1. Bob Dylan - Shelter from the Storm 2. Avey Tare & Kira - Lay Lay Off, Faselam (Unreversed Version) 3. Panda Bear - Take Pills 4. Animal Collective - Fireworks 5. Final Fantasy - This Lamb Sells Condos 6. Arcade Fire - (Antichrist Television Blues) 7. Born Ruffians - This Sentence Will Ruin/Save Your Life 8. Tokyo Police Club - Citizens of Tomorrow 9. Broken Social Scene - Canada vs. America 10. The Walkmen - The North Pole 11. Frog Eyes - Bushels 12. Destroyer - Painter In Your Pocket 13. The Constantines - Soon Enough 14. Sunset Rubdown - Us Ones In Between 15. Laura Barrett - Robot Ponies 16. Johnny Cash & Bob Dylan - Girl From The North Country 17. Akron/Family - Love and Space
1. UGK feat. OutKast - International Players Anthem 2. Ghostface Killah - Holla 3. J Dilla - Two Can Win 4. Charles Mingus - Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting 5. Clark Terry & Chico O'Farrill - Spanish Rice 6. Caetano Veloso - Marinheiro so 7. Animal Collective - Winter's Love 8. Akron/Family - Running, Returning 9. J Dilla - U-Love 10. Prince - I Would Die 4 U 11. Parliament - Flashlight 12. Ghetto Brothers - Ghetto Brothers Power 13. James Brown - Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved 14. Incredible Bongo Band - Apache 15. Tom Tom Club - Genius of Love (Long Version) 16. Brother 'D' and the Collective Effort - How We Gonna Make The Black Nation Rise 17. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five - Scorpio 18. T.I. - What You Know 19. Young Dro - Man in the Trunk 20. Jaylib - The Red (Produced by J Dilla, vocals by Madlib) 21. Mobb Deep - Shook Ones Pt. II 22. Rick Ross - Hustlin' 23. Simian Mobile Disco - Hustler 24. The Juan Maclean - Give Me Every Little Thing 25. Hot Chip - Over and Over 26. Robyn - Konichiwa Bitches 27. Cadence Weapon - Oliver Square 28. Yo Majesty - Club Action (Bagraiders Sailing to Baltimore Edit) 29. Kelis - Milkshake (FBS JQueen Remix feat. Tigarah) 30. Cansei De Ser Sexy - Let's Make Love and Listen to Death From Above (Spank Rock remix) 31. Justice - D.A.N.C.E. 32. SebastiAn - Walkman 33. The Rapture - Out of the Races and Onto the Tracks 34. The Gossip - Standing in the Way of Control 35. Gang of Four - Ether 36. ESG - Moody 37. Liquid Liquid - Bellhead 38. New Order - Age of Consent 39. Kate Bush - Hounds of Love 40. Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart 41. The Walkmen - The Rat
An abstract I've put together for the conference I'm helping to organize....The title of the conference is Rum, Sodomy and the Lash and it's on piracy (new, old, etc.).
Mixtape Drama: Piracy, the RIAA and the Case Against DJ Drama By Graham Preston
This paper thinks through the cultural resonances of piracy through an investigation of the recent arrest of DJ Drama who is a well known hip-hop DJ, entrepreneur and mixtape producer responsible in part for the rise of platinum selling artists such as T.I., Lil Wayne and Young Jeezy. On January 16th, 2007, acting upon a tip supplied by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Fulton County, Georgia police officers and SWAT teams raided the recording studio and office of DJ Drama. The police confiscated over 81,000 CDs, computer equipment, recording gear, four automobiles and assorted promotional material. DJ Drama and his associate DJ Don Cannon were arrested on racketeering charges related to the allegedly piratical aspects of the production and dissemination of mixtapes. I argue that this incident reveals two important valences of piracy in the music industry of the United States. First, piracy itself can be an important economic driver in the industry and the arrest exposes an incoherence in the RIAA’s war against digital piracy. That is, DJ Drama’s mixtapes work as promotional tools for the artists’ “official” albums released by transnational corporations, related concert tours and ventures like the film ATL which starred T.I. and featured contributions from DJ Drama. Thus, while the arrest of DJ Drama is an attack on piracy itself, it simultaneously works against the interests of the music industry to market artists, sell records and make profits. Second, the fact that DJ Drama has been charged under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act suggests that DJ Drama’s mixtapes have been defined and policed as tools of organized crime rather than as artistic documents. The significance of this shift cannot, I think, be easily overstated.
