Giant Squid CAUGHT ON TAPE

The squid hunters themselves are agog. "Wow!" said Emory Kristof, a photographer for National Geographic who twice ventured to New Zealand in hopes of capturing giant squid on film.

TAKE THE TIME IN SCHOOL TO LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Last year, I started becoming fascinated by the AWESOME music I was hearing in stores around my hood; it had super clean guitars, catchy melodies and almost-robotic Latin percussion. I remember walking through the Morton Williams Supermarket on 115th St. and noting how the vibe of the music was almost as FRESH/CLEAN as Morton Williams itself, which had recently been renovated. Morton Williams is not the FRESHEST/CLEANEST supermarket in the world, but even kind of grimey supermarkets feel FRESH/CLEAN to me. Maybe it's the unlimited promise of foodshopping; "I could make ANYTHING with these bananas", "My pantry is gonna be SWEET", "DINNER PARTY TONITE!".






MONICA @ MORTON WILLIAMS, CHRISTMASTIME 2004

Most places with fluorescent lights are depressing, but NOT supermarkets. Man, I've got a lot of good supermarket/convenience store memories now that I think about it:

-@ a Hart's Grocery in London, 12/98: I was on vacation with my family and we hit up a Hart's to get some supplies. I remember: frozen Indian food, those diagonally-cut sandwiches in the plastic triangles, some U2 playing on the radio, Tango Apple Soda, hearty-ass British candy. It was CHRISTMASTIME.

-LAWSON in JAPAN:
Man, we really loved this place. We were hitting it up for ice cream after every meal. There was a touching tribute to Lawson written by an American expat living in Japan in the NY Times last spring.

-7/11 in Bloomfield, NJ: There was a time in my life where going here for a Slurpee was actually a special and exciting event. Tough guys hang out in the parking lot with their souped-up Hondas. You can make huge burritos in their industrial microwave. Come see it sometime. It's on Broad Street.


A few months ago, Vietnam celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon. There was a huge parade which included a SALUTE TO SUPERMARKETS:


Anyway, that awesome music is from the Dominican Republic and it's called Bachata. It was hard to find any information about it. I didn't even know what it was called until my creative writing professor told me. I wish I spoke Spanish. It reminds me of early Talking Heads. Please download these songs to your iPod and go to the supermarket. <----WHAT A CONSUMERIST/CAPITALIST THING TO SAY!

Anthony - Simplemente Te Amo

Vanessa - Ya No Te Creas

Both of these songs are from Bachata Hits 2005 and use variations on the chord progression of Pachebel's Canon.

THIS NEW "SHOT HEARD ROUND DA WORLD" PROMO PIC JUST DROPPED. THE ONCE AND FUTURE BEARD ALEX FARRILL BRUSHED HIS TEETH WITH LUCKY CHARMS.
www.preyfortheprairie.com

The Shot Heard Round the World are kind of the opposite of Native American-based Pop but then you take a step back and start thinking about Reggaeton or some shit and then those supposed opposites seem like the exact same thing.
People who think Men and Women are opposites need to take a trip to the zoo.

NATIVE AMERICAN-BASED POP PART II: NATIVE AMERICAN BASED POP

Coyote, the trickster, titled that last post!

Now, I will really talk about Native American-based pop!

In the New York Times Magazine last month, there was an article by Jack Hitt entitled "The Newest Indians" about the recent surge in the Native American population of the US. One source of this boost is the increasing number of white Americans discovering (legitimately or not) their Native American heritage. In a nutshell, it's becoming relatively cooler among middle-class white people to NOT be middle-class white people (BIG SURPRISE!). To gauge the harshness and/or fairness of the previous sentence, read the article for yourself here.

Anyway, this is not an entirely new phenomenon. Hippies have been wearing Native American jewelry and hanging dream-catchers in their VW buses since Jim Morrison took a walk in the desert. Probably even before that.

An important artifact in the long and complex history of Native American relations is the 1971 Paul Revere and the Raiders song, "Indian Reservation". This song is no obscure oddity. It hit NUMBER ONE on the US charts in the summer of '71.

In it, Paul Revere proclaims:

Though I wear a shirt or tie, I'm still part RED MAN deep inside.

This song, sung by a white man who spent most of his career dressing up as a famous COLONIST, looks like schlocky exploitative crap in 2005. However, it struck a chord with the Americans of 1971. Experience the tense and angry vibe of this song yourself:

Paul Revere and the Raiders - Indian Reservation

Two years later in 1973, another pop song about the Native American experience in America topped the US charts: Cher's "Half Breed". In the song, Cher, who is 1/16th Cherokee, conveys a sentiment that many of the "Newest Indians" could relate to:

I can't run from what I am




"Half Breed" has 70's-style string arrangements similar to "Indian Reservation", but ups the ante with a semi-tribal drum beat intro.

