So sang Madonna.
If we took a holiday
Took some time to celebrate
Just one day out of life
It would be, it would be so nice
It’s school holiday time (which doesn’t – obviously – mean parent holiday time!)… I’m due to submit the first draft of my PhD thesis on Friday some time (possibly late-ish). The marking’s all done. The conference is over. But that wonderful thing called semester starts up again on the 21st. And I don’t have either the time or the money to take my preferred break – which was going to be an intertubes-less week in a cabin by a beach somewhere reading books, followed by a week of partay-ing in Sydney or Melbourne, followed by a week back in Brisneyland under the doonah. So give me some vicarious holiday goodness! Do we get enough holidays? What do we do when we take them? Are we ever away in a wired world?
I just bought one of these so I could keep my iriver and mobile running on my upcoming jaunts http://cgi.ebay.com/New-USB-Solar-Power-Charger-NDS-PSP-IPOD-Moblie-1350mAh_W0QQitemZ140245381793QQihZ004QQcategoryZ20336QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem 1
Spaminated?
School holidays, is it? Means external schools at UNE, so pointless going up there trying to do photocopying.
Means streets full of ankle-biters, some of them bawling at 1000 decibels, so it means avoiding going into town as much as poossible.
Means less choice of DVD’s at Video Ezy.
Means kids next door will come in more often to use the computer and make phone calls. (Try pointing out to an 8 year old that phone calls cost money so they rush home and come back with 10c. What do you do? Let them make the phone call, of course, and refuse to take the money. Then point out to them next time they should have 25 or 30 c. They won’t ever have it,of course, but you’ve got to try.)
Means less DVDs in the local library.
Actually, I do a reasonable job of avoiding school holidays. As for going away – too much effort.
No holidays here, I’m afraid. I’m submitting the thesis at the end of August, about four weeks after I start semester 2 teaching. It seems that we’re never not working, and when we aren’t working we’re still working on something. Maybe in December after the last conference of the year.
This paper from Mel Gregg is somewhat on topic, I think.
No holiday in the foreseeable future for me either….I’ve just put in the intention to submit form, I’m teaching a brand new unit and one heavily revised one in sem 2 and have one article due on August 30 and another three weeks after that. I need to reread The Mysteries of Udolpho before sem 2 begins. And there is the teaching and learning project… omg what am I doing here?
Earlier in the year I did this great timeline for my work in which I specifically made sure that the holidays were clear (preschool children, but husband is a teacher he likes to monopolise my time in the holidays!) but, inevitability I’ve fallen behind in thesis writing and will be playing catch up over the holidays, as well as getting ready for the semester two subject I’m teaching and the two conference papers I am delivering next semester. I haven’t yet been to a conference so this next semester is going to be pretty big for me.
First time I ever danced in a nightclub. That song. I was way too young to be there.
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Sorry Madge. It’s been downhill since Bedtime Stories.
Err, same!
Pavlov’s Cat at 2, can’t find any stray comments. Sorry!
Personally I’m really sick of the 80s revival. If I hear Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On A Prayer” one more time I’m gonna shoot him. Oh well the decade’s almost over. So here comes the 90s again. I hope they recycle some of the good stuff. That way I can relive my youth before shuffling off to the old folk’s home.
Ha! You haven’t understood postmodernism and culture, Adrien – it’s the 80s forevah, dude!
“I hope they recycle some of the good stuff.”
What good stuff?
What good stuff – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvC1ijiyv1c
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I know it’s ‘89 but the 90s began in ‘89. And Mark if it’s the 80s forever I’m gettin’ me an Armalite and doing Cho Seung-we: John Bon Jovi, Bryan Adams, Stock, Aiken and Waternman – watch out!!!!
And of course – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEggVnuPcfY
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Eeez Are Good!
I’m not sure those music choices really facilitate a celebratory holiday mood!
This, or this, would have been more convincing for me, I’m afraid. Alas, uppers never really did it for me.
Nice selections KK. We can and should relax the decadal parentheses this far:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgdCzZiPZBU&feature=user
Or this from more or less dead-centre:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfWxa-FN8X4&feature=related
I’m with you for the Mudhoney. Less so Mr Smith, although that is a particularly good example of his work, and very ’90s.
