(Video) Madlib Meets Ethiopian Legend Ayaléw Mesfin

Madlib meets legendary Ethiopian funk musician Ayaléw Mesfin whose music he has often sampled. The story of Ayaléw Mesfin, his struggles under an oppressive government, his humble appreciation of political asylum in America, and his emotional return to the stage to perform his music years later---there's a lot to appreciate in this 13-minute video. Ayaléw was jailed by an oppressive Communist regime that took over Ethiopia in the 70s. Arrested for distributing his music to the public for free, released only on the terms that he stop making and performing music.

A student of music in all its forms, we witness Madlib meet one of his idols and discuss their respective crafts as well as the harrowing story of what Ayaléw suffered through. Had to post this here as it really resonated and I'm glad to see Madlib showing love to one of the musicians whose work he's inspired by, while shedding light on an obscure artist for the fans.

Healing Ingredients for Hard Times

Greek street art from here.

"A middenhide hoard of objects!" 

- Finnegans Wake, p. 19

"To clean and tidy up Matter...

To put back all the things people cluttered up

Because they didn't understand what they were for...

To straighten, like a diligent housekeeper of Reality,

The curtains on the windows of Feeling

And the mats before the doors of Perception...

To sweep the rooms of observation

And to dust off simple ideas...

That's my life, verse by verse."

- Fernando Pessoa (as Alberto Caeiro), 17 September 1914 

(from A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems, p. 56)

Besides the increasingly entropic, sad and infuriating thunderstorm of drama unfolding daily in the news, my closer circumference has also been racked with scary, turbulent, and unpredictable drama lately. The tension of the times is inescapable, it seems.

Besides the weight of experiencing people close to me fighting life-threatening illnesses, family friends passing away, and cherished friends leaving town, the last few months have featured the misfortune of a nearby neighbor exploding into a dark psychotic and meth-aided breakdown bringing nerve-eroding levels of disturbance and threat to my immediate community. My strong woman is terrified, deeply rattled, and my infuriated Italian Staten Island dude energy is trying to force its way into the situation. Plus it's Texas so the entire neighborhood is armed. Dealing with all of this has been rough.

What's helped me keep my head on straight is regular indulgence in the following ingredients: reading the poetry of Fernando Pessoa, exploring the music of rapper Ka, vibing off daily doses of Fela Kuti or lines from Finnegans Wake, and both watching and playing lots of baseball. Here are some thoughts on all of those.

Madlib Interview NYC 2016 (Video) & More

Posting this not because it's a fantastic interview or anything, but a new(ish) appearance of an interview with Madlib in that type of setting is worth celebrating and paying attention to. The interview technically isn't even anything special, mainly because Madlib is such a notoriously quiet character. But for me, as a huge Madlib fan, his elusive nature and bizarre personality---buried as it is within a thick turtle shell whose surface is decorated with jewels and whose cavernous depths echo exotic clanky music---is fascinating in and of itself. It's amusing watching Madlib here squirm away from straightforward answers, or use humor and sarcasm as subterfuge.

More importantly, Otis Jackson Jr. aka Madlib is widely considered (by those who know who he is) to be one of the great musical geniuses of our time. When he speaks (whether in a rare interview or through music), you listen. A multi-instrumentalist who transcends mediums and genres, his trippy crate-digging mixes of Brazilian jazz or African rock or other miscellaneous gems are just as interesting as his one-man band jazz releases or his legendary beat tapes. He's always been one of my favorite artists to write about and a constant presence in my daily playlists. I'm thrilled to see the mind of Madlib open up here even just a little bit to share his wisdom. Plus, above all else, the common thread of intrigue about his sound is his style, and the man's unique style certainly comes across in this interview. So do check it out.

After that, you can listen to this Madlib mix of Brazilian records from the crates, entitled Speto Da Rua.

(If you dig that, then also check out his newer mix, Mind Fusion: African Ear Wax.)


Lately, I've been immersed in the instrumentals he produced for Strong Arm Steady's 2010 album In Search of Stoney Jackson. I could listen to this for days:



And, lastly, one can't talk about Madlib without lamenting the absurdly long wait for the new Madvillain album with Doom. Here's Madlib's remix of a track from another long-awaited collabo, Doom and Ghostface:

The Indigenous Arts of Moondog

I don't know how it took me all this time before I finally discovered Moondog. But, thanks to the glory of the internet, once I tasted a few drops of his music it wasn't long before the floodgates opened.

Moondog was a blind composer, street musician, and poet who spent decades plying his craft on the streets of New York City in the mid-20th century, busking and selling his music and poetry. Known as "The Viking of 6th Avenue", the eccentric blind bearded artist always wore full Viking regalia

New York Times image

(clothes which he made himself), spear included.

