrix, and Dre. A few years later he attempted to satiate his curious, nearly frantic energy by freestyle dancing at raves and in b-boy circles — to electronic and hip-hop music respectively. But it was DJ Shadow who bridged those fractured worlds for Bensussen and ignited a desire to dig into jazz, funk, and psychedelic crates. "I started on this frenzy trying to find all the originals. And then I realized that Shadow had sampled half of his stuff, and he wasn't as much of a genius as I thought he was," Gaslamp recalls, laughing. "That's when I started looking for older records and thinking, well, maybe I could do this."

Bensussen's dark nom de plume is a bittersweet tribute to his unlikely origins. As a 19-year-old college dropout, he flipped wax in San Diego's glittery Gaslamp District to a sometimes hostile crowd. Bensussen remembers bitterly a particular confrontation with a vindictive listener. A strikingly beautiful woman — who intimidated the then-teenage DJ — queried him angrily why he wanted to ruin her time with his fucked up music. Why? Dumbfounded, wounded, and angry, Bensussen drew sadistic nourishment from the provocation. It helped inspire his first mixtape project, the circa-2000 Gaslamp Killers, a lo-fi guzzling of psychotic drums and horror sonic bits. Recently, Bensussen decided to rename himself in light of this original labor of love.

Gaslamp has yet to settle down. He helped found L.A.'s monolithic weekly showcase for uncut beat-driven tracks, the Low End Theory, in the fall of 2006. And he's secured a close affiliation with Flying Lotus' bubbling imprint, Brainfeeder. But Bensussen's troubled mind still wanders, like his music and his words, in perpetual hunger for the rawness of life. "[My music] comes from more of a vicious area," Gaslamp explains, searching for the right words. "Not angry, just passion — but a passion that can't be sugar-coated."

This unmediated passion takes Gaslamp into many dangerous and strangely ethereal caverns. It also jettisons him to the homes of foreign musicians marked by the same shattered pathos. My Troubled Mind gathers its influences from all over the globe — Turkey, India, Russia, Mexico, Germany, and Italy. But the way Gaslamp employs samples from these regions defies their idiosyncratic place of origin. He has a rare skill for extracting universal otherworldliness from regional sounds. And he implements their fiercely destructive yet uplifting spirituality into his mind-melting compositions. His music and DJ sets become performances, elusive experiences leaving you charred and fiending for more of their ineffable allure. "I'm glad people can't describe it," Gaslamp says, nearly yelling into the speakerphone. "Once they are able to describe it, that's when they chew it up, spit it out, and leave it behind. The more indescribable and amazing it is, the more you'll hold on to your people, your listeners."

Writers' Block On The Run

I've produced a couple new articles on graffiti in San Francisco that were both published in the SFBG this week. The first is oriented around this week's free issue and explores five lesser known public art locations in the city. I got a chance to catch the grand opening of Kommunitas, of Bluxome allery fame. It has some mind blowing murals now, the most stunning piece boasts over 500 colors across maybe 50 feet of wall space. Check the picture above.

You can find pictures of the Mac Dre in Langton Alley here, 3 parts of the Defenestration here. And a historical document of the Defenestration building at Funk and Jazz. No pictures of Lilac but Plug 1 has some shots of the Iz the Wiz tribute. Historical document of Bluxome / Kommunitas at Graffiti Archaeology. Nothing for Oak Parking lot yet, anyone got some?

I also wrote an article in defense of the tag. Oh the hated on tag! I thought it could use some love or at least a bit of context. The film Infamy (2005) does a pretty good job providing more background and perspective on the aesthetics of and lifestyle emerging from the tag.

Sanguine Soul: Drums and Fire

New Sanguine Soul webpage is up! Wow, Shelmatic and I worked on that shit the whole friggin' weekend, trading off on one edit, another edit, and more until we came up with this template. If anyone out there knows how to do a drop down for our tracklist, but without stopping the audio player if it's being used, please let us know! That would be the illest right there.

So for this episode we brought "drums and fire", quite a fertile concept I think for a mad range of musical nastiness. Definitely expect more conjunctions in the future. Escaping those dichotomies but still producing a magnetic tension which inspires creative thinking and artistry. Big ups to The MF Gaslamp Killer for hooking up the Q&A, and if you haven't copped it yet, peep his new mixtape, Hell and The Lake of Fire Are Waiting for You! We talked right before his show at Paradise Lounge with UK's Andy Votel; wrote a little short something on it here. Now that's some swarming drums and fire.

