The countdown continues and we are down to only three weekends left of summer. It is so quiet in the city today—when has the F train ever had the majority of seats open at 8:00 A.M.? For those of you in town this weekend, more thunderstorms are predicted, so if you go to Central Park, watch out for falling trees.
Here’s the second song of our Friday “Summertime” jam series from the Long Beach, Cali band, Sublime. Sublime finally achieved mainstream success with their self-titled third album in 1996. Sadly, the Sublime album was the group’s last; lead singer Bradley Nowell died of a heroin overdose shortly before its release. This song is a classic and although it’s not officially entitled “Summertime” I’m pretty sure it counts.
Sublime – Doin’ Time:
-Melissa
Editor’s note: Please excuse the randomness of this video, it was the best version of the song available.
According to the results of a recent study out of the University of South Australia and published in the Journal of International Business and Economics, 18-26 year old girls are far less likely to buy products (regardless of what the product might be) from female sales associates that they perceive to be more attractive than themselves. As Stylelist.com points out, this phenomenon is far more damaging if your company is, say, Abercrombie & Fitch, than if you’re Bloomingdale’s. But still, the author of the study finds that “upward social comparison, where individuals compare themselves with people who they believe are socially superior, can create anxiety, lower confidence and create feelings of inadequacy” leading to “avoidance behavior.” As if women didn’t have enough to deal with already!
But if you’re a pretty girl who is starting to worry about her job security, fret not: you’ve got a friend in Wale (and let’s not forget Lil Wayne, who is very clearly not discriminating).
Wale (real name: Olubowale Victor Folarin), who hails from Washington, D.C., began his career back in 2006 with a series of local hits that were largely inspired by/examples of go-go. Go-go is a sub-genre of funk that originated in the D.C. area (and remains mostly unknown outside of D.C.) that is characterized by its syncopated bass/snare pattern as well as the importance of live “call and response” interaction with the audience.
I first heard about Wale in 2007, when his manager gave a copy of his song “Good Girls” to Mark Ronson, who liked it so much that he invited him to spit a few bars on his East Village Radio show, “Authentic Shit.” Since then, Wale has been riding the Ronson train straight to Hitsville. While playing at Ronson’s record release party at the Highline Ballroom, he was interviewed by MTV news and was later asked to perform at the MTV Video Awards in 2007. This led to his teaming up with Lady Gaga on “Chillin,” and on October 20th, Ronson’s Allido Records (an Interscope imprint) will release Wale’s first official record. Not too bad of a ride thus far.
Getting back to the original point, the most recent leak from the record is “Pretty Girls,” which has a great beat and sample (from D.C. go-go group Backyard), and is one of my favorite new hip hop releases of the moment. Not only is it his second song with the word girls in the title, but it is a pretty good example of go-go (hear that call and response in there?) and reps D.C. hard. So to all the pretty girls: put this record on while you pick up the pieces of your shattered retail-sales-associate dreams, and then go find some rappers to love you!
Scene from a rooftop on 106th street last night.
Photo Credit: Melissa Hersh
For any of you that were outside in the city last night, or anywhere near a window, I don’t have to tell you that there was one hell of a thunder and lightning storm. The storm, which only lasted for half an hour, between about 10 and 10:30, knocked down more than 100 trees in Central Park and damaged hundreds more.
Unfortunately, last night was the inaugural night of the seventh annual Central Park Film Festival, and they had to close down early because of the driving rain and powerful winds. The more than 2,400 people that were there had to run for cover as the storm clouds opened up over them, missing the end of the unnecessarily long Sex and the City movie (spoiler alert, they finally do get married in the end). As Adrian Benepe, the city parks commissioner, told the Times, “Central Park has been devastated. It created more damage than I’ve seen in 30 years of working in the parks.” Amazingly, although the storm brought wind gusts of 70 miles an hour, there were no reports of anyone injured around the city. Central Park Conservancy work crews are canvassing the park today to inspect the condition of the park’s more than 24,000 trees for loose and dangerous hanging branches.
Somehow foreshadowing this unfortunate turn of events, Radiohead released their latest song, “These Are My Twisted Words” for download on their website on Monday in response to speculation online that it was indeed a Radiohead track after it surfaced last week. If you dowload the song, you also get an accompanying pdf of artwork depicting scraggly, twisted, jagged tree branches. The artwork file is meant to be printed out on tracing paper for you to “put them in an order that pleases you.” The eerily appropriate sample of the finished product that they included is below.