The blind man's sound is spellbinding, intoxicating, invigorating, enchanting---often a Native American-influenced thumping drum pattern forms the spine of his symphonic melodies with their whistling flutes, moaning horns, or lilting violins. Together with the indigenous tribal thump, his music is known for incorporating the sounds of the world, whether it's animals (frogs croaking, birds squawking), the crashing ocean waves, a boat's foghorn, or the grumbling of car engines. It's all combined together into a unique jazz-classical hybrid occasionally punctuated by readings of his short, playful poetry.

Mostly self-trained as a musician, he was adept with many instruments and even invented a few of his own. During his years busking in New York he eventually connected with some major composers of the era who helped get him to record studio albums and even conduct major orchestras. Despite reaching the heights of conducting symphonies in Carnegie Hall he remained devoted to the streets, regularly donning his hand-made Viking garb, rain or shine, to stand out and play for pedestrians.

Surely the most fascinating character I've come across in a while, his story sounds mythical and his sound is mystical. He even has a timeless look to him, his face could be the face of Da Vinci or Aristotle.

Thankfully there appears to be a documentary about him slated to be released this year.

A few of my favorite Moondog sound clips will follow. The first one should be strikingly familiar.

Album Review: Sophisticated Movement by Kevlaar 7 & Woodenchainz

"My vinyl voice so vintage, hear the *crackling* and the *clicking*"
- Kevlaar 7

With three high-quality releases in less than two years, Kevlaar 7 is arguably the most consistent purveyor of pure hip hop right now. This latest offering, Sophisticated Movement, is a 15-track collaboration with burgeoning beatcrafter Woodenchainz, an album bursting at the seams with soulfulness as the sounds of decrepit Detroit's underground hip hop/blues heart continues to pour out from the Wisemen camp.

Autumn is Here

All of the colors are changing
Autumn is here
Leaves now are falling
Dark's near....


It's the first cool, crisp day of Fall here in Austin. Autumn has finally arrived in this beautiful city.

Exactly two years ago, my former girlfriend and I embarked on a 12-hour journey up the coast of California to attend the World Vegetarian Festival in San Francisco. It coincided with the final two days of an exciting baseball season, with San Fran as its epicenter. That crisp, chilly weekend was one of the more memorable experiences I've had in the last four or five years (documented here). Today in Austin, World Vegetarian Day will be celebrated at a massive outdoor potluck picnic party in Pease Park which I'm attending.

After that I'll be hanging out with a diehard San Francisco Giants fan to watch their postseason begin. Two years ago, shortly after we returned from that unforgettable Bay Area trip, the Giants won the World Series.

Baseball has reached its final stages. Football has begun.

The air is crisp, the shadows long. 

Autumn is here.

Where We're At (The Center of the Universe)

The Railway Station at Perpignan (1965) - Salvador Dali

During the year that has just concluded, a good deal of my mental energy was devoted to Salvador Dali and his paranoiac-critical method. The paranoiac method was one of the keys to my study of Dali and James Joyce. For Dali, one of his favorite means of sharing this theory was always his deep infatuation with Millet's famous painting The Angelus (this was discussed in more detail here). During the 1930s, Dali penned a book-length analysis of this seemingly simple painting, asserting that the two farmers, who appear to be observing the daily Angelus prayer devotions in their field, are actually kneeling over a tiny casket. Millet decided to paint over the casket, Dali declared, because it came across as too morbid.

Wu-Tang Bats All in the Sky

As embarrassing as the pop and glitter music that parades itself as hip hop may be to the true fan of Rhythm And Poetry, and as ubiquitous as that hollow and monotonous commercial sound may be on the corporate airwaves, the essence of real hip hop music remains powerful if not exactly popular. This is especially evident for loyal fans of the Wu-Tang Clan and their endless throng of talented affiliates.

Almost 20 years after their debut upon the music scene, Wu generals like Raekwon and Ghostface Killah are still highly sought-after by both fans and fellow musicians, while The Rza has soared straight past the heights of musical production and film soundtracks into the director's chair for his film debut, The Man with the Iron Fists, starring Russell Crowe and set to be released later this year.

The Wu camp continues to release a steady stream of quality music, staying true to their formula (the original hip hop formula) of sharp lyrics, skillful flows, and sample-based loops with crackling drum breaks while giving birth to another generation of diehard fans (40-year-olds and teenagers alike can be found making the eagle-wings at concerts). This summer was particularly profuse as not only the Wu and their affiliates but even outside artists have delivered offerings in homage to the name of the mighty Shaolin supergroup. Here, I will briefly go over all that we've heard this summer.


