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The in-person day-to-day life has been overwhelming me for several months so instead of a well-wrought well-thought post I've got this catchup, things I hope to write or might write someday, fast thought, not too wrought, we'll see.

(1) Put Pipokinha In It. Making YouTube playlists may be the thing I do online that I care about most these days. Created a new Eardrums playlist in February, long overdue, am aching to write it up and scared of blowing it. South Africa, USA, and Brazil – more Brazil than the rest combined – favela funk hitting me not only as wildly experimental but as heart-touching, just as the K-pop/hip-hop of E.via and 2NE1 were touching me in 2010: a scrawny young woman in São Paulo whose twerking and dancing are barely competent but who seizes the spotlight and puts excitement into sound, gets recorded and sampled all over, all everywhere (but maybe that's only in the minds of the few of us who are looking for it, our minds hindered or aided by our not understanding the meaning or the social landscape). Brazil's northeast rhythmically reworking songs like hers, and in the process São Paulo penetrating the northeast.

Bota Pipokinha em tudo (Frank's Eardrums February 2024)


Note, Grateful Dead content, track 18, the Dead more than holding their own (a band that was adventurous in mood, texture, and rhythm as well as guitar solo, who stretched out and cut up, and Jerry Garcia's singing could be fetching). --One afternoon in 2003 a young woman, very smart and openhearted, early 20s, announced to the rest of us that she was of the Rave Generation (the context: the planning of a conference with dance attached).

A couple of days later, she told us she'd gotten tickets for the Dead.

The playlist also contains Linkin Park content, but I'll let you find it yourself.

(2) "A blonde woman named Anne." In September 1988 a woman gave a tremendously touching and edgy live performance, left me thrilled and with a lump in my throat and with lots of questions. "Eying someone in the audience, she breathed 'I really need you,' a tinge of sarcasm in her tone." Is quite possible that some of the edginess had to do with (unknown to me) her having been hired to pretend to be somebody else! In Wikipedia she's mentioned once, "a blonde woman named Anne," it says. If I had any reportorial chops I'd have long ago searched for and found and interviewed her, embarrassing myself by showing her what I wrote. --Yes, I'm being cryptic, this likely only making sense to someone who read my article (published in Jack Thompson's Swellsville in 1989, "Nietzsche With Tits," then collected in my book, pp 265-271. So read my book! [More buying choices $2.20 and up.])

In the audience, my friend Leslie and I thought we were seeing intellect within her edginess, and fantasized her as not just an intellect but an intellectual. I wonder what Anne would think of that, to be used in that way – used imaginatively, but still, what does that have to do with her?

This foreshadows equally ignorant extrapolations I'll be foisting on Pipokinha.

Got some bare knowledge* from the Internet, and an emotive, pretty good bread-and-butter freestyle track, the only song I could find under her own name:

Anne Williams "Cries In The Dark"


Earlier, impersonating Debbie, "I'm Searching"


(3) Yes, I can has a Substack. If you're reading this on Substack you already know I have a Substack, a free one (likely free forever). I possibly will write something up wondering what Substack is doing, esp. with Notes (like, let's be a gated community that acts like it's open to the world but is unfindable?). Anyhow, I use the Substack to reblog my Dreamwidth/LJ; in fact, everything I blog is triple-posted on Dreamwidth, LiveJournal, and Substack. The first two still allow simple HTML, result: (a) Dreamwidth is the best-looking. But Dreamwidth doesn't embed tweets well, nor does it embed vids in the comments at all, though my Dreamwidth has by far my most-extensive sidebar links as I'm a paying customer. (b) Linking to LJ seems to give the best previews, and LJ embeds tweets best. (c) Substack is the easiest of the three to use though clunky in look, so to draw your interest to Substack I've created a Substack-only "Meta paragraph" at the end of each of my posts where I let loose meanderingly.