Music, film or pop culture referred to during my 20+ hours of lectures this semester:
Ebbets Field Brooklyn Dodgers Jackie Robinson DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince Will Smith The Fresh Prince of Bel Air Six Degrees of Seperation Men in Black The Pursuit of Happyness Ali Joanna Newsom's Ys Hitler Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will Queer Eye for the Straight Guy Julia Child Nigella Lawson BANG 1st Birthday Party Jane Austen Joe Canadian ("I Am Canadian" ads) Toques Hockey Summit Series 1972 Rodney King George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech/photo-op The Simpsons Tron Depeche Mode Honda Girl Talk Rick Ross Daft Punk The Colbert Report The Word The O'Reilley Factor Talking Points Memo Waking Life The Apprentice The Forbidden Planet Star Trek Star Wars Futurama Kill Bill Michael Igantieff Lou Gehrig Yankee Stadium The Pride of the Yankees Booney The Ashes 1932-33 Bodyline Ashes Don Bradman Bill Woodfull Shane Warne Wayne Gretzky 2006 Edmonton Oilers Finnegans Wake Arrested Development (TV series) Memento Sunset Boulevard Casablanca Australian Football League Michel Foucault Woody Allen Annie Hall Marshall McLuhan The Medium is the Massage (LP) A light bulb in a lamp Magnolia Pulp Fiction Juan Gris Cubism Norman Mailer Jack Bauer 24 Shakespeare Richard Burton Naomi Klein Banksy Paris Hilton Dooney's Cafe Starbucks "Drake You Ho This Is All Your Fault" (graffiti on a Starbucks on West Queen West, Toronto, circa late 2005-early 2006) Eminem Justin Timberlake Australian Idol American Idol Ronald McDonald Mick Jagger Vanilla Ice Eddie Murphy Richard Pryor Golliwogs Florence Kate Upton Kate Finn Thomas D. "Daddy" Rice Jump Jim Crow Zip Coon "Cross Dressed Wenches" Cuff Dan Emmett Bamboozled Spike Lee Stephen Foster Stanton High School Choir (circa 1955) Old Folks At Home Elvis Presley Dave Chappelle Chappelle's Show, the "Racial Pixie" sketch Young Jeezy ("Trap or Die") Michael Richards Seinfeld The "Incident" Richards in Blackface in the Past The Jazz Singer Al Jolson Bing Crosby Fred Astaire Huckleberry Finn Uncle Tom's Cabin Bob Dylan Le Corbusier Frank Lloyd Wright The Guggenheim Beaubourg The Seagram Building The Las Vegas Strip The AT&T Building (now Sony-BMG Building, NYC) Piazza D'Italia (New Orleans) Melbourne Museum Federation Square RMIT Henry Ford Gravity's Rainbow Don DeLillo's White Noise Family Guy That 70s Show John Cage 4:33 Salvador Dali Un Chien Andalou Jean-Luc Godard Matthew Barney The Cremaster Cycle Bjork Michel Gondry Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Charlie Kaufman Francis Fukuyama Neoconservatism (Neoliberalism) The War on Terror Rudyard Kipling Baudrillard Abu Ghraib 9/11 New Media Barack Obama The Audacity of Hope Google Joyce's Ulysses Abacus CSIRAC ARPANET J.C.R. Licklider Mosaic (web browser) John Perry Barlow A Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace Personal Homepages Tabatha's Days At Work What's Inside Jeremy's Wallet Tim O'Reilley Web 2.0 eBay Demetri Martin Friendster MySpace Rupert Murdoch Facebook
So, I'm going to Malaysia in August to (a) visit my brother (who's doing fieldwork in KL), (b) see my mom (who's going to visit him) and (c) present at the International Convention of Asia Scholars 5. The first two more than the last probably but Arjun Appadurai is giving the keynote for ICAS5 too.
I arrive in KL at 6:25 AM on August 1 and leave at 9:30 PM on August 5th (back in Mel-burn at 7 AM). Yet another whirlwind trip (thanks to teaching commitments, etc.).
My officemate/friend/"mate" Nick is going off to Cambridge to do his PhD in Old English (aka Anglo-Saxon) Literature and here's the mix I made for him. There's a couple things (Roots, especially) that I don't really like that much anymore but he's still into....also, excuse the Dilla-overload at the end.