Bronze Nazareth - School for the Blindman

First off, and most importantly, the ostensible 21st Century messiah of Wu-Tang, Bronze Nazareth, has finally released his sophomore album, the follow-up to his 2006 debut (one of my favorite albums of all-time) The Great Migration. The Detroit-based emcee/producer is considered the heir to the throne but unlike many of the Wu-Tang affiliates and Killa Bees, he did not simply inherit this title, he earned it. He's not a relative, old buddy/schoolmate, or record label-appointed collaborator, instead he's something of a savant who so impressed European Wu-Tang affiliate Cilvaringz (himself, an important part of Wu-Tang's new breed) back in 2002 that he was given an opportunity to show his work to The Rza who immediately signed him and housed him up in New York for two months to work on The Abbott's new album.

When that record, The Birth of a Prince, came out in 2003 there were two beats in particular that shot steam out of my ears and led me to declare that Rza had regained his magical touch production-wise. It wasn't until two years later that I actually thought to look at the album credits and realized it wasn't Rza who had made those beats, it was the debut of someone named Bronze Nazareth.

We eventually got to hear Bronze speak his piece lyrically and it was immediately evident that Wu-Tang had once again uncovered a gem: a gifted poet as well as sublime beat-crafter. His debut album made hip hop heads explode (one particular Amazon user review has always stuck with me) and he subsequently unveiled his own group, The 7 Wisemen, who released two highly-acclaimed albums while Bronze received an increasingly steady stream of production work for Wu affiliates hungry for the vintage chops (more on those in a minute).

The new record, School for the Blindman, was released yesterday amid high anticipation and, speaking for myself at least, it has definitely met the absurdly high expectations I had. The lyrics are mostly pretty heavy though delivered in short aphoristic lines (he indicated in a recent interview that he's prone to work on a verse for days/weeks to make each line strike the right note), his flow has added some new complexities, and the beats are out of this fucking world. Here's one of the album's bonus tracks featuring The Rza:


"Squeeze the page, please / my blood, sweat and tears
drip off my inscription / no minor incisions 
unless you fail to listen"

Go get it!

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Timbo King - From Babylon to Timbuk2

When the Swarm was upon us in the mid-1990s, Timbo King was leading the pack. He was one of the few artists outside of the 9-member Wu-Tang Clan circle who, right from the beginning, proved he could match up with anyone when it came to clutching mics. The notoriously poor business management of the Wu enterprise left him waiting to receive his time in the spotlight though and his blacktop-hardened street personality didn't soften up to the corporate record execs who preferred to call the shots and this mega-skilled emcee found himself black-listed in the industry.

He continued to stay relevant in the ears of listeners by featuring on albums with Rza, Gza, Killah Priest, and being a part of the supergroup Black Market Militia, but it wasn't until this summer, nearly 20 years after he began his career, that he finally released his debut solo album. He put his best work into it and brought plenty of great production to the table, mostly from Bronze Nazareth. I've got a big review of the record covering every track all written up, just need to make some edits and I will post it here soon. It's definitely one of the best albums of the year.

Here's one of my favorite tracks from the record, a clever takedown of all the industry executives who've been ruining the rap industry for the last decade or so.


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Wu-Tang Clan - Legendary Weapons

Earlier this summer the group released this short compilation album, a sequel to 2009's Chamber Music, with live production from The Revelations and features from rap legends like Sean Price and AZ plus some of the Killa Bee affiliates. The production, despite being handled by a live band, was a bit lacking for me and certainly a step below the similar 2009 showcase. As this might be called The Summer of Bronze, the Nazareth man got to step on to a track next to legends Rza, U-God and Cappadonna to outshine all of them ("tempted by Satan, put a bullet in his diaphragm / Walk around, black clouds and quiet violins").

The most important part of this latest effort, though, was the return of fan-favorite Killa Sin. Sin, like Timbo King, had been impressing everybody for years but never got a chance to shine on his own. These last 5 years or so (maybe longer, I'm not sure) he's been in and out of prison and hasn't put out much music at all. This record hails his return as he and his water fountain flow were featured on two tracks, including a solo track.

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Wu-Tang & Jimi Hendrix - Black Gold

Last year a musician named Tom Caruana released a free mash-up album combining the Beatles and Wu-Tang that was absolutely superb. He deftly weaved together Beatles interviews, quotes, instrumentals, songs, and all kinds of Wu chops for a magic musical tour (the mash-up was entitled Enter the Magical Mystery Chambers). It was so good that Rza actually mentioned it in a verse on the aforementioned Legendary Weapons album.

Caruana just recently released another homage to the Wu that's getting plenty of attention, it's a mix of the bass-heavy flavors of Jimi Hendrix with verses from the Wu and friends (Killarmy gets a song on here as well as other lesser known affiliates). I don't like it quite as much as the Beatles mix but it's no slouch either, I highly recommend it.

Another similar project that caught my attention is Shaolin Jazz - The 37th Chamber, a smooth combo of jazz (both old and new) and classic Wu-Tang material. All three of these mash-up homages (the Beatles, Hendrix, and jazz mixes) are totally free and available for download.