Sanguine Soul: Summer Madness

Kool & The Gang's "Summer Madness" doesn't sound quite the same in the consistently mild temperature of San Francisco summers. Once every couple months the mercury still rises, definitely a lower threshold in this breezy city, but a beautiful one that sends thousands onto their stoops and the streets. And I still have my memories of Los Angeles' horribly burning asphalt, the ghastly humid thickened heat in New York and Philadelphia, as well as the endless sweat and daily reports of elderly deaths when I used to live in Paris, the frugal city of no air conditioners.

On the last Sanguine Soul radio show, we premixed some summer jams while making Korean / Chinese / Vietnamese BBQ at Moss Studios. Definitely a few classics thrown in the mix as well as a newer strain of sun drenched tunes for your listening pleasure.

Also, for a more exhaustive arhive, check out Oliver Wang's summer music blog.

Writers' Block: Graffiti News

I started a regular stint writing on graffiti for the Bay Guardian. Its called "Writers' Block" in tribute to New York's original Writers' Bench as well as a play on words for a suppressed medium or restrained creative force. In my first article I explored the phenomenon of crushed newspaper dispensers and placed them in a broader historical context of modern graffiti's evolution and spread across the globe. I think I'm going to just republish all the articles on the blog for organization purposes, so enjoy and tell me your thoughts!

Modern graffiti practice -- born out of New York’s behemoth subway system nearly 40 years ago -- has diffused across the globe arguably faster and further than any other subculture of our time. Many thought the prohibitive end of New York subway graffiti in the mid-1980s might mark the death of the movement itself. But the phenomenon has instead grown vibrantly, evolving in imaginative and cunning ways while unexpectedly inspiring thousands of offspring movements worldwide. Regional mutations of graffiti now prosper in urban centers from São Paulo to Tokyo, as well as the sprawling suburbs spanning Paris and Phoenix, and even in small town America.

San Francisco was one of the earliest cities outside of the East Coast to contribute heavily to graffiti’s development. Young writers painted on freight trains in attempts to mimic their eastern counterparts’ love for subway cars, but they also brought the medium to life on the more stationary public spaces; walls, rooftops, billboards, and street furniture all gained color in rhythm. To this day the city is a hotbed for the creative evolution of style, approach, and placement. Graffiti tattoos the skin of our city, breathing vivaciously yet ephemerally in the rapid changing visual landscape.

During my morning routine in San Francisco’s SOMA district I come across hundreds of graffiti pieces. The moment I step outside my flat, vibrant names call forth on the neighboring walls, twisting and swinging frenetically in with an incandescence that is brighter than the fog-smothered sun rays. A school of simply stenciled koi fish meander curiously along the concrete sidewalk, snaking up the side of a storefront’s iron cage that is painted with a woman’s statuesque face locked in distant meditation. I jaunt over to the newspaper dispensers and reach for the daily only after appreciating any new stickers and wild, hand style lettering or drippy, dirty tags and rotating wheat paste prints, all competing equally for my attention. And I take a moment to imagine the people out there who took the time to get up, the thrills they must have felt, the inspiration that brought them out to the streets to write a shadowed name or post up a devilish cartoon character.

Is the newspaper vendor not the prime placement for graffiti -- both literally and metaphorically -- in this post-subway train era? Covering the pervasive street furniture are the etched names of hundreds of locals. Some invent complex calligraphy and craft intricate geometrical balance to stylize their nom de plumes. Some choose the course of improv for the signatures and let the muses of the moment guide their ink-saturated markers. And still others invest countless hours of preparation to the act of clandestinely posting up ready made stickers during the dead of the night or even the grind of the day.

A writer’s obsession with the news dates back to a now infamous article published by the New York Times in 1971 on the city-wide popularity of Taki 183 and his many pen pals. As soon as the article hit the streets circulating around the boroughs, young people quickly realized just how famous Taki had become. It spawned even more imitators and helped catalyze a movement. The irony of Taki’s expanded notoriety is that he refused to provide his last name in the article. Even though roughly the whole city discovered that “Taki 183” referred to a Greek 17-year-old named Demetrius who lived on 183rd Street in Washington Heights, nobody knew a thing about him beyond his omnipresent signature.