So I recommend you look at both the Dreamwidth and the Substack versions. But I still tend to link old posts to the LJ version because those have the original comment threads rather than the reconstituted ones on Dreamwidth. --Btw, I assume a fraction of the micro-pennies that LJ gets through ads on my LJ goes to bankrolling evil fomented by the government of LJ's home country. But rather than delete LJ and hence my past to prevent this, I mitigate it slightly every now and then by avoiding a car-trip so as to make the world infinitesimally less dependent on home country's oil reserves, and, you know, I vote against the Repubs.

(4) Guilty Pleasures. Think the term "guilty pleasure" can have interesting uses, both work-ethic guilt and more guilty guilt. Don't think the term gets its due anymore; we thinking we know better.





(Fwiw, I've not read Kim Wan-sun's aunt/manager's side of the story, and a quick Web search isn't finding it.)

Sure seems that anything I adore by Cassie (and there's a whole bunch) will now dive us headfirst into guilt criteria, e.g., someone got hurt in the music's manufacture.

(5) Live versions of person-to-person love songs when they're sung by groups, e.g., Dion and the Belmonts "I Wonder Why" and Miss A "Breathe." The choreographed interaction among members ends up being an interesting message in itself, often outdoing and countering the interaction described in the lyrics. A sequel to an old post.**

Miss A "Breathe" on Music Bank


The lyrics have the young women flitting and fluttering and pretending not to breathe in the presence of their crush, whereas in performance they look like they could use their legs like a nutcracker to crack any potential crush's head open, if they weren't too busy mimicking comic opera and bonding all with each other.

(6) Dave Moore recently tipped "Mega Do Egito" by DJ Ws Da Igrejinha, MC Jessica do Escadão & MC Vuk Vuk, which occupies the Venn center of two different baile funk tendencies, favela-funk orientalism and tracks that refuse to get on track. For the latter we've also got an earlier Dave Moore find by DJ Arana.

MC Lan & DJ Arana "Abcdário Da Guerra"


Uncertain where tracks end and begin, but this is where today's post ends. Unless it doesn't.

*I linked the cached version, since I sometimes have trouble loading that page. If that doesn't work for you, here's the page itself:

https://myfreestylemusic.com/debbie-deb-freestyle-music-latin-hip-hop

**And see last week's entry for the old post's reconstituted comment thread.

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CROSSPOST: https://koganbot.substack.com/p/noite-de-crime-dj-wesley-gonzaga

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Closed my 2017 Top 100 on March 3, giving myself a sigh of relief that "Gummo" and "The Race" were near misses and I wouldn't have to write about them. But here those guys are anyway, 6ix9ine and Tay-K, sure things on this list for "Billy" and "After You." And I still haven't done my writeup for 2017. Probably don't have much more to say about those guys other than that they're acting tough while the music cries tears behind them — "cries tears" is in reference to the stark and edgy beauty of the musical settings, while in front 6ix9ine is saying "Whole squad full of fuckin' killers, I'm a killer too/Sending shots, shots, shots, shots, shots, nigga/Everybody gettin' pop, pop, popped, nigga." Meanwhile Tay-K may be losing his race, in jail for capital murder for allegedly taking part in a drug robbery that resulted in the death of a dealer, was 16 when the killing happened though last I heard the state of Texas wants to charge him as an adult. "Hands in the air like a statue, I shoot you in a classroom (fucking classroom)," which one of the readers at genius.com explains, "No matter the situation Tay-K will shoot and he doesn't care where it takes place." And the keyboard sounds like sad little bubbles rising to the sky, as if it knows better, though I doubt it does.*

Ongoing Singles Playlist, 2018


Expandhemming and hawing, dearth over thirty, males, Ninety One )

Bhad Bhabie is a messed-up 14-year-old who rose to prominence being exploited on a Dr. Phil freakshow and got the phrase "Cash Me Outside" sampled effectively in hip-hop and turns out to have a lot of talent in her own right. You wonder though — I wonder — if being famous will be good for her psyche at all. It's not like her ability disappears if she waits until she's 22. But maybe nursing a budding career is just the thing for her to pull herself together. How would I know? In the vid for "Gucci Flip Flops" she runs a hoary milkman gag: the milkman knocks, "Hey little girl, you're so cute; is your mommy home?" She tells him: "Bitch, I am my own mommy, the fuck!" That's incredibly sad, if you think about it; but for the girl who says it, it's got the joy of her declaring her own adventure.