So am I right – no one actually has time for a holiday any more? Just – as Mel Gregg’s research finds – micro breaks at work where we can think about songs?
It seems so. There was another great piece on Mel’s blog about TV hating a little while back – for me that also said a lot about the situation.
Here it is.
Okay, back off topic (with apologies). Hip hop in the 90s, as illustrated by Nasty Nas. Here he is towards the beginning of the decade:
Halftime
And at the end:
Hate Me Now
I like ‘em both, but even a fan has to admit that it was mostly downhill during that decade.
Oooh, that’s a stark contrast.
Bit like comparing DITC to their various meanderings off into shitty gangsta shiite.
Make Em Say Ugh is probably the absolute nadir for hip hop, (though not in terms of sales). And yet, all this time later, I actually kinda like it. Ah, the ’90s.
Everything Master P or Silkk touched turned to shit. How on Earth were they ever famous?
What is so hard to understand is how those guys could move millions upon millions of units. It now takes Lil’ Wayne two years of solid promotion to manage a platinum album. Hip hop in the late ’90s was a place where anybody with an 808 backing track and a grunty voice could be very, very rich.
Well I considered The Pixies or maybe some the early Thames scene or even
Pulpbut nooo….
I somehow kinda figured this would be a ’stayed loyal to the guitar’ type crowd. Sorry guys you missed out. Those two songs embrace an era that was kinda special to those who partook. Can’t really remember the best tracks for some reason. It’s Ebeneezer good.
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But I liked some of that other stuff too. My Bloody Valentine on acid was lots of fun. Same year as Nirvana. On acid. No I’m not an acid casualty. Really. No. Don’t listen to those people.
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Hip-Hop was downhill. Agree there. Trouble with Hip-Hop is the paradigm only changes twice. A century. Ice-T and NWA et al created a monster.
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Can’t say I ever got into Mudhoney. Love Sonic Youth. But Mudhoney? Tried. Went to see ‘em. No. But anyone remember this lot? -
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Scrummy. Not their best song sorry.
Link disappeared. Doesn’t matter “Sweetness And Light” wasn’t much good. This is it. Outta print.
“Hip hop in the late ’90s was a place where anybody with an 808 backing track and a grunty voice could be very, very rich.”
If any of those guys ever even SAW a real TR-808, I’d be pretty surprised. But in any case, it was all about the clips I reckon. A bunch of round, plump booty straining against shreds of fabric, fake cash falling from the sky, rented limos and Lexi, all the fake shit you can get on camera. The novelty clearly wore off, and people started caring about the sounds.
Hence Timbaland, the Neptunes, and the whole rebirth of decent hip-hop production we saw circa the turn of the century.
Wha’s wrong wi’ dat gee? Y’ gots ta get into this shit n-. It fonk on a who’ nu level, the rhymn is the bass and the bass is da treble. It’s not facile materialistic base self-gratifcation. It’s a statement.
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Gimme some more
Love the loop there. I took me a while to place. Where have I heard that before? Ah.
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Perfect.
“If any of those guys ever even SAW a real TR-808″
I guarantee that they did. I’d bet even the dodgy anonymous Southern producers at places like Cash Money chased them down. It’s also that it’s a disposable aesthetic: you’re not meant to listen to it for very long until the next unit arrives.
I also reckon that the Neptunes were great for about five tracks, and almost all of them are on the first album by Clipse. Timbaland has been more consistently interesting. The thing is, none of those guys are shifting units like they used to either. It may be something to do with the Bush presidency and the parlous state of the American economy.
That is an awesome Busta Rhymes track, Adrien. There are loads of his tracks that are individually very good. It’s a pity it’s never really been sustained for anywhere near an album. It’s also a pity that Mr Smith (another one of those!) decided that an uber-buffed look facilitated by steroids was a good direction to take.
Busta is the antidote.
Anything I said above is perfectly fine with a sense of humour, natch!