The writer’s signature is not an autograph in the traditional sense. The graffiti autograph is the mark of an alter ego coming into being. And that alter ego is the work of art itself, just as Calvin Broadus Jr. creates the living artwork known to many as Snoop Dogg (or in comic art, just as Bruce Wayne offers the performance piece Batman). Rather than a mark of ownership over another piece of work, the graffiti signature is a disjointed movement towards self-ownership. Instead of glorifying the originator of the artwork, the writer’s signature celebrates its own existence in a self-referential movement leaving the creator of the work anonymous. The writing of the autograph affirms an identity, its personality shaped through the stylization of the letters. And though graffiti puts emphasis on an individual’s yearning for self-affirmation, the practice is ultimately not an indulgent or egotistical project. The graffiti signature takes place in the context of a city’s public space, an environment that provides a vehicle for developing a social identity and facilitating collective dialogue among all people as free and equal citizens. The signature is a coded cry for both personal and social recognition.

While writers rarely make the news in all-out Taki 183 glory, the graffiti-strewn surfaces of newspaper dispensers distribute the news to the people. Each piece tells an intricate story saturated with drama, intrigue, and mystery. Every day we choose whether to make the effort to read these encrypted tales, whether to participate in the dialogue. We choose our responses from indifference to engagement and enthusiastic appraisal to vehement disgust. Some people challenge their underlying assumptions about the stigma of graffiti whereas others stubbornly adhere to their beliefs about its devastating harm to our quality of life. But I suggest at the least to pay attention. Otherwise you might just miss out on some of the most compelling, awe-inspiring stories that San Franciscans tell each other every day all over the streets, all over the news.

Sanguine Soul: Transformations

I'm happy to announce that our radio program is no longer limited to the signifier of a day of the week. Sanguine Sunday has transformed into Sanguine Soul. We got a new web page in the works, and Honey Knucks has been working on a logo for 9 months now, so we'll see where that's going. Until then, enjoy our slightly confusing wordpress, we still got some mad decent content. We push the "transformations" episode in a time of political upheavel (Iran, Honduras), en memorium of the king of pop, and in the midst of all that, a more exacted conceptual orientation for our show, and a conversation with Khingz's about his debut solo LP, quite of the transformative variety, "From Spaceships to Slaveships."

Fresh Artistry: Karriem Riggins Expands Jazz, Informs Hip-hop

On Wednesday I dropped by the historic Oakland Yoshi's venue for the first time to peep Karriem Riggins introduce his new quintet and blend some mad decent jazzified hiphop with Pete Rock. A veritable young lion in the jazz world and a much sought after beat conductor on the rise in the hiphop world, Riggins is displaying some impressive talent and unique skill for crossing the two monstrous genres.

If you want to get some background, I wrote a brief article on Riggins for the SFBG. Rachel Swan at the East Bay Express layed down some more details about his life and work.

I recommend peeping his Hella International mix. Madlib, J-Rocc, and seemingly Riggins as well have been pushing a style of looping jazz beats, cutting them in and out in a fragmented blunted funk aesthetic.

Listen: Karriem Riggins Live at Hella International - Stones Throw

You can also cop his fresh, and ridiculously impressive mix-tape, featuring original production, remixes, and jazz loops, Kaleidoscope. Expect a debut CD soon, whether it will be the Karriem Riggins Quintet or a full length of the Jahari Massamba Unit, we'll have to wait and see.

Album Review: Nickodemus' Sun People

My editor at the Guardian just passed me the new Nickodemus record, Sun People, for a review. I'm usually hesitant of world music despite my absolute love for all sorts of outernational sounds, from Mulatu Atstatke to Turkish psych and Brazillian bossa nova. You just never know whether the producer will pull off a uniquely multiculturally inspired sound, or just reap the benefits of marketing to the crassly cultured NPR audience who fiend for the next opportunity to bust stagnant salsa moves on the next fundraiser galla dance floor. Nickodemus is far beyond this cheese. Dude makes an excellent brand of uplifting, groove heavy music.