Expandfootnotes )

Here's the list, and more commentary beneath it. (Ongoing playlist here.)

Singles First Third 2018 (actually I can do arithmetic and I know it's really the first five-twelfths, but I meant to do this a month ago):

1. Cassie "Don't Play It Safe"
2. Bhad Bhabie ft. YBN Nahmir, Rich The Kid, Asian Doll "Hi Bich (Remix)"
3. Ninety One "Ah!Yah!Ma!"
4. Fairies "HEY HEY ~Light Me Up~"
5. Bhad Bhabie "Both Of Em"



6. Boy Tag ft. Tala A. Marie "Talla"
7. Royal KD "Swagchy"
8. Tay-K "After You"
9. KeshYou & Baller "Swala La La"
10. 6ix9ine "Billy"



11. Tenor "Alain Parfait (Á L'Imparfait)"
12. The EastLight. "Don't Stop"
13. MHD "Moula Gang" (AFRO TRAP Part.10)
14. Cardi B "Be Careful"
15. Yella Beezy ft. Lil Baby "Up One"
16. Niniola "Saro"



17. Bhad Bhabie ft. Lil Yachty "Gucci Flip Flops"
18. Lil Pump "i Shyne"
18. Mylène Farmer "Rolling Stone"
20. Chi Pu "Talk To Me"
Expand21 (Burna Boy) through 37 (Tia) )

ExpandCommentary, Cassie, Boy Tag )





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Those enticed here by the promise of butch and sparklers may be disappointed that the title pretty much only applies to the Dev vid — though I've not looked so thoroughly as to guarantee you won't find butch and sparkle throughout.

"Born To Wub" was another prospective title; it too only really goes with the Dev track.

Next year I'll just post my favorite Dev song, and announce, "Dev Contains Everything."

Was also thinking of calling this, "You Already Know Who It Is"; I've made this list into a YouTube playlist, and those are the words Silentó introduces himself with, on the first track.



And after all, you already knew I was gonna give you Dev, and T-ara, and K-pop. In 2012 I simply called my half-year list, "More Songs From K-pop, Dev, and Cassie." A year earlier I'd called it "Dev Like Cassie."

But there's also wub in Vince Staples' "Norf Norf": wobble that's disembodied from a beat. And there's wub deep in Ash-B's larynx.

1. Silentó "Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)"
2. Ash-B "매일"
3. The Seeya with Le "The Song Of Love"
4. Azin "Delete"
5. HyunA ft. Jung Ilhoon "Roll Deep (Because I'm The Best)"
6. Dev "Parade"



7. Rihanna "Bitch Better Have My Money"
8. Crayon Pop "FM"
9. ZZBEst "랄랄라" [Lalala]
10. Red Velvet "Ice Cream Cake"
11. Titica "Você Manda Fogo"
12. Ash-B "What's Real"
13. Daphne And Celeste "You And I Alone"
14. SHINee "View"
15. Ash-B "누구야"
16. 4minute "Crazy"
17. Jason Derulo "Cheyenne"



18. Lil Mama "Sausage"
19. The-Dream "Cedes Benz"
20. BiSH "BiSH: On A Night When Stars Are Twinkling"
Expand21 through 40, KISS n Clover Z through Brigitte )
Expand41 through 60, A$AP Rocky through Oh My Girl )

I've scattered Ash-B tracks all through the list, like dandelion seeds. Can't find English translations, so the adventure for me is her voice. She begins "매일" with darkly insistent eighth notes, then she's pushing the main beat hard, then she's relaxing into the conversational, which she's then pushing into even more insistence.

