Genius…

Hey, Mr. Cartel from jeff on Vimeo.

They Reminisce Over Ye from jeff on Vimeo.

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Twenty Ten huh. Good for everybody. Pretty unanimous that beyond everyone’s personal greats during the last decade, on the whole, it was pretty bitter for a 10 pack. But who cares about all that when ya got funky links!

A few things on my radar to start off: I’m a big time documentary fan…you should be too*

Ghosts of Cite Soleil: While Haiti is in all of our minds (and hopefully $10 text messages) this was an unnerving, unflinching amazing documentary that should be seen. It follows the Haitian Tupac and other lost youth in the slums of Haiti whose lives are an inconceivable mix of hip hop, terror, love, war and relentless poverty. Gripping and almost Shakespearean from the first frame, it puts the realities of pre-quake Haitian issues front and center in the frame.

For a little lighter doc fair:

ESPN 30 for 30: Muhammed and Larry. Maysels, the name is pretty much the grand start to the doc world. Here is 42 minutes of fly in the crowd hotness, it’s Ali on his last tour, with a emperor has no clothes vibe, and the dignity, honor and pride of Holmes, along with a supreme car phone appearance in his 1980 ride. It’s on demand, and it was a gem from an old diamond. Now I really can’t wait for this one… http://30for30.espn.com/film/winning-time-reggie-miller-vs-the-new-york-knicks.html

on another note:

thesmartass.info: Pretty much every old school computer/video game you could think of that was on a home console in the 80’s. I’m not smart enough to hook up a joystick with it. But for anyone who did any gaming up into the early 90’s…a must to checkout.

Eye-Fi Card: Take a pic…it senses wifi and puts your picture on your hard drive, like magic, without ever having to do any real world wired connecting. AND…Check this google deal out. Basically the card alone costs $100. But Google will sell you 200 gigs of space online for a year, and give you the card all for $50. Not bad for never having to plug your camera into your computer ever again.

Youtube.com/Disco: It seems like the google/youtube genius’ (geniui?) are putting themselves into the free music mix fray. Check this new extension out now, put in an artist or a few and take a whirl. I’m sure improvements are coming, but not too shabby a start here.

Alright Vicariousies (or is it Vicariousers?). Thanks for letting me link around with yall. For comments, hit me in the comment section or @heitin. More next time!

And if you didn’t catch this…please do.  Chargers lost, but LT will always win cuz of this.

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Happy Holidays and all that good stuff. It’s Eli, it’s links…maybe ya heard of some of this, maybe ya haven’t, but how would we know if we didn’t try.

Chat Roulette: Similar to Omegle, but better…If you have a hankering to see a strange persons face, and you feel like abandoning any social norms…check this site out. It randomly connects you to a webcam chat with someone around the world, anonymously. I’ll let you ponder the possibilities, but lets just say this lies somewhere between prank calls and far away penpalmenship (I say men, cuz I’ve yet to stumble onto a female on this thing, but I have seen a bunch of shirtless dudes). It’s as hysterical as you make it. And you can always hit the NEXT button. (Photo)

Indestructable USB Keys: It started with the bright idea of having easy data storage always in your pocket so ya don’t have to think about it. I tried 2 different thumb drives on my keychain, only to have inevitable snap offage before too long. But this new breed is supposedly indestructible, and is all metal and made specifically for a keychain. I’ll let ya know how it goes, but I’m diggin the understanding these people have for the mosh pit in my pocket.

TwoYoutubesandamotherfuckingcrossfader.com: Continuing in the realm of online random enjoyment. The name speaks for it all..it’s not super new, but it’s always good for cracking a smile and giving you a false sense of rhythmic talent.

Online Basketball: Cool as heck and simple. Test your jumpshot, live against a leaderboard which constantly updates after every stroke. Addictive and easy/not so easy…well worth a few clicks till your boss passes your cubicle.

Machinarium: If you haven’t hurt your brain recently. This would be a good way to do so. An enchanting and challenging puzzle adventure game. No words, just visuals as your droid maneuvers his way through a robot world looking for an escape. With a built in cheat book, this is one that will challenge and entertain for hours…will it cure your headaches? Not so much.

Jelly Bellys: Do these things ever get old?? NO!!! Every bite is a different variety…what other candy goes from popcorn tasting to peanut butter to coffee to watermelon without a hitch.  You know you are cool when you were the basis for a Harry Potter item (yes, I’m just making this assocation up between Bertie Bots Everything Flavored Beans and jelly bellys…but I’ll bet I’m right).