*   *   *


Tragic Allies - Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil

Tragic Allies is a trio from Massachusetts that has been putting out great new music steadily for a few years now through mixtapes and free internet tracks but they've yet to release an album. As seems to be a common thread with some of the artists I've mentioned, they announced their record a while ago and it suffered a bunch of pushbacks and delays.

Well, finally, the Tragic Allies debut album is coming. It's due September 27th and features Planet Asia, Canibus, Killah Priest, and (yup) Bronze Nazareth. The reason I mention them here next to all the Wu-Tang stuff is that, while they aren't affiliates or associated with Wu-Tang at all, their new record not only features some Wu legends but they bring that similar style of classic 90s-era hip hop. I've felt for a while now that Tragic Allies are making some of the best rap music in the world, period.

Of all the great music I've mentioned, this track stands next to all of it:


Here is the first single off the new album, "God-gifted" featuring Planet Asia.


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Madlib Medicine Show No. 12: Raw Medicine

Lastly, since I've written so much about Madlib and his Medicine Show series, I should mention that Stones Throw just released Part 12 of the series, a 37-track remix album that features a whole crowd of various emcees including Wu-Tang's Inspectah Deck, Ghostface, Raekwon, Cappadonna and a bunch more. I've only just received it so I can tell you that the artwork is as awesome as usual and the sounds are vintage Madlib, that is, dusty old raw hip hop sounds.

"Keeper of My Soul" by Yesterday's New Quintet

Somebody put together a great video for this track by YNQ (otherwise known as Madlib pretending to be a jazz quintet all by himself). It displays some of the jazz record covers for Madlib's multitude of forays into his father's genre. This is off the first Yesterday's New Quintet album entitled Angles Without Edges. I need to review that one soon. Check out my other Madlib reviews, especially this one about some of his jazz stuff.

Some words for Winehouse

Saturday morning I had to get up very early, around 6 AM, to drive my girlfriend to work. Bursting out of sleep and into consciousness so early brought with it a still-spinning movie reel of vivid dream action. I don't often remember my dreams (although I have tried a few times, including recently, to record them in the morning immediately upon waking up in an effort to tap into that unconscious wellspring) but this time I was still seemingly half asleep. The whole story was fresh and I outlined it to my girlfriend during the short drive over to her job, including my own attempts at interpreting each facet of it.

My memory of the dream began with me checking into a hotel and my credit card being denied. The problem was quickly resolved (although there was intense worry upon my only form of payment being rejected) and I went over to the elevator to head up to my room. It was a crappy, rickety old elevator, probably representing the elevators at the hotel I stayed at recently in Pasadena, those were unusually old and slow as hell.

I went in and hit the button to head up to my floor but then two little children rushed in and started playing a game where they chased each other in and out of the elevator while their mother looked on, unable to control them. I realized the elevator wouldn't be going anywhere so I opted to take the stairs. Walking back into the lobby there was a big beautiful staircase in the middle that led up to a restaurant on the second floor. This lobby, in retrospect, was a dream distortion of the lobby in the hotel I was forced to stay in after I was stranded at LAX last month when the United Airlines computers crashed and passengers had to sit at the ticket lines for over 5 hours.

Walking up the hotel lobby steps I heard a news report blaring out from a television below: a young superstar NHL goaltender had suddenly died in a car accident. This goalie had a name in the dream but it wasn't anybody real, just an unconsciously garbled name but this news hit me hard and I felt terrible for this young man who'd died so suddenly. A very close friend of mine, a hockey goalie who I'd grown up with since the age of 8 or so, died in his sleep two years ago, just two weeks after his 26th birthday and, with the anniversary of his untimely death coming up soon it's likely that the thought of him was present here.

As I continued ascending the stairs onto the second floor, the news report's grim images and descriptions of the young man, normally a spirited and animated presence in hockey games, having his life evaporate from him on a stretcher bubbled up sadness from my heart into my throat and I nearly broke into tears. The stairs led into a restaurant and while walking through the restaurant I spotted a familiar face. It was a distinguished man with glasses and he was carrying on a monologue to a large table of people, I recognized him as an NHL general manager, in fact, the GM of the team who'd just lost their goalie to a sudden death. I went up to him and offered my condolences at this horrible tragedy and he was relieved to see me because he'd been trying to communicate to his dinner guests just how bad this news is. I helped elaborate it for him, noting how this young man was only 25 years old and was at the height of his athletic career, etc, etc.

Shortly after that I woke up. After returning home from dropping my girlfriend off at work it was still super early and I was super tired so I sunk right back into bed and went back to sleep for hours. When I woke up again I was spacey and slow, before I could even get out of bed I languidly checked for new e-mails on my phone and then resorted to Twitter. There I saw the news that Amy Winehouse had just been found dead at the age of 27. It felt like my dream had perhaps tapped into a splash in the collective unconscious.