Or just a really great flow over a really great sample:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGEGPq7XvqI
“I’d bet even the dodgy anonymous Southern producers at places like Cash Money chased them down”
Maybe so. More often they’d just sample some Run DMC I bet. I don’t really miss mine any more (co-owned with a bandmate who got it in the divorce) cos I spent a whole day making a sweeeeet sample library from it. Boring, but the result is *ahem* somewhat easier to program.
Love the Mase track. Bad Boy were enormous at that point. It’s no coincidence that Diddy was responsible for that second Nas track I linked to earlier.
Sampling earlier hip hop tracks is an interesting phenomenon: it’s not uncommon to see a whole album now that only samples (slightly) older hip hop. It’s kind of like the music has started to eat itself after exhausting other source material. There is a lot of quotation and allusion in lyrics too, which has always been the case, but there are sometimes entire verses made up of citations of other artists, cobbled together with cliches.
Yeah, TEH POSTMODERN RAP!!1!
Like a lot of the best sounding tracks, that Mase one has done fuck all to the sample. It’s just all the bits of Hollywood Swingers that don’t already have vocals. Lazy perhaps, but you can hear in his voice he’s not really up for too much hard slog.
I still love the old school pre-sampling days though. I had a party in ‘99 or so where me and my boy decided to make it as 1980-block-party-authentic as we could. Decks, a TR-808, 2 old synths (Sh-09 and a Juno 6) and 2 open mics for whosoever wanted to get up. That was probably the best fun I’ve ever had playing music.
“I had a party in ‘99 or so where me and my boy decided to make it as 1980-block-party-authentic as we could. Decks, a TR-808, 2 old synths (Sh-09 and a Juno 6) and 2 open mics for whosoever wanted to get up.”
Awesome. Did anybody happen to dress like this? Bling meant something quite different at the beginning of the ’80s, it seems.
The costumes were supoib, yes. This was in the days when my physique could still pull off a white faux-fur jacket, the shortiest of short shorts, a pair of original Adidas Romes and nothing else but jewellery.
I love how the really early days of rap had no uniform aesthetic. Basically carrying on the glam/disco tradition.
Even relatively late there’s still not that much uniformity, though I detect more conservative dress by this point (if open leather jacket and white shorts can be considered conservative).
Later on, groups like NWA were self-consciously unfashionable, wearing their hair in jheri curls that had since become passe on the east coast, but it was basically a uniform look for the whole crew.
Some good stuff recommended above…no much bad rap fortunately…I’d put on Public Enemy, NWA, Nas, Disposable Heroes of hiphoprisy, D.J.Shadow, Asian Dub Foundation, Nenah Cherry, soundtrack from Clockers…and the artists my brother recorded in studio a few years back in Canada if i wanted to chill to hiphop/rap again.
I like holidaying to this sometimes…gets ya loosened up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDvdBgJdEzU
(Bob Marley & the Wailers – Roots Rock Reggae)
Holiday time, lazing around, and just in time for the hi jinx, medical science is about to save a lot of old men a big heap of cash. “Watermelon has effect similar to Viagra” http://news.theage.com.au/world/watermelon-has-effect-similar-to-viagra-20080704-31nq.html
Not safe for work if you’re easily excited, Grandpa!
“Watermelon has effect similar to Viagra”
I’ve been diving into watermelon heaps this week Ambigulous…gotta bit of a rough throat, nothin’ like it to quench thirst…& goes down that reddened passage nice & easy. Hadn’t thought about the other benefits tho.
Here’s another character who has a few LPs that i’d put on to get in the holiday spirit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sjSHazjrWg&feature=related
(Cat Stevens – Peace Train – live)
Might have a Piña colada tonite. Hope it rains…:)
“goes down that reddened passage nice & easy”
ooooer
Apart from a few albums – The Chronic and Blazing Arrow come to mind – that’s the sad story of hip-hop.
‘Paid in Full’, ‘Illmatic’, ‘Ready to Die’, ‘Doggystyle’, ‘The Infamous’, ‘Enter the Wu-Tang’, ‘The Low End Theory’ and ‘Reasonable Doubt’ are at least as good as ‘The Chronic’ as far as I’m concerned.