1. Afrika Bambaataa & the Zulu Nation - Punk Rock Shout 2. The Roots - Thought@Work 3. KMD - Sweet Premium Wine 4. Organized Kongusion - Late Night Action 5. Black Milk - Shut It Down 6. Prodigy - Return of the Mac 7. Joe Budden & Redman - New Jersey Drive 8. Psalm One - Rapper Girls 9. UGK feat. OutKast - International Players Anthem 10. Mos Def - Ms. Fat Booty 11. Charizma & Peanut Butter Wolf - Talk About A Girl 12. Murs - Freak These Tales 13. Big Youth - Same Something 14. Count Ossie - Count Ossie Special 15. Charles Mingus - Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting 16. Ghostface Killah - Charlie Brown 17. Madlib - Montara 18. The Watts Prophets - A Pimp 19. J Dilla - One Eleven 20. Augustus Pablo - King Tubby Meets The Rockers Uptown 21. Jacob Miller - Baby I Love You So 22. Al Green - Look What You Done For Me 23. J Dilla - Dilla Says Go 24. J Dilla - Shouts (Alt)
I've purchased a ticket for a ball game at the House That Ruth Built, Yankee Stadium! Section Tier 1, Row M, Seat 9! You can't understand how excited this makes me as it's been a dream of mine to see a game from either Fenway or Yankee Stadium since I was a little kid. With Yankee Stadium closing after 2008, this will probably be my only chance. The only downside is that the Yankees are playing the Orioles...who the hell do I cheer for?
So, I just geeked out when I found out I'll be presenting on the same panel as Oliver Wang aka O-DUB from the mighty Soul Sides blog, probably the most prominent if not best rap blogger ever. He's also apparently an academic at CSU Long Beach in Sociology and he's talking about Joe Baataan. I'm on first and my paper's on Charles Mingus. I better not suck.
I'm going to email him and see if we could go out for drinks or something. He's bound to have some sort of hip-hop related hook-up in NYC that I should attach myself to.
We're on at 3:30 on Saturday April 7th somewhere in the Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York (opposite Grand Central Station).
1. Peter Tosh - Igziabeher (Let Jah Be Praised) (Live at the One Love Peace Concert 4/22/78) 2. I Self Devine - Can't Say Nothing Wrong 3. Brother Ali - Truth Is 4. Nas - No Ideas Original 5. Black Star feat. Common - Respiration 6. Cage - Middletown New York 7. Blackalicious - Rock the Spot 8. Lyrics Born - Do That There (Young Einstein Hoo Hoo Mix) 9. Viktor Vaughn (MF DOOM) - Saliva (Produced by Rjd2) 10. Cali Agents (Rasco & Planet Asia) - Neva Forget 11. Cam'ron feat. Juelz Santana - We Make Change 12. Charizma & Peanut Butter Wolf - My World Premiere 13. GZA & RZA - Pass the Bone 14. Spoonie Gee - Spoonie Rap 15. A Tribe Called Quest - Luck of Lucien 16. Styles P feat. Talib Kweli - Testify 17. Immortal Technique - Freestyle 18. Sean Price feat. Rock - P-Body 19. Little Brother feat. Chaundon - Starvation 20. Lil' Wayne - Oh No 21. Buck 65 - Centaur (from the Vertex cassette) 22. Blackalicious - Alphabet Aerobics (Cut Chemist 2.5 Minute Workout)
Curse ov Dialect - token local, somewhat bad rappers. Danced around like fools. No one cared.
Archie Bronson Outift - likely would have killed late at night in a packed club but was only OK at 1 PM on a Sunday in an alleyway. Swamp blues type shit - I was into the first song but after I realized every song was the same, it got boring quick. I liked this music better when they called this the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.
Camera Obscura - laughably bad stage presence and plagued by bad sound. The first half of their set was terrible but got somewhat better, although only passable, as it went on.
Love Is All - the first good to great set of the day. apparently they were partying until 6:30 AM that morning but they still gave it their all. the singer had awesome shades.
Youth Group - generic alternaindieschlock. Die OC Die. The singer was a wanker. Worst set of the day. By far.
Crayon Fields - locals who look all of 16 years old. inoffensive indie pop. we stayed for only a song and a half.
The Sleepy Jackson - they really knew how to put on a festival show, playing to the back of the alley. The first two thirds of their set was intense and pretty great but it lost steam when they played some slower tunes before closing with aplomb. I don't think I'd ever listen to them but they sure put on a good gig. After Youth Group, they redeemed Australian music.
Holly Throsby - nice folk-ish type singer songwriter material with vocals from the Newsom school.
The Walkmen - killed that shit dead. Best set of the day. Dressed as if they had just attended a seminar on Deleuze.
Peter Bjorn and John - everybody seemed to be there for these guys and the first half of their show was decidedly underwhelming. But then they played "Young Folks" (with the singer from Camera Obscura subbing for Victoria Bergsman), everybody went crazy, jumped around, sang along. Afterwards they turned up the guitars and were pretty amazing. Too bad the whole set wasn't as intense as the last half.