I never paid that much attention to Amy Winehouse's music over the years but I was certainly blown away by "You Know I'm No Good." The woman clearly had an immense gift for singing, listen to her voice for a few seconds and it will rumble down into the deep recesses of your soul. As powerful as her talent was, her inner demons were just as strong. We all wrestle with our shadows. Nietzsche wrote: "One must have chaos within oneself if one is to be a dancing star." Reading about Ms. Winehouse's harrowing struggles with drug addiction it's clear that her torment ran deeper than we could possibly imagine. She certainly wasn't the first superstar musician to have a drug problem but reading the details of her preferred substances (crack, heroin, ecstasy, cocaine, ketamine, alcohol) makes Ol' Dirty Bastard seem like a choirboy. And her descent played out in plain sight for all to see and judge.

I've been listening to her music a lot these past few days and I'm simply in awe of her voice. Russell Brand wrote a beautiful and personal tribute to her and described this feeling perfectly:

The awe that envelops when witnessing a genius. From her oddly dainty presence that voice, a voice that seemed not to come from her but from somewhere beyond even Billie and Ella, from the font of all greatness. A voice that was filled with such power and pain that it was at once entirely human yet laced with the divine.

I hope her troubled soul can now finally rest in peace.

I also hope that people can come to understand that she doesn't deserve to be tossed into the gutter because of her failure to cope with her problems. Artists are often lightning rods not just for controversy, glamor, and all the other paparazzi bullshit. They are antennas tuned into the aura of their epoch. We live in a chemically consumptive world and this brilliant young woman who couldn't stop gobbling up drugs is representative of our modern mass madness. 

More Mind Fusion

"De la musique avant toute chose..."
("Music before anything else")
- Paul Verlaine, Art Poétique

I'd like to share a few more examples of the records that appear on Volume 2 of Madlib's Mind Fusion series I talked about in the last post. The essence of this first song embodies, for me, the whole approach of these Madlib mixes and serves as a nice introduction to the catalogue of forgotten beauties that this musical savant seeks to entertain us with.



This next one is an epic 1960s Italian song with great drums.



That song is by the famous Italian composer Ennio Morricone who also produced the legendary soundtrack to the trilogy of Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns in the 60s. Of all the great musical notes in that classic film series, the one that I've always been most struck by is the poignant little pocket watch tune that plays an important part in the second film of that trilogy, For a Few Dollars More.



And, last but not least, a glorious explosion of drums and piano, again from Mind Fusion Vol. 2:



(I just want to point out that this isn't even the best mix in the 5-part Mind Fusion series. That would be Volume 3 which contains about 70 minutes of nothing but gems. Unfortunately, there is no extant tracklist for Volume 3 and I've only been able to identify one song, though it's a beauty.)

The Flight of the Oriole

For the last 2 or 3 weeks I've found myself listening almost exclusively to Madlib's Mind Fusion series, a pretty rare set of cds featuring a vast display of old soul-jazz-funk-psychedelic-global-whatever records (there are 5 albums/mixtapes in the series, 2 of them feature Madlib-produced hip hop remixes, 3 of them are diverse DJ mixes from Mind Altering Demented Lessons In Beats' famous 5-ton collection of vinyl and those mixes are superb).

The song above is from Volume 2 of the series (you can see the full tracklist here) and this tune has captivated me from the first time it hit my ears. It's jazz/soul with an old nightclub feel (the singer, Lorez Alexandria, had performed in Chicago nightclubs in the 1950s but this song is from her 1978 album How Will I Remember You?). I'm entranced by the blend of fast-tapping drums, deep bass strumming slowly, and the singer's strong voice and delivery. Her voice darts and floats like a bird as she sings the seductive story of a ladybird, a Baltimore Oriole, using avian archetypes ("no time for a lady to be dragging her feathers around in the snow"). A bird's eye view of the track reveals the full synthesis of meaning, content, and flavorful delivery---her French-sounding pronunciation of the "r" in Oriole even brings to mind the French word orielle which means "ear" and it's as though the temptress described in the song is also tempting the musical ear of the listener (the oriole is, after all, a songbird). It becomes clear that this was all purposely done by this very talented musician, her bio states that her "clearly enunciated delivery...was always highly sensitive to the import of the lyric she was singing" and the info shown at the bottom of the YouTube clip describes her as "superior at interpreting lyrics."

*   *   *

The Baltimore Oriole first received its name because the bird's orange-and-black feathers resembled the coat of arms of Lord Baltimore, a British coloniser in the 1600s who was the first proprietor of the colony of Maryland in North America. The Baltimore Oriole is (surprise!) the state bird of Maryland and, following the pastoral tradition of naming baseball teams after state birds, Baltimore ballclubs have used the symbol of the Oriole for almost 130 years now.