There were no Cassie singles, so Sofi De La Torre was awarded the Cassie Ventura Honorary Remote-Achiness Fellowship for 2015.

"Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)" at number 1 demonstrates the influence on this list of the elementary-school gym class. See also "Hit The Quan" at number 54.

See also the fact that this list is three months late.

ExpandTaylor, Kendrick, Pungdeng-E, Derulo, SHINee, cultural interpenetration? )
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An actual available-for-legal-free-download-rather-than-a-leak mixtape from Cassie. Her presence or antipresence or whatever-it-is is as compelling as ever and I have no better explanation now than I ever have. I pretty much depleted my descriptive ability back in '07. In my 2006 P&J I expressed my disconnection from/indifference towards her lyrics and ethos. Dev subsequently became the Cassie Whose Words And Life Made Sense To Me. But Cassie still brings me to jelly knees a bit more consistently, which is all the time. On "I Know What You Want" and "Turn Up" she experiments with turning down the instruments to add even more spaciness to her spaciness. "Do My Dance" is as deliberately retrogressively dumb and crude as the rest of guest artist Too Short's oeuvre, and she's still sweet vapor on it. The instant initial swooners for me are "Paradise," "Addiction," and "Numb," but there'll be more.

Cassie ft. Rick Ross "Numb"
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Wrote about "Harlem Shake" at the Jukebox, but I chose writing my own dance over writing about the viral dance meme. So here are some undeveloped thoughts about the latter:

The original Australian dorm-room version: Starts with people in their individual, isolated activities. Then the bass drops, and now they're in wiggly motion. Cuts off after 15 more seconds, before it's really an issue — for me* — whether or not they're dancing well, whether or not they're dancing with each other.



The Norwegian army version: Soldiers in order, in formation. The bass drops. Formation lost, everybody in wiggly motion.

Beat as infectious agent, which I brought up in my 2011 wrap-up regarding LMFAO's vid for "Party Rock Anthem," the 28 Days takeoff: We start with one person infected with the dance. Others apparently ward this off either by not noticing or by pretending not to notice. Bass drops. They've all got the dance fever. But are they taking each other into account any better than before? (A metaphor for writing? We see something, at first we try not to let it change us, then we flail about? Repeat?)

ExpandBeyond well and not well )
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I forgot that Cassie's "King Of Hearts" was up for review on the Jukebox, so I ended up writing about it in the comment thread, to the extent that my comment figured out what it was about:

Damn, I missed this. Was wavering between 8 and 9 anyway, which would have taken another five hours out of my life. In the blurb I might have gone into a long incoherent story around the fact that four years ago on a drive with relatives to Mystic Seaport we went through New London and passed the Williams School and I said to incomprehending family members, "You don't know who Cassie is and you most likely will never hear her, but this is where she went to high school." And from that unpromising beginning I continued talking about Cassie, despite only a tiny possibility that they would ever care about her, and despite the certainty that they didn't care about her at that moment. Was then (in my blurb, not the car trip) going to ask if Cassie could be inexplicably alluring even when reduced to little blips, and answer, "Yes." Perhaps would have added an anecdote about the time in Radio On that I countered Phil Dellio's takedown of Clint Eastwood's skill as an actor with a long, eloquent defense of Clint's acting, and Phil praised me highly for how I managed to come up with twenty synonyms for "boring." In any event, I'd rate ten or fifteen Cassie tracks even higher than this, almost all of them unreleased. I think there's maybe one post-first album track I dislike. Favorites are "Summer Charm" and "Turn The Lights Off."

Katherine, if you're interested, the "Boney Joan Rule" is where I
definitively fail to explain Cassie's allure. Don't think she's blank, do think she's recessive, think that, as she recedes, the space is filled with massive desire. Doubt that any other singer should even try this. Which doesn't mean there's no other singer who moves me in a Cassie way. I think I've written here that I get the same Cassie feeling from Dev (or for Dev), despite Dev not being recessive at all but rather being a scrappy outgoing little clubrat: the same drifting sexiness permeating her atmosphere.

