Some may know him as “Van the Man”

For many, it’s almost impossible to think of Van Morrison without conjuring up the lyrics to “Brown Eyed Girl.” The two have almost become synonymous, much to the artist’s dismay.

Although Van may seem like “an Irish prick” sometimes, it may actually be warranted. Discover some more about the legendary musician, as Kory French defends and honors one of his favorite singer/songwriters of all time.

Another Lady Lamb the Beekeeper video for you!

I must admit, there’s something irresistible about Lady Lamb the Beekeeper. All in all, it looks like I’m not alone on this. Lady Lamb performed at Brooklyn Vegan’s showcase at SXSW this past Wednesday, and I’m sure it did not disappoint. Although I wasn’t one of the fortunate one’s to be graced with Lady Lamb’s voice via live performance, I can always dream about it while watching some Live Studio sessions. So take your pick, or pop on both for your listening pleasure.

DJ Rekha hits up NPR for a little chat session

She’s the host of Bhangra and Beyond, and she’s hittin’ up NPR for a fireside chat. DJ Rekha breaks down the world of “bhangra,” including its immense influence on American music. Now used in many tracks from artists such as Jay-Z, bhangra has been taking off largely due to DJ Rekha’s passion.

So feel the rhythm and the beat, and give a listen to the show that can give you a whole new genre to appreciate.

Sway, from Death or Freedom, jams at Spoonbread Too in NYC

Sometimes Hear & There episodes only make me wish that all concerts were more like this. Today’s episode is no exception. Taking one electric guitar to soul food stalwart, Spoonbread Too, Sway (aka Steve Clarke from Death or Freedom) performs his song “Nobody Listens.” Filled with a somewhat eerie/dark melody, the composition comes to life in a beautifully crafted piece. I must say, the end verse sends a chill down my spine.

For Freedom or Death tour dates, including some shows at SXSW, check out their Myspace page. Don’t forget to read the band’s recent review by Jim Fussili over at The Wall Street Journal.

Setlist: BTR Hip Hop Show

The luscious voice that opens up DJ Wayne Ski’s Tuesday afternoon Hip Hop Show doesn’t hold back what she feels for him or the beats he plays: “I got you. Can I get you more than once a week? I can’t get enough of that Hip Hop Show on BreakThruRadio.com.”

So what is it that makes Wayne Ski’s Hip Hop Show on BTR separate itself from the rest of the Internet hip hop stations? It’s the delicate mix between classic and fresh that Wayne Ski spins that keeps his listeners thinking they just “can’t get enough.”

“Basically, the beats sound like New York City underground hip hop Radio in the 90s blended with the new sound mix show,” explains Wayne Ski in an email on the style and sound of BTR Hip Hop. “Heavy beats and dope rhymes. Boom Bap Rap as most people like to call it.”

The BTR Hip Hop hour on Tuesday afternoons is a “show that features new artists as well as underground hip hop legends [who are now] on the independent route.” This special blend helps promote new talent while tapping into the listener’s desire for the nostalgia. Take this week’s show for example, we get everything from the very scratched up and redelivered Bumpy Knuckles to the much more smooth and ‘opulent’ Gangalee. “The best part of the show is that I get to play artists who some people have no idea who they are, but once they check out the show they know exactly who they are.”

Another portion of Wayne Ski’s talent that shouldn’t go missed are his colorful mic breaks. One of BTR’s more full-personalities on the mic, I found myself listening to what he had to say about the music just as interesting and entertaining as listening to the tracks themselves.

Take, for example, a message he shares with his listeners at about the halfway point in his show. With a creative way of delivering what is happening in hip hop news and the latest rap music scene, as well as a sense of humor in keeping it real with musician-friends, followers, and fans; DJ Wayne Ski is never short of entertaining antics: “You don’t have to follow me. You can if you want to, but you don’t have to. But if you do, I’m pretty sure you’ll be entertained in some way. shape. or form.”

His programming technique is “simple,” he says. “Basically, I want to hear the studio shake when I turn a song all the way up. And of course I must get the crazy head nod going. Once that happens it’s going on BTR.” Wayne Ski explains to me that “most of the artist I feature I already have relationships with; so once they send it in–it’s on.”

Just like all hip hop, the music on BreakThru’s Hip Hop hour is not about sound only. In respecting the true values of the hip hop form, Wayne Ski makes sure to feature music “that has a message.”

“It’s not just about kicking it or having fun. I would like my listeners to challenge themselves to listen to what the artist are saying.”