The Baltimore Nine in the 1890s

The original Baltimore Orioles baseball franchise was founded way back in 1882 (the year James Joyce was born). They were a charter member of the American Association, an old professional league that lasted for ten years. When that league folded in 1892, the Orioles joined the National League (yep, the same National League that the Mets and everyone else play in today) and became a powerhouse, winning three consecutive pennants.

The National League during the 1890s was a scary place, the games often filled with violent, dirty play, the umpires were often spat on, punched, or shoved and the fans involved themselves in the game's quarrels to a degree unlike anything we could imagine nowadays. In their tame moments, they were known to hurl rotten eggs or beer bottles at the on-field arbiters. As Bill James wrote in the Historical Baseball Abstract,

 "the fans never actually killed an umpire. They tried. Umpires required police protection countless times, and there was an incident in Minnesota in 1906 in which a crowd got hold of an umpire with apparent intent to do bodily harm, but was dissuaded by a local athlete. A good many umpires have been killed in on-field accidents, some of them in the minors. But if they didn't kill one (deliberately) in the 1890s, then it just wasn't destined to happen, because they sure tried." (pg 53)

During this violent era, the Orioles were known as the absolute dirtiest team of them all. In 1894, the Orioles started a fight on the field in Boston that got so ugly it ended up with the the fans rioting and starting a fire that destroyed the ballpark and 170 surrounding buildings. Led by third baseman John McGraw, who would eventually go on to become one of the greatest managers of all time for the New York Giants, they played rough and they succeeded with it.

But just as the 20th century dawned, the National League decide to get rid of four teams including the Orioles. Members of the defunct team went to the brand spankin' new American League and made their own Baltimore Orioles team though they'd only last a couple of years before moving to New York and becoming the Highlanders (eventually changing their name to the Yankees).

The Orioles of today that we know and love were originally the St. Louis Browns, another team in the early American League, until the franchise transferred to Baltimore in 1954 and took on the name of the famous old B-more ballclubs. The newly minted Orioles stunk during their early years in the American League but they would eventually build up a pretty spectacular team that managed to stay in contention virtually every year from 1960 to 1983, winning three World Series titles along the way.

Those Orioles teams pulled off the exalted feat of playing in the Fall Classic for three consecutive years from 1969 to 1971, though they only won once during that span (in 1970). In 1969, the highly-favored, powerhouse O's went up against the scrappy New York Mets. The Amazin' and lovable Mets pulled off the upset, defeating Baltimore in 5 games, winning their first ever World Championship in a series that featured a handful of legendary moments. Here's the Mets segment from Ken Burns' wonderful baseball documentary:


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Having departed San Diego and lost the luxury of rooting for and seeing a nearby baseball team (the Padres) on the regular, I've found thus far this season that I'm clutching to my Mets fanhood as tightly as ever. I'm now deep in the heart of Texas, the state's two pro ball teams are each at least three hours away from me and I've got absolutely no interest in either of them anyway. I don't have cable, so I can't pick up their games on TV and while I do watch baseball on MLB.tv, I'm blacked out from watching any games involving a Texas team. So, early on in the season while league storylines are still developing, I've latched onto my ol' Mets.

This year's team got off to a terrible start but they've looked pretty respectable lately as their deep offense has awoken from its offseason hibernation. As I mentioned recently, I've been particularly glad to see Carlos Beltran back in the lineup and mashing the ball like he used to. As I cooked dinner the other night, I watched and cheered loudly as Beltran launched three homeruns against Colorado.

This weekend, the Metropolitans make their only trip to the city of Houston (though they do return to Texas to face the Rangers in June) and I've been trying to figure out a way to head over there to see a game but my schedule doesn't allow it and it's a three hour drive each way. I can't help but be annoyed by this, though, because my favorite baseball team is playing within driving distance from here and I'm unable to go see them.

I didn't even get to watch last night's game live as it was blacked out. The Mets went about their business anyway and blasted three monstrous homeruns in a nice comeback win against the Astros. For tomorrow afternoon's tilt, featuring the knuckleball-flinging sensation that is R.A. Dickey taking the hill for the Mets, I'll probably resort to tuning into the game's radio broadcast to keep up with the happenings of the National League New York Nine.

*   *   *

The inimitable Joe Posnanski wrote a nice blog post that briefly examines the reborn Carlos Beltran (leading the NL in extra base hits at the moment) and compares him to Derek Jeter while also painting a humorously accurate and well-written portrayal of New York City and her relationship with her baseball teams. As anyone who's spent time in Manhattan knows, the best way to get a glimpse of what's going on with the local teams is to drop a quarter and pick up the often absurd New York Post tabloid. Sayeth Joe:

"I look to the Post front page for overreaction, for gut punches, for the very thing that New York cops, construction workers, store owners and waitresses and anyone else you might run into would say."

China Gates

It was through Madlib and his cosmic experimental jazz that I first heard of Sun Ra and now I'm finally starting to get into Ra's music. I first heard this obscure track from Ra on an out-of-print mix by Madlib called the Mind Fusion series.