Twisted Woods
The new song is ominous, the perfect soundtrack to the events of last night. Take a listen to “These Are My Twisted Words” below:
Radiohead – These Are My Twisted Words:
But Radiohead has always been ahead of the curve, even in an arboreal sense. Today’s Jam is one of the band’s best, “Fake Plastic Trees,” from their second album The Bends. It was the third single to be released from that album in the U.K., but it was released as the album’s first here in the U.S.
I was talking to a friend today who is on a volunteer mission in Tanzania about her experience there so far and I haven’t been able to get “Warm Heart of Africa” out of my head all day. “Warm Heart of Africa” is the latest release from The Very Best, a collaboration between Malawi-via-London singer Esau Mwamwaya and British DJ/production duo Radioclit.
They first came on the scene late last year when they released their version of M.I.A’s “Paper Planes” entitled “Tengazako” (“Take What’s Yours” in Chichewa, the national language of Malawi). Since then, Mwamwaya raised his profile the fastest way you can in the music blogosphere: with covers, remixes, and collaborations. The buzz-worthy releases so far have included “Get It Up” featuring M.I.A. and Santogold, covers and remixes of Vampire Weekend, and “Kamphopo” which they built on top of an Architecture in Helsinki track.
A studio album is expected this year which you can pre-order now from Rough Trade, and there promise to be further collaborations with M.I.A. and Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend, among others. The release will include the new record plus a copy of The Very Best’s dark horse mixtape from last winter, Esau Mwamwaya and Radioclit are The Very Best, which received praise from Pitchfork and Fader, among others. If you don’t want to buy vinyl, and you can’t wait until later this year for the full length, you can download the mixtape from their myspace page, or just click here, because we like to make your life better and easier here at ev2bk.
The Very Best – Warm Heart of Africa (ft. Ezra Koenig):
One final thought: Could we be building up to a DJ Khaled v. The Very Best battle, in which it is decided, once and for all, who has a more legitimate right to claim “we the best“? If it comes down to it, we’re voting for TVB.
Back in April, after a rare mass-protest by Afghan women and particularly forceful international pressure, Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai agreed to review the Shiite Personal Status Law that reportedly would have “forbid[den] women to refuse to have sex with their husbands and force[d] them to get their spouses’ permission before leaving the house, looking for a job, going to the doctor or receiving education.” But last week Human Rights Watch revealved that a final version of the law, which was reviewed by HRW as published in the official Gazette on July 27, 2009, retains many of the regressive and oppressive articles that were the source of international outrage to begin with:
“The law gives a husband the right to withdraw basic maintenance from his wife, including food, if she refuses to obey his sexual demands. It grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers. It requires women to get permission from their husbands to work. It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying “blood money” to a girl who was injured when he raped her.”
Earlier today, the Times posted a Lede entry with a pretty inflammatory headline that includes some interesting videos showing interviews by Al Jazeera with some Shiite women who endorsed the original articles.
To all my Afghan women: it’s time to listen to rapper-ternt-family movie star Queen Latifah and tell these guys to cut it out. In her early ’90s hit classic, “U.N.I.T.Y.,” Queen Latifah brings the positive message to females everywhere that it’s simply not OK to let men belittle you, call you a “bitch” or a “ho,” or smack your ass (without permission). I think that starvation as retaliation for lack of sex might fall into that category of “unacceptable” behavior as well, but maybe that’s just me. Two lines really struck me as appropriate for today. The first, “I’m not your personal whore,” could rightly be said to apply to the Afghan women here. The second, “I had my cut-off shorts on, right, ’cause it was crazy hot” goes out to all the people, male or female, who are sweating it out in this humid hotness that has finally descended on the city.
But back to the message: Women of the world, UNITE.
We have four weekends left until Labor Day basically closes the season out, and it seems like tons of people are out of town enjoying the fact that summertime seems to finally have arrived. So to celebrate (and because we’re trying to hit up the beach, yo) here’s the first of four “Summertime” jams, this one the classic track from those two fresh kids from West Philadelphia, born and raised.
East Village to Brooklyn 