Link to this article:
http://www.breakthruradio.com/index.php?b=article.php?id=1678

– Kory French

Liner Notes: If There Is No Father To His Style, Call Him ‘Bastard’

“To the public he was known as Ol’ Dirty Bastard but to me he was known as Rusty. The kindest, most generous soul on earth.”

-Cherry Jones–mother of ODB

This past Saturday (November 13th) marks the sixth-year anniversary of the death of Russell Tyrone Jones, the rapper more famously known as Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Strangely enough, on this past Monday (November 15th) he would have been 42.

It is a daunting task to try and write a thousand-word obituary on a man I hardly know anything about. Sure, I remember playing basketball to Wu Tang Clan tracks when I was in high school; but that was only as a result of the pressure and persistence of a very close friend or mine who demanded his hip-hop CDs get as much play time as my overdone, and inappropriate in comparison, classic rock repertoire.

It was not long before I began to recognize my own closeted affection for the Staten Island collective, soon thereafter, and much to the surprise of my good pal Chris, I was requesting the Clan each time we got into his truck to head off to football practice, drink rye and ginger ale at a bush party, or cruise the ‘dangerous’ redneck streets of my hometown. What was this kung-fu stuff? I didn’t have a clue. What I did know was this:

Two indisputable certainties: 1) I had no idea what this guy was rapping about, and couldn’t relate to any of it. And 2) It didn’t matter, because oh baby, I too, “like it raw.”

A guy who comes onto the scene with a name like ‘Ol’ Dirty Bastard’ backed by a group called ‘The Wu Tang Clan’ presents an immediate problem–or so one would think. And while I feel guilty now for once thinking this way, the more I learn about ODB, the less guilt I feel. It was shock that became his modus operandi, a style that would separate him from his contemporaries. I speculate that the reaction I got from his music was the very response he was looking for. He wanted his audience to hear his music and watch his performance with a “what the fuck just happened” state of disbelief.

A case in point (his most famous case, to be exact):

One does not jump on stage during the fortieth Grammy award ceremonies (1998) in Rockefeller Plaza to interrupt the “song of the year” recipient speech without full consciousness of intention and desired result. You see, in 1998 the Grammy’s were still not recognizing the rap-portion of the ceremony as a television worthy event; and this pissed Dirty off. Frustrated that the awards for hip-hop were handed out a day earlier, during a non-televised ceremony, despite the fact that the genre of music was over two-decades old and while immersed in American culture, ODB took advantage of this moment to share with the rest of the country the injustices of a biased music industry. While many viewers saw it as a form of “distaste,” others applauded Dirty for his stance against racial prejudices in a country and industry that is supposed to be a leader in the disintegration of exactly that.

A lot can be said about the life of Russell Tyrone Jackson that this article does not have the time nor space for. (As a side not, if you are interested I suggest Digging for Dirt: The Life and Death of ODB by Jaime Lowe, which was the primary research source for this article). I could have spent much of my time filling you in on all of his sexual escapades that led to fatherless and unsupported children. I could have gone into detail over his trouble with the law, time spent in and out of  the US’s notorious and discriminatory prison system, and the somewhat lengthy criminal record he managed to acquire over his thirty-five years in this world. Finally, I could have discussed his personal battle with drug and alcohol abuse, supposed and much disputed mental instability, and the official cause of his death: “Accidental overdose from a lethal combination of Tramadol [a painkiller] and cocaine.” But none of this gets down to the core of the man known as Ol’ Dirty Bastard.

Time is the ultimate equalizer. The further we move away from nineties hip-hop, the more we come to recognize it as a major player to a much greater subversive trend. What we often fall guilty of when thinking about these acts of subversion is that it is individual ‘people’ who make the parts to these cultural shifts. Ol’ Dirty Bastard was one of those people. In other words, while our language is mostly predicated on the idea that ‘hip-hop’ stands alone as viable, sustainable American culture, we should be thinking about the people that made it this way. It wasn’t some anomaly born out of thin air. It was a culture built on the character and subcultural styles of artists and performers like Russell Jackson.

Alas, forget my self-prescribed verbose haughtiness. It is said much better in the vernacular of the culture:

“What’s the world without Dirt? Just a bunch of fuckin’ water.”
– Rhymefest

Link to this article:
http://www.breakthruradio.com/index.php?b=article.php?id=1672

– Kory French

AOTW: Chico Mann

While guitarist Chico Mann takes a break from his band, Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, he has developed a multi-layered, electronic fusion sound that’s been blowing up dance floors in New York City and Miami. Mixing Afro-beat, freestyle, Latin, and synth-heavy electronic beats, Chico Mann has brought sounds of far away and far past, with music of the future, just beyond our reach, and called is “electropical.”