Nina

The Summer of Jazz: A Review of Installments 7 & 8 of the Madlib Medicine Show

For the summer months, the Madlib Medicine Show (a one-album-per-month series that the musical mastermind known as Madlib has blessed us with this year) shifted fully into jazz mode with Medicine Show #7: High Jazz in July and #8: Advanced Jazz in August. Although previously I've never been a fan of jazz or even given it much of a chance, Madlib's musical genius sucked me in and got me hooked. All through the summer, my ears were tuned to these new jazz releases and I even went out and purchased some of his previous jazz albums including the excellent debut Angles Without Edges by the one-man band calling himself/themselves Yesterdays New Quintet.

High Jazz is an original jazz album featuring new and unreleased tracks from some obscure and unreleased Madlib jazz projects under pseudonyms like Russell Jenkins Jazz Express, Jahari Massamba Unit,  The Kenny Cook Octet, Joe McDuphrey Experience, and The Big Black Foot Band. It's really a hodgepodge of random new and old tracks but yet it flows together seamlessly into a very nice little album. Overall the sound is very cosmic, almost shamanic sometimes but always (seemingly) done with jazz instruments.

My favorite track is the "live" rendition of "Broken Dreams" by Yesterdays New Quintet. The entire "live" performance, which is almost 15 minutes long, is excellent and has the slightly grainy and a-bit-off-key sound that a live jazz quintet would be expected to have. Except here it's one guy pretending to be five while pretending the five-man band is playing live. It's truly amazing both in thought and result. And, of the three tracks they play, "Broken Dreams" sounds the most wonderful to me with its slowly intoning heavy and deep guitar moan that actually conjures the dream music in the film Inception (how perfect that this album came out right around the same time the movie did). Over that guitar groan another melody chimes in through a piano, then an electric piano, multiple diverse drum sounds, and this all rhythmically carried along, a wagon of instruments rolling down the street producing beautiful song.

It's as though the dark moaning melody that always remains in the vibrating backdrop is the element of a dream. The whole song is a dream although it's musically depicting broken dreams. The dreams are introduced through the hopeful soft-key piano melody and then progressively we hear the sound of the "ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry," but it's all introduced and executed harmonically. (Note that the live rendition sounds different---better to me---than the original version.)

The harmonic balance of multiple different elements is one of the keys to what makes this music so gratifying and Madlib such a genius. Not only a range of different instruments and sounds but even two or three different melodic tempos are weaved together at the same time creating a musical atmosphere and a wide, spacious, mysteriously cosmic one. Using a different metaphor, Madlib's jazz music is a Jenga tower built from multiple layers of sound and tempo, swaying rhythmically in the wind.

"Reality or Dream" is another example of this. The song feels like the sounds of descending down a tube like Alice down the rabbit hole, grasping on to anything you can and dragging it down with you. There's probably over a dozen different sounds as you descend downwards here. The key recurring motif though is an eerie, Arabian flute that smoothly chimes before getting caught up in the mess of scattered objects, becoming bent and manipulated.

"Space & Time" is the smoothest track on the album, a melodically expanded jazz loop that doesn't venture as far out into experimental realms as some of the other tracks. It's closer to a hip hop beat than anything else here, even by its relatively short length (1:47) compared to the other much lengthier tracks around it. It's followed by the dusty guitar strings and soft melodic drums of "Conquistador," a track that plays like a spaghetti western space exploration flick. Music like this is truly an experience. Like a Disney ride or something. You're lifted and carried through multitudes of metamorphing scenes.

The thirteenth track, entitled "Tarzan's Theme," has stuck with me since my very first listen. It carves little holes through the conscious into the sub- or unconscious. It does this through (again) multiple melodies that are introduced and weaved together. Jangling drums (always a pleasing Madlib specialty) accompany throughout. The song is by "The Big Black Foot Band" and it naturally has that hypnotic and colorful shamanic ring to it. Even the strange and repeated chants of things like "starved killers migrate south"and "teeth, hair, teeth, teeth" seem to just go with it.

The only tracks I don't like are "Electronic Dimensions" (way too electric for me) and "High Jazz" (boring) but they really don't seem to hurt the overall feel of the album at all. They're right at the beginning and I can endure them knowing the gold that awaits over the horizon. It's impressive that, in the midst of a series of 12 albums, in a year that has seen the release of two other very good full-length jazz albums from the same guy (who's most famous for his hip hop production), we have here an album experience which promotes and rewards multiple listens. Most of the songs on here feel like they take you places. You can't really ask for more than that.

...But Madlib is the musician who keeps on giving. And so he followed up his own jazz joints with a mixtape of some of the very best jazz musicians ever. I can describe this latest Medicine Show offering no better than the cardboard tab that came affixed to it:

No. 8 - Advanced Jazz: Imagine an 80-minute music history course taking place in a dusty, hazy studio with wall-to-wall jazz vinyl---records from the past 40 years---jazz, fusion, obscure. This course will not be graded. There will be no lecture. Madlib's at the turntable. Class is now in session.