Aight yall. Big Happys to you. Always enjoyable when our whole country takes a culural break on productivity. Now if only we can implement the siesta in 2010.

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VILLA MANIFESTO EP
AVAILABLE NOW ONLINE
http://itunes.apple.com/us/…

www.slumvillage.com
www.barakrecords.com

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Something new off Bar Exam 3 over Popeyes. No more Popeyes freestyles, as Royce said on his twitter, ya’ll are now *dead

Royce da 5?9? - No Coming Back From That One | Mediafire

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Awww Snap…who is the new blog bag up in this Vicariousness…

Some quick background before we get too deep. I am Eli, I am 31 (thirtyfun), I’m pleasantly married with a wackadoo 3 year old, I co-own a production company (www.suitespotnyc.com), I blog/rip other peoples funny links here (www.thisshitistight.com), I dig on tech, film/photography, sports, (all the balls, foot, base, basket, fantasy and the mma action too), video games, and of course all things Herche. My musical tastes run the gamut: hip hop mid 90’s, 70’s rock, bluegrass, early decade emo, and the punk/metal and gogo (dc love) in between.  Gimme Keith Sweat, Janis Joplin, Radiohead, Masta Ace, Minor Threat, Backyard Band and the Foo Fighters…and you get the picture.

So, lemme not bore you fools, I’ll just ring up a couple of newish things I think are great right now. Give ya a taste for where I’m coming from.

Flavors.me: A great online resume site to link some of your favorite bloggin/music listening tools into one seamless little page about yourself. Easy to navigate, quick to update and as pretty as you want it to be. Recently moved off of beta testing and ready for primetime.

Mixtape.me: I think it’s wonderful in it’s simplicity and accessibility. Search specific songs or artists. Login to make your own mixes and share them, or listen to like minded users own lists.

Ustream broadcasting app: Simply amazing that this free app lets Iphone 3g (and 3gs) users shoot and save video and broadcast live, off of a cellular network even. Gotta love great programming in conjunction with bandwith hogging.  So, say something, say nothing…but share it with the world, when the hell ever ya want.

Uncharted 2: This game is blazing awesome. Refined and glossed, this game is a monument to intelligent game making, set pieces keep coming and coming, animation is top rate, environments are screen grab worthy. And fun top to bottom. You are hooked in the first 5 minutes.

American Gangster: The show…BET took it up a notch with these Gangsta Biographies. You know it’s well done when you get a majority of photos/footage and interviews rather than recreations and second hand tales. Some amazing criminal lives put into perspective and objectively examined. Well worth 10% of your DVR.

Alright yall. Big thanks to the Vicarious team for giving me the opportunity to spew away. I hope this will be a weekly checkin…a mix of links/opinions/damn did you see that’s and so forth. Give me a shout if ya got comments/suggestions/jokes…gotta love jokes.  @heitin

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Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/entertainment/8330633.stm

The golden age of infinite music

By John Harris

Not long ago, if you wanted music, you had to save up your pocket money, take a trip to the local record shop and lovingly leaf through its racks.

Now, it’s almost all free, instant and infinite. And our relationship with music has changed forever.

We all know what the alleged future of music will look like. The record industry will be reduced to a smouldering ruin, the album replaced by endless individual songs and music rendered pretty much worthless by the fact that it’s universally free.

Empty record shops will be overrun with weeds and old CDs will be used as coasters. Your Madonnas, U2s and Coldplays will prosper, but for anyone further down the hierarchy, the idea of making much of a living will be a non-starter.

That’s the accepted wisdom, at least. Some of it will probably prove to be true.

But that grisly picture ignores subtler and more fascinating changes in our relationship with music that people have barely begun to understand.

Now, just to make this clear from the off: I’m nearly 40. Having recently moved house and consigned my CD collection to cardboard boxes, I’ve been surprised to find that I don’t miss it at all.

I use the free version of the music streaming application Spotify almost every day - and I now understand that it represents a genuine revolution in music consumption (and makes iTunes look pathetically old-fashioned).

Should the music industry finally get its act together and insist on some kind of subscription model, I’ll pay for the same kind of service. But I wouldn’t imagine that will alter my new listening habits.

All that said, my musical mindset is still rooted in an increasingly far-off past, where to be a true fan of a band took real dedication, access to obscure information - and, frankly, money.

I’ve just poured the music-related contents of my brain into a book, and I would imagine that 30-ish year’s worth of knowledge about everyone from Funkadelic to The Smiths has probably cost me a five-figure sum, a stupid amount spent on music publications, and endless embarrassed moments spent trying to have a conversation with those arrogant blokes who tend to work in record shops.