Born in NYC to Cuban parents, Marcos Garcia was exposed to music and the business from birth. His father owned a Cuban music record label and his mother often wrote compositions for the artists whom he signed. Garcia was involved in piano and guitar lessons from very young, and though he was told to steer clear of the music industry, it seemed to be his fate. In 2002, after a few jam sessions with Antibalas, he was asked to join the band permanently and has been developing his sound ever since.

The new artist Chico Mann released his first solo album, Manifest Tone, Vol. 1, in 2007, and the following two volumes in May and June of 2009. In doing this, he introduced the world to a fusion of sound as blended as the city he hails from. “It’s an expression of uniquely American music in the sense that it has all these different elements hooked together in one stew. It’s also very urban, very Latin and very multicultural in that it draws from African and funk music,” he says in an interview with James Rawls for Spinner.

Now signed to Wax Poetics records, Chico Mann is releasing his second full-length album, called Analog Drift, on November 16th. These twelve club-tronica, Latin-Afro-freestyle tracks are impossible not to dance to, his cover of Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime” is just one example.  He recently wrapped up the promotional tour, which included a stop at South By Southwest, and plans to be back on the road in 2011. For the time being, check out chicomann.com to buy the digital CD, join the mailing list, and keep up to date on this revolutionary new artist.

Link to this article:

– Carly Shields

Setlist: Japanese Super Terrific Happy Hour

Japanese Super Terrific Happy Hour is BTR’s stretch across the Pacific Ocean and into that quirky, subcultural gizmo-techno world of Japan. In the words of two-man collective DJ Hanabi: “Our main focus with the show is to highlight the incredible ability the Japanese possess to copy a particular element of US pop culture, in this case music, so well that they actually become a parody.”

In a cross-country email, Hanabi elaborates on the modus operandi of today’s Japanese rock/pop/punk bands, making clear to his listener, and my reader, just what it is that makes Super Terrific’s playlist so unique, and in their own rite, cool: “Japanese bands tend to become almost obsessive in their desire to emulate the music that speaks to them most, yet they have no real connection to the roots of the music or the scene itself. Most of these bands don’t speak much English and therefore rely on visual and aural cues to form their approach but they often lack the essence of the scene and sound itself. For example some of the Japanese rockabilly bands we’ve played have the Stray Cats ‘look’ and sound down cold, but you get a sense that they have no real understanding of the rockabilly sub-culture or the music itself. Not that we do either.”

This is what makes the show so “awesome to [them].”  It is precisely these bands that DJ Hanabi feel best harness their talents and incorporate influences into their own, very original sounds.”

DJ Hanabi is actually made up of two people; John and Matt. They tell me they like it that way, but only because it was “a lot easier than coming up with another separate DJ name” than one they already record under. Their approach to each Super Terrific show is usually centered on a specific “genre of well known music and then finding the best and worst examples of Japanese mimicry.” What makes this formula most interesting is that Hanabi never overtly tells their listeners which tracks they think to be good and which they find sillier than anything else, because “of course, that’s subjective.” The explanation of selection-formula goes on, “Actually, we really do enjoy all the tracks we play in their own way. Sometimes we laugh our asses off when listening to some of these bands. How can that be a bad thing?”

Their attitude and sense of fun in the show is contagious. Before writing this article, I listened to their show while in a library. At times, I found myself snickering out loud to the disapproval of many around me.

“As to our performance on the show, we definitely wanted to stay away from the more typical Disc Jockey banter; and we certainly do not want to come off as pompous bastards who think they are way more cool than others because we happen to be lucky enough to have a radio show.” Personally, I found their mic breaks to be anything but “pompous” or “pretentious.” DJ Hanabi informs without taking themselves too seriously, a refreshing addition to online radio these days. They find a great balance between “snarky quips, sarcasm, and an aloof delivery” and informative DJ’ing.

Finally, DJ Hanabi represents the West Coast of BreakThru’s international DJ squad. Admitting that they are “quite happy to remind people we live in San Francisco” they are just as happy to remind many of their listeners that “they don’t.”

“Basically, we have fun with it and don’t take ourselves too seriously and yet we produce a quality show. We wish we received more fan mail though.”

Send Hanabi an email, will ya? citysoundprod@hotmail.com

Link to this article:

http://www.breakthruradio.com/index.php?b=article.php?id=1665

– Kory French

Liner Notes: Inverted Ballet

I am not sure how many of you are aware, but there is a new ballet running in San Francisco that is choreographed entirely to music by The Shins. It has been playing for about five weeks now and has received some fairly strong reviews. This is precisely the cross-fertilization of traditional music genres that I am personally glad to see these days, despite my disdain for ballet, as musicians and choreographers seek to remove the limits of what is expected in separated music mediums.