Live Review: Erykah Badu Gets Out of Her Mind

In anticipation of releasing her brilliant sound odyssey, New Amerykah Pt. 1: 4th World War (Universal Motown, 2008), Erykah Badu, a.k.a. “Analogue Girl in A Digital World,” a.k.a. “Fat Belly Bella,” a.k.a. “Low Down Loretta Brown,” clarified her artistic objectives on an Okayplayer form. Posting as analoguegirl, Badu affirmed, “As much as I would love to be just a recording artist, I am not. There’s a difference. I am a performance artist first; there’s a difference.” Having the chance to see Badu perform live at the Warfield June 6, I could not agree more with her distinction.

Erykah Badu performs at L.A.'s Club Nokia June 5, 2009, the night before her San Francisco gig. Photo by Beth Stirnaman via LA Record.

Dressed in a mystical mauve kimono, golden skull cap, and gem encrusted space goggles, Badu strutted onstage in profile, tracing her steps forward like a celestial, hieroglyph narrative. A cinematic whirling rainstorm of bleeps and lasers and synth bubbling keys reverberated in the background, aspiring to transport the audience to the far reaches. This intergalactic resonance would remain the most consistent frequency throughout the performance; each transition of song and style marked by its cosmic joy of noise. Badu’s enigmatic presence recalled Sun Ra’s theatrical myth making, framed by an open ended aesthetic in Egyptology and a surreal space age, radicalized belief in the power of music to free the soul from its rusty, earthly shackles.

But this outlandish and historically rooted ethos did not restrain Badu’s emphasis on the contemporary. The high priestess of hip-hop soul incorporated the gods of our musical past into the urgency of the now. The tensions of old and new styles and sounds continuously pressed against each other throughout the remarkable performance.

Sometimes the antagonisms felt dramatically sharp. To introduce the set before Badu entered stage, her solid boogie funk outfit played a couple of the original tracks sampled in the production of 4th World War. The tribute to these musical foundations was contrasted by the DJ dropping Lil Wayne’s gutter poetry banger, “A Milli,” a wild song that encapsulates the sonic zeitgeist of the youngest generation of hip-hop heads. At other times Badu chose -- in a smoother fashion -- to synthesize contrasting musical elements with her own highly original, personal touch. Armed with a vigorous back catalog, Badu redefined some of classic soul grooves like “On and On” and “Didn’t Cha’ Know” in accordance to 4th World War’s coarsely textured and somewhat dissonant sonic landscape. While crooning her smoked-out throwback joint, “Back in the Day”, Badu cut in and out of the song to channel her muses, tracing the aggressive and playful soundscapes of Ice Cube and Slick Rick to feel good soul jams and real old school bluesy ballads. At one moment Badu reinvigorated her moniker, jazz scatting to sing the cosmic electronic keys in Afrika Bambaata’s “Looking For The Perfect Beat” all while reproducing the unforgettable bass line on the drum machine. To arrange such a complex performance -- seamlessly referencing and remixing musical history in a compellingly contemporary style -- Badu succeeded in translating and expanding the formal aesthetic of the hip-hop DJ into the art of the composer-singer. I’m not even overstating it.

While unraveling the many historical layers behind her sound, Badu slowly unburdened herself of wardrobe layers. Each shedding of an item enabled one of the many schizophrenic characters which make up the complicated being of Erykah Badu to manifest. The initial, arkestral space creature transformed into a golden headed free flowing being, and for the second act, Badu changed garb completely into a simple red summer dress. She whisked around the stage like a funkified ballerina, singing from her younger-aged repertoire of intimate coming-of-age joints. Shining the spotlight on her own personal struggles, Badu showed us the conflicted trajectory which led her to the apotheosis of her new mythological project articulated most transparently in “Healer,” the cyphered song marking the opening and closure of the first act. In “Healer,” Badu refines her musical vision, declaring a mysteriously therapeutic and transcendental power of hip-hop as more expansive than religious or governmental entities. The meaning behind this notion of spiritualized hip-hop is left vague, but there might be a clue in Badu’s closing actions. The sorceress sips her tea and implores the crowd, “Get out of your mind!” Badu is certainly out of her own.

This article was co-published on SFBG.

Sanguine Sunday - Global Rhythms

Last Fall I traveled through Eastern Europe and made it to the frontier of the Occidental world in the great city of Istanbul. The city is actually built partially on the European continent and partially on Asia; the Bosporous bridges actually bridge the two continents. Istanbul once was Constantinople, the seat of the Byzantine / Eastern Roman empire, and before that served as cross sectioned portal between the eastern and western worlds.