ExpandThe Ghost Of Comment Threads Past )
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Been meaning to gather up the tracks featuring Dev that are scattered across the 'Net and then give her a proper write-up, but in case the write-up never materializes, here's my thesis: Dev hits me in my Cassie spot. Their image and sound are different - Cassie's a model/starlet at an audition, while Dev is a 1950s shopgirl offhours, reincarnated in 2011, preparing for her Friday night. But they both have a drifting, inexplicable sexiness, Cassie's maybe more dreamy and Dev's more scrappy, but it feels like the same thing.

(Don't think Dev is at the Cassie point yet where she can do no wrong, but unlike anything recent from Cassie, some of her tracks are actually released for purchase and such.)

Singles:
1. Britney Spears "Hold It Against Me"
2. Jeremih "Down On Me"
3. GD&TOP "High High"
4. Galaxy Dream ft. Turbotronic "Ready 4or Romance"
5. IU "The Story Only I Didn't Know"
6. Bobby Brackins ft. Dev "A1"



7. Big Bang "Tonight"
8. Far East Movement ft. Lil Jon & Colette Carr "Go Ape"
9. Dia Frampton "Heartless" (live)
10. GD&TOP "Knock Out"
Expand11 through 50 )

ExpandAlbums )
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For the many people* who ask me "Why Korea?" my answer is love. Yes, and there are plenty of other answers too, one being that people who know more than I do come to my lj and talk to me about K-pop, providing sociability and mindwork, and another being that K-pop is creating a hip-hop, r&b, dance-pop amalgam far better than the Billboard Hot 100's, and so on and so forth. But there's always got to be love. With rock there was Jagger**, with glitter the Dolls, with punk the Stooges, with disco Donna, with hip-hop Spoonie Gee, with freestyle Debbie Deb (both the real Debbie Deb and the imposter), with hair-metal Axl, with teenpop Ashlee, etc.***



In this instance****, though, especially given the cultural distance, my not knowing Korea or Korean, I really can't say what's going on; this has inspired me to actually read some books about Korea. Not that what I learn will tell me what I want to know here, which is whether the E.via I've fallen in love with, whom I basically constructed in my mind out of scraps and song bits*****, has anything to do with any kind of reality. Did the Jagger? Pretty much everyone on my love list above has got some Jagger in her or him, or has me projecting the Jagger, anyway, Jagger Jagger burning bright, a combination of Jagger and Miss Lonely, my believing that the world is continually picking up the baton that the Stones and Dylan dropped, and dropping and picking up again.



ExpandE.via's attitude towards cute like Ray Davies' attitude towards sunny afternoons )

Expandvideo for Hey!, plus commentary )
koganbot: (Default)
Cassie "Summer Charm"

ConCon

Feb. 16th, 2009 11:09 pm
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Inspired by Scott Woods' list of His Top 10 Canadian singles, here are my Top 10 Connecticut songs. Criteria have something to do with important bandmember being reared in Connecticut, rather than, say, living there in your old age like Keith Richards. (And if you think the pickings are sparse for Connecticut, you should try Colorado, which gives us the Fray and Big Head Todd And The Monsters. And a bunch of people I've never heard of who for all I know may be good. Actually, Philip Bailey of Earth, Wind & Fire is from Denver.)

Oh yeah, and I put a limit of three on the Cassie songs allowable. And the only eligible Monkees songs were ones that Peter actually had something to do with:

1. Cassie "Turn The Lights Off"
2. Gene Pitney "Mecca"
3. Cassie "In Love With U"
4. Cassie "Me & U"
5. The Wildweeds "No Good To Cry"
6. Steam "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye"*
7. The Monkees "Daydream Believer"
8. Weezer "The Good Life"
9. Sonic Youth "Kotton Krown"
10. Moby "Honey"

*Seems to contain a xylophone or glockenspiel.
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Am embarking on a project of rereading Thomas Kuhn and so I'm starting a Thomas Kuhn reading group here in Denver. The group so far consists in its entirety of me and my friend David (the fellow who taught the intro to philosophy course I audited last semester) and isn't likely to grow, so I'm adding an online component. As always, I'm open to anyone posting here whether you've done the reading or not and whether you feel "qualified" or not. You'll likely stimulate my ideas even when your own aren't worked out. That said... well, see below.