As for me, my personal interest in this particular crossover can be tied to the fact that it is: a) a band I happen to like very much; and b) a form of musical representation in which I really have no time for. So I wonder which of the two will dominate my subjectivity to taste? I also wonder: Why The Shins? Or more specifically: Why Oh, Inverted World (the Shins album to which the dance is performed), and why ballet?

To place the performance in context for those who enjoy details, the world premiere of Oh, Inverted World – the ballet, is choreographed by Trey McIntyre as part of San Francisco’s Smuin Ballet’s fall/winter program that runs October 1, 2010 through February 27, 2011. This isn’t the first time that McIntyre has flirted with pushing the boundaries of Smuin’s bill. According to one reviewer, “McIntyre has proven time and again that he can create innovative work set to any music.” Just this past summer, “McIntyre followed Felix Mendelssohn’s Wedding March with Queen at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. His company performed Wild Sweet Love, choreographed to a medley that also featured The Partridge Family, Lou Reed and Roberta Flack. McIntyre is as comfortable with Beethoven as he is with Beck and The Beatles, or in this case, The Shins.”

The Shins

I have not seen the ballet as it is only being performed on the West Coast and I live on the East. Therefore, despite the look of its nature, this week’s Liner Notes is not a review of musical performance. Rather, my focus here is to comment on how popular music (or indie music, or rock and roll, or whatever you want to call it) fits into traditional bourgeoisie musical representation. What is San Francisco’s Smuin Ballet Company trying to tell its audience by performing a ballet to music recorded nine years ago by a very well known indie band from Albuquerque, New Mexico? Or conversely, what are The Shins saying to their fans by allowing Smuin to go ahead with the project? Perhaps they are trying to say nothing, and academic analysts like me look way too long and hard at this sort of stuff. But I doubt it. What’s the point of musical performance if there is no artistic message?

My initial reaction to reading this piece of ‘noteworthy popular music news’ was to try and avoid, “the endless opportunity for cliché” (I phrase I stole, it should be mentioned, from Stav Ziv–the ballet and dance reviewer for The Stanford Daily who wrote the only good review on the performance). I too, like Ziv, often “cringe” at these crossovers between rock/pop and traditional European dance performance. To be completely honest with you, I am not a giant musical/dance supporter in any form, and the mixture of rock in theater usually leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth (for example, American Idiot by Green Day. Ugh, “shudder”). But the reviews of Oh, Inverted World have me second-guessing my own musical snobbery. The Smuin Ballet Company, it is reported, has “distinguished itself with energetic, playful and accessible choreography.” Ziv goes on with his praise: “The program is worth a trip … even if you’re not a bunhead yourself” (I had to turn to the urban dictionary for this one. A “bunhead” is term for a ballet dancer, either affectionately or used to imply a degree of snobbery).

I feel that indie meeting ballet, ahem, dances with the line of the contrivable. Is this Smuin’s attempt to tap into the youth market currently caught up in today’s reality trash television programs like So You Think You Can Dance? and Dancing With The Stars? Or is it an honest attempt by choreographer Trey McIntyre to express an indie album in fluid, body movement? Perhaps it is a bit of both (although I am sure McIntyre nor Smuin would ever admit to the former, even if it were true).

Regardless of whether I ever see the ballet performance or not, now knowing that the music has been put to a ballet, and watching a snippet of the performance on YouTube, I don’t think I will ever hear the album Oh, Inverted World the same way again. It does not surprise me at all that a band like The Shins would agree to the idea. After all, this is the band who lent a large chunk of the soundtrack to Zach Braff’s risky, and yet quite successful, endeavor Garden State back in 2004 when very few mainstream people had ever heard of them. But ballet just isn’t what I think of when I think ‘The Shins.’ And The Shins just aren’t what you picture when you see tights and pointe shoes.

Oh, what an inverted world!

Link to this article:
http://www.breakthruradio.com/index.php?b=article.php?id=1663

– Kory French

Running with Music

I’m DJ Meredith and I’m here to provide you all with high intensity music from genres all over the world with the hardest beats that will keep you entertained and get you through the most strenuous workouts with ease. I’m here every Monday.

I was at the NYC Marathon Expo last Thursday to chat with runners about listening to music and their running. Watch the video here:

Listen to today’s show dedicated to all those who ran the NYC Marathon.

The right music can increase your performance, keep you focused, and can help you stick with your training program. The effects of music on the performance of athletes has been well documented by research.

http://www.breakthruradio.com/index.php?b=article.php?id=1661

– DJ Meredith