Last weekend, by contrast, I had a long chat about music with the 16-year-old son of a friend, and my mind boggled.

At virtually no cost, in precious little time and with zero embarrassment, he had become an expert on all kinds of artists, from English singer-songwriters like Nick Drake and John Martyn to such American indie-rock titans as Pavement and Dinosaur Jr.

Though only a sixth-former, he seemingly knew as much about most of these people as any music writer.

Like any rock-oriented youth, his appetite for music is endless, and so is the opportunity - whether illegally or not - to indulge it. He is a paid-up fan of bands it took me until I was 30 to even discover - and at this rate, by the time he hits his 20s, he’ll have reached the true musical outer limits.

What does all this tell us? Clearly, for anyone raised in the old world, the modern way of music consumption has all kinds of unforeseen benefits.

A good example: though I’ve always heard plenty of talk about the utter awfulness of such infamous albums as Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music (a double album of guitar feedback and white noise) or Deep Purple’s Concerto For Group And Orchestra (don’t ask), I can now listen to them for nothing, and have an opinion of my own.

“ As one of my music press colleagues use to say, there’s no longer any past - just an endless present ”

They’re both terrible, incidentally, but that isn’t the point. What really matters is the fact that I can so easily tune in - and what that says about a new world of completely risk-free listening.

Most importantly, as the great digital revolution rolls on, bands are no longer having to compete for people’s money. Instead, they’re jockeying for our time. And the field is huge, crossing not just genres, but eras.

Who do you want to investigate today: TV On The Radio or Crosby, Stills and Nash? Do you fancy losing yourself in the brilliant first album by Florence And The Machine, or deriving no end of entertainment from how awful The Rolling Stones got in the 1980s? Little Richard or La Roux? White Lies or Black Sabbath?

As one of my music press colleagues use to say, there’s no longer any past - just an endless present.

For musicians, it’s self-evident that there are all kinds of new openings for their music, but even if they break through, much less concerted attention will be paid to it.

They may get an audience, but it will be very easily distracted. After all, endlessly playing the same album so as to extract your “money’s worth” is behaviour that will soon seem like something from the dark ages.

Woe betide the act that decides to make the kind of record that tends to be charitably described as a “grower” - something that may account for, say, the scant interest paid to the last U2 album.

Certainly, as a record company MD told me a couple of weeks ago, stuffing your albums with mere filler is no longer a sensible option.

So, yes, the record industry may yet have to comprehensively reinvent itself, or implode. Sooner or later, given that the need to read reviews before deciding what to listen to is fading fast, I rather fear that even music journalists may be rendered irrelevant.

But for now, this is a truly golden age - the era of the teenage expert, albums that will soon have to be full of finely-honed hits and the completely infinite online jukebox.

Even if the music business manages to somehow crack down on illicit downloading and claws back a few quid via annual subscriptions in return for that self-same endless supply of music, the same essential rules will apply. Really: what’s not to like?

John Harris is the author of Hail! Hail! Rock’n'Roll, published by Sphere.

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ST 2 Lettaz (G-Side) “This Is Life” & “Tryna Get Rich” Feat. PT Prime TIme from DJ DIRRTY on Vimeo.

“I think it was May time frame when J Dirrt invited us to New York to shoot a video. Now mind you we had only been in contact with the Ballers Eve crew for less than a year. The first date for the video shoot was set for mid July, but due to other circumstances we were not able to make it to New York.(We ended us shooting this Sept 2 - 4, 2009) Over the next few months the direction the Huntsville International Project started to take a life of it’s own. It went from being a mixtape, to a street album, to a concept album that incorporated all the people we have met since Starshipz and Rocketz entered this world. So what we did was let everybody we knew contribute a portion of influece to this project to give it a more global sound, but keep it Slow Motion Soundz. The thing about those involved they are digital companies which have well respected online brands. In the age of slumping record sales and the mis-direction of artist we felt like building a new infrastructure so we can travel on freshly paved roads. We have dedicated our energies for music, writing, and film, focused that energy from trying to be discovered, to discover the truth in that energy. Well Baller’s Eve is one of those digital brands and here is their contribution to the Huntsville Internattional Project (The H.I.P.).

Key people for this video. Ballers Eve, Slow Motion Soundz, East Village Radio, Lil Frankie’s, DQM, Zoo York Clothing, Complex Magazine, Spanky’s apartment, Edwing Jiminez, Ricker, New Port, Max Fish Bar, and of course the director, J. Dirrt”.

-CODIE G
Slow Motion Soundz

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