Cher- Half Breed

In 1986, Swedish pop-metal group Europe (famous for "The Final Countdown") took the Native American pop lament to an international level with their song "Cherokee". Songwriter/singer Joey Tempest lambastes the "White Man's greed" in the verses while solemnly evoking the tribe's forced relocation in the stark chorus:

Cherokee - marching on the Trail of Tears

There's a searing guitar solo that segues into a series of triumphant keyboard arpeggios, perhaps representing the possibility of the Cherokee Nation's return to glory.

Europe - Cherokee

CONCLUSION POINTS:

-Cherokees are THE tribe for a lot of people. 100% of the Native American-based pop I could think of was about Cherokees.

-Political songs are easy to dis, perhaps because the pop song is so low on the art forms-totem pole. Fuck that; these songs have heart.

-Don't waste your time studying Native American-based pop if you want to learn about Native Americans; this music is an entity unto itself.

NATIVE AMERICAN-BASED POP

GREETINGS FROM THE ISLE OF THE MANHATTOES:
Today I rode my bike from the beautiful and mysterious Upper West Side of the Isle of the Manhattoes to the arguably less-beautiful and more-mysterious Minnehanonk aka Randall's Island, former home of the New York Cosmos.

It's a weird island (not as weird as Roosevelt Island, though, which we should talk about one day). Actually, it's an amalgamation of three islands artificially connected through paved-over landfills. It's a transportation hub as well, propitiously located between the Bronx, Manhattan and Queens. On this particular Sunday, I saw lots of barbecues, chill-out sessions and amateur league sports.


Moving between the islands of New York City on a bike, I was struck by the physical geography in a way I never feel when I take the subway from one hood to another hood; Manhattan is an island! Even when I stare at the New Jersey homeland from Riverside Park, I am so bound by cultural and personal geography that I forget that, like the Maharishi Yogi or Dave Longstreth's Don Henley, I simply live on a ridge overlooking a river.

This is not to say that like the oft-ridiculed cheerleader of Glen Ridge High School who was publicly amazed to learn that the Lincoln Tunnel is underneath water, I am a geography dumbass. (I think??) I am talking about the multi-layered understanding of geography which I am exploring in my own mind. If this is not clear to you, it's probably because you are not me, but even this point is debatable.

DJ Shadow for High School Percussion Ensemble

My buddy Steve Condo showed me this weird video. It's a couple of DJ Shadow songs performed by a high school percussion ensemble from Minnetonka, Minnesota. The man behind the arrangement is Brian Udelhofen.



This video is a great blend of awkwardness and dark mysticism; two essences which I imagine characterize the life of many a Minnesota high school percussionist.

MIA REMIX

This is a remix of MIA's "Bucky Done Gun" that I did for XL's "Online Piracy Funds Terrorism".

I TOOK THIS DOWN BUT YOU CAN STILL DOWNLOAD IT FROM THE XL WEBSITE

Ezra Factory - MIA - Bucky Done Gun (Bachata Plantain Mash)

NOW IT GETS SERIOUS!

YO! NOW IT GETS SERIOUS!
My name is Ezra and I'm back on the beautiful and mysterious Upper West Side. My senior year has officially started [SENIORS!!]. Anyway, I'm seriously going to start working on this blog because I think it's important to keep up with new technology and to organize thoughts. Plus I think I know how to put mp3's up and shit. Also, it's embarrassing that my blog is one of the least popular on the internet.
Enough soul-searching!!

Boy, I've been listening to such great records lately I barely know where to begin; stuff like the first Hiroshima LP, Paul Winter's groundbreaking animal sounds-smooth jazz fusion record Common Ground, Bachata Hits 2005! You gotta be kidding me! This is the best time to be alive and those three records prove it because this is the first time on earth that a guy could sit in a room on the beautiful and mysterious Upper West Side and listen to all three in a row. This is not to say that we live in a perfect world...


First things first though. I gotta get some shit off my chest:
I didn't have a lot of time to record this summer, but I did get started on a project that I'm very excited about. My good friend Andrei has been wanting to cut a solo album for a long time (he's a member of NJ noize dudez Gorgot). I helped him make the artwork a long time ago, but he never got around to recording some music to go with it.














This summer the stars finally aligned! While chilling at Wes Miles' house in beautiful Frenchtown, NJ, we finally got the creative juices flowing. In a short burst of creative lightning, we recorded two songs for Andrei's album. Wes, Andrei and I all contributed! GESTAMKUNSTWERK!

PLEASE listen to these mp3's and let me (us) know what you think! I could tell you more but the plot is clearly stated in the music. These mp3's are a little quiet, but don't worry about it.

RIGHT CLICK SAVE AS
SORRY, I HAD TO TAKE THESE SWEET MP3's DOWN. DL THEM FROM ANDREI'S MYSPACE PAGE

Andrei - It Ain't Easy

Andrei - Anthony