This "music history course" features audible classes on legends like Miles Davis, Ornette Colemen, John Coltrane, and Sun Ra as well as some of the others you see here crossing the Hudson:

There have been some terrific album covers in this Medicine Show series but this tops them all. Since receiving it, I've kept this CD standing up atop my desk, the small glass-cased image of Miles and his pals looking regally upon my writings.

The first thing you notice about this album is that it's LOUD. The sounds really seem to have been turned up and it works great as you can hear the depths of the live instruments and crackling, dusty old vinyl records. There are ten tracks of varying length, each named for a jazz legend and featuring a hand-picked and nicely-mixed collection of their songs. The opening is lovely: a gravelly voice speaking and settling the listener in for a comfortable musical excursion like a hypnotist preparing a patient ("are you there?") and then the pianos, horns, drums, everything, it all marches in so beautifully that I get the chills every time I hear it even though I must've listened to this opening 20 times by now. It then transitions into a jazz flute rendition that Ron Burgundy would describe as "a little Ham and Eggs."

Unlike the other great jazz(esque) mixtape in this series, Flight to Brazil, this isn't just a bunch of Madlib's favorites thrown together and played with very little interference. Instead, Madlib throws in plenty of his customary obscure skits and interludes while also weaving the songs together like a DJ, letting some play longer than others and maintaining a pretty consistent vibe while exploring the works of many different artists. The height (and hilarity) of Madlib's mixing skills here comes at the transition of tracks 2 and 3 when the former closes with a very serious-sounding man touting a film that he feels "is of great importance" and urging us "to undergo this uplifting cinematic experience" only to lead into the opening of track 3 with its hilarious mock blaxploitation trailer ("if you wanna get it together, and see the brother who predicted the weather, dress your mother up in leather, and see KING PIN").

The heart of this album, its thumping, beating, pulsating heart, is an amazing three-minute-plus drum orchestra performance in the middle of track 3 leading into the saxophone of Pharaoh Sanders. You can hear the end of it here in the promo video for the album but honestly, if you have even the slightest interest in jazz or just enjoy great music, I highly recommend picking this up this CD and hearing it in full. It'll really get your blood pumping.

Track 4, dedicated to Herbie Hancock, opens with words of wisdom that resonate and jump back and forth between each side of your headphones before taking you to new lands musically. This track features my favorite melody on the whole tape, a beautifully smooth piano over drums beginning at the 3:06 mark. It's one of those songs that sticks in one's head and pops up unbidden at random moments. Other highlights include: the entire Sun Ra track (Madlib pays proper homage to one of his oft-referenced favorites), the chilling big band track at the opening of Phil Ranelin's track, the exquisite soul track at the beginning of Deodato, and the closing horns/piano/drums from John Coltrane.

This mixtape is lively, bursting with instrumentation and energy, all delivered by Madlib from dusty old jazz records by some of the best musicians of the 20th century. It's a CD I'll probably go back and listen to 20 years from now and still enjoy. A spectacular collection of music, stitched together like an all-embracing quilt.

Note: We didn't get the expected Medicine Show #9 in September apparently because it wasn't finished on time but we may be getting two of them in October. We're at least assured of getting #10 which will be a collection of 60s and 70s soul and funk. Stay tuned for a full review of that one once I soak it in.

MMS008 Advanced Jazz: Class is now in session

This is the cover for the latest chapter of the monthly Madlib series we've been blessed with this year, Medicine Show #8: Advanced Jazz. The painting is called "Jazzcats Crossing the Hudson" and features jazz pioneers like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Sun Ra as they make their way towards New York City. Read more about the cover here.

The album is an 80-minute mix of jazz from the last 40 years with Madlib at the turntables throwing in his usual obscure skits and sounds in between the carefully chosen jazz records.* Since receiving this album last week I haven't listened to anything else, just letting it repeat over and over. I've never been a huge jazz fan but with my growing interest for the multifaceted Madlib, especially this year, my audio tastes have witnessed a very pleasing expansion of horizons. The previous Medicine Show, an album of Madlib's original jazz music called High Jazz, helped evolve my ear drums to the richness of this musical genre (although, I should point out that much of Madlib's jazz stuff seems to transcend the limits of any genre except maybe "cosmic music," if there is a such thing). I will have a double review of the Medicine Show's Summer of Jazz written soon but for now I'm still soaking in the sounds of Miles, Pharoah, Herbie, Mingus, and more. I suggest you do that too. You might learn something.

*I've tried to use the Shazam application on my phone to identify the tracks but the app has been completely stumped thus far. Madlib does it again! (Or Shazam sucks)