Believe it or not I find this stuff real easy (about a hundred times easier than figuring out and articulating why I like Cassie's "Turn The Lights Off" and Heidi Montag's "No More"). And what's impressive about its easiness is that Kuhn is addressing himself to the hardest practical topic there is, how to go about understanding a mode of thought that you had not previously been acquainted with.

I'm going to experiment to see if these posts can function as a proto-Department Of Dilettante Research, which means I'll put thought into how to be a teacher, how to stimulate your ideas. So in some instances I'll be asking questions but temporarily holding back my own answers until you've had a chance to start on yours, my belief being that ideas you work out for yourself will stick with you better than ones you simply read or memorize. And this also means that if you want to learn much you're better off doing the reading and doing what I tell you.

ExpandNo, you must explain this in full, now! )

Expandreading list )
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My nephew Bobby reports that his girlfriend likes an '80s band sounding "much like the Dresden Dolls" whose name begins with an S, or if it doesn't begin with an S it has an S somewhere in it. We determined that it was not Supertramp.

19th-century all-wooden whalers seem remarkably cramped from the inside, having to pack in whole bunches of bunks for seamen, not to mention storage space for whale blubber. (Note to self: be sure to contrast smallness of living quarters with vastness of oceans. Speculate on whales' concept of "living quarters.")

Road to Old Mystic Seaport goes through New London, taking us past the Williams School, which is where Cassie Ventura went to high school.
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Latest column, in which I explain why everything is everything else.

The Boney Joan Rule

Your own examples or refutations are welcome.

(I'm not back from vacation, but I did find my way to a computer, and maybe I'll succeed in doing so again soon; sorry to Dave, Nia, Kat, and Jessica for not getting a chance to respond to your most recent comments.)

EDIT: Links to my other Rules Of The Game columns
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The polls keep coming. I made a couple of substitutions and I shuffled the order a little bit from my Jackin' Pop. And I wrote new comments. (I hope that if Rob excerpts from my ballot, he doesn't just take my Powter and Blunt bites out of context. Otherwise, they could read as simply dismissive.)

Frank Kogan's Pazz & Jop ballot, 2006:

SINGLES:
1. The Veronicas - "4ever" - Warner Bros
2. Lily Allen - "LDN" - Regal import
3. Aly & AJ - "Rush" - Hollywood
4. The Pack - "Vans" - Jive
5. Marit Larsen - "Only A Fool" - EMI
6. High School Musical - "Breaking Free" - Hollywood
7. Hi_Tack - "Say Say Say (Waiting for You)" - Gut
8. Fergie - "London Bridge" - Interscope
9. Blog 27 - "Hey Boy" - Magic import
10. Yung Joc - "It's Goin' Down" - Bad Boy

ALBUMS:
1. Marit Larsen - Under the Surface - EMI (15 points)
2. Paris Hilton - Paris - Warner Bros. (14 points)
3. Brooke Hogan - Undiscovered - SoBe Entertainment (12 points)
4. Lily Allen - Alright, Still - Regal import (10 points)
5. Ciara - The Evolution - LaFace (10 points)
6. JoJo - The High Road - Blackground (10 points)
7. Robyn - The Rakamonie EP - Konichiwa import (9 points)
8. Taylor Swift - Taylor Swift - Big Machine (9 points)
9. Cham - Ghetto Story - Mad House/Atlantic (6 points)
10. Alan Jackson - Like Red On A Rose - Arista Nashville (5 points)

ExpandMy P&J comments )

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