What very few people over here in California know is that Istanbul has an extremely rich musical history, informed by a global sensibility just as much as the people and city are. What emerges from this heritage is a uniquely provocative and cosmopolitan sound, blending many soulful and bass heavy styles from around the world with a backbone in Sufi mysticism and Turkish percussion. I found a great record label during my stay by the name of Doublemoon Records. They do an excellent job detailing their musical objectives.

Over the past 10 years, in synergy with three sister companies, Doublemoon has succeeded in nurturing a roster of promising talent into internationally recognized artists. Ranging from Sufi-electronica to groove alla turca, from jazz to gypsy funk, from oriental hip hop to Anatolian blues the musical gems that emerge from recording sessions are documented and recorded by Doublemoon. As such, Doublemoon Records is the sole platform for musicians with an amorphous ethnic identity to come together to create, collaborate, and communicate through the universal language of music.

Listen to a taste of this sound in our Sanguine Sunday Radio "Global Rhythms" set. Also, we're putting up a poll to vote for a new name on Wednesday, so please give us your input!

Party Crimes : Pilooski's Black Hole Drums

Did you miss the Donuts Party last Saturday night featuring the dirty disco edit wizard Pilooski? The French based deejay made his only West Coast appearance--clouded in the spring fog of San Francisco and smoke machines of 103 Harriet's handsome basement gutter--for a night of cosmic travelin and blapping disco percussion. So if you did sleep on dude on the local tip, then unless you travel to / live in Europe, it might be a minute til he drops in on our wavelength again. My solution: go comb through the internet waves to enjoy some of them flipped inside out, baring the internal flesh like a dog's stanky horse food tooth, jams.

Pilooski gained fitting acclaim on the blogosphere and in underground jams the world over for his grainy cosmic edits of disco classics and surprising choices from the ranks of Elvis and Franki Valli. After releasing Dirty Space Disco in 2007, the beat conducta released a series of 12 inches off the deep crate digging label, Dirty Sound System. The collective just finished sifting through the nebulous depths of France's psychedelic grooves for a new volume of dank mind expansion.

If you're unfamiliar with Pilooski, I wrote a Sound Lesson on him a year ago. There might be some free shit still linked to it.

On a side note: I was more impressed with opener Derrick Love's galactic gamma-ray picks. Lucky enough for us locals, he spins the far out disco jams that give the genre a bold ass name at the monthly shaker Gemini Disco.

Sanguine Sunday - Electric Soul

We experimented with the conceptual orientation of "Electric Soul" for yesterday's edition of Sanguine Sunday Radio. Our sets are inspired by the music of the minimal synthesized grooves of Swedish outfit, Little Dragon, who are about to release their follow up to last year's brilliant eponymous debut. And lucky for us, we got a chance to catch up with lead singer, Yukimi, for a Q&A in the middle of the show. This episode is sure to sooth the somnolent and the perpetual anxious. Spasmodic therapy straight to the ribs, god. Enjoy!

Sanguine Sunday - The Sample Edition

In store for you this episode on Sanguine Radio we dropped a full fledged show dedicated to the sample. What many don't realize outside the fairly insular Hiphop community is that the layering of samples cut from previously recorded tracks is a highly refined aesthetic formula. Taking bits and pieces from old grooves, the Hiphop beatsmith arranges and manipulates a montage of sounds to cast an entirely fresh composition. The art of sampling is no simple theft.

The emcee flows over these beats, letting their ink spill over the multi-tiered archeology. In a sense, the lyricist spits over history, rejuvenating the past with a new horizon of meaning, and informing the present with the soul sonic flavor of the ancestors. In fact, we could call this craftwork musical montage in line with Eisenstein's montage theories on film. I like to think that this sample episode is a continuation of the Sound Lesson series, just a lot of back and forth dialogue between the originals and the new songs which reference them.

For the past couple decades legal battles have entangled the sample aesthetic intrinsic to this unique craft of beat production. And in recent years, the laws become stricter and more intensified, casting a hazy gloom over the future of this musical style. We turn to our legal expert, Danielle Furman from Art Venture Law, to drop into the studio and shed some light on the copyright issues relevant to the recording industry. What she tells us is certainly alarming yet at the same time hopeful for the future of sample production. Tune in and tell us what you think about the current state of sampling laws--whether they restrict the proliferation of new forms of art or protect the recording industry and the artists it represents!