Midnight Juggernauts - locals from the vein of the Avalanches and Cut Copy in Melbourne's scene. They closed the mainstage and were pretty fucking great, getting everybody dancing and going crazy with their slick beats, squeeling synths and anthemic vocals. their recorded material doesn't come close to matching their live show.
All in all a surprisingly good day. The best: Walkmen, Juggernauts, Love Is All, Sleepy Jackson, 2nd half of PB&J. The worst: Youth Group, 1st half of PB&J, Camera Obscura.
I'm back from the trip. The return to Melbourne felt like coming home off a tour. Melbourne > Sydney > Brisbane.
The new El-P record, I'll Sleep When You're Dead, leaked thanks to one Matthew Snider (from Pop Matters, I think?). That guy's an idiot (as if DJX is ever going to send him anything ever again) but the album is pretty incredible. It's not as noisy and jangly as Fantastic Damage and not nearly as funky or simple as Producto's work with, say, Cage but still it bangs like a mu'fucker and crushes heads when it needs to. Too bad El-P can't really rap well. I'll talk about this one more on the real blog. The new Aesop Rock NIKE workout mix also leaked and it's actually quite good too. Def Jux is back (said in the same way I've been saying it since 2002 always to be disappointed by the next mediocrity they release).
I've nearly finalized the course reader (scholarly mixtape?) for my class on cultural studies and semiotics. It's pretty Raymond Williams and Barthes heavy; I tried to make it quite readable and relatively short and lacking in any Foucault or Derrida. Here it is:
1. Raymond Williams - Culture is Ordinary 2. Ferdinand de Saussure - Nature of the Linguistic Sign (from the Course in General Linguistics) 3. Roland Barthes - Dominici, or the Triumph of Literature (from Mythologies) 4. Roland Barthes - Ornamental Cookery (from Mythologies) 5. Stuart Hall - Encoding, Decoding 6. Raymond Williams - The Technology and the Society (from Television: Technology and Cultural Form) 7. Clifford Geertz - Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight 8. Marshall McLuhan - The Medium is the Message 9. Naomi Klein - Brand Bombing: Franchises in the Age of the Superbrand (from No Logo) 10. Eric Lott - Racial Cross-Dressing and the Construction of American Whiteness 11. Jean Baudrillard - The Gulf War Will Not Take Place (from The Gulf War Did Not Take Place) 12. Lev Manovich - Principles of New Media/What New Media Is Not (from The Language of New Media)
At a regular neighbourhood pub for the Superbowl on Monday. I'm with a "mate" from New Zealand. We're joined by a bogan Aussie dude who drops a beer, tells us about his just reattached fingers and broken neck, shows us his burnt and tatted torso, admonishes us for our accents and almost challenges me to a fight over AFL (aussie rules footy). He starts telling jokes:
Bogan: What would you call New Zealand if we [Australians] sent all the non-anglo-saxons there? Us: What? Bogan: MEXICO.
We left soon afterwards when he was in the shitter.
-been feeling a bit uh out of sorts recently. little motivation to actually work on the thesis, slightly emo at times, restless yet lazy, etc.
-currently obsessed with Rich Boy's "Throw Some D's" (thanks Neebs) and the Walkmen's "the Rat." I have no idea why on either account.
-after relative frugality, i broke the budget in the past few days. even bought a ticket for Laneway Festival (Peter Bjorn and John/Walkmen/Love Is All/Camera Obscura/Youth Group/Sleepy Jackson/etc.) although I may have to roll solo.
-was going to go to a cricket match today but ducked out after fully considering the cost of sitting in the sun for 8 hours in 38C weather.
-about 3 days until conferencing in Brisbane/Sydney. I may "freestyle" the Sydney presentation. I don't really give a fuck and haven't done any work on either talks (well, except for writing the papers awhile ago and reprinting them on friday).
-superbowl tomorrow! i missed last year because i was on a bus from ottawa to toronto, the year before i hosted a party in my quad with a whole bunch of people (one i'd rather forget about, others i haven't seen in too long). this year i'm going to the pub at 10 AM to watch the game with a friend from new zealand. drunk on monday at 10 am- class all the way.
For all intents and purposes, barring some disaster, I took the teaching gig. I have my own class of 50 young, likely Catholic students.
I've started to put together a coursepack. The greatest hits of cultural and literary theory - likely Raymond Williams, Barthes, McLuhan, Baudrillard, possibly Foucault maybe, Saussure, Kenneth Burke, Fredric Jameson probably, Benjamin, perhaps Derrida, etc. Some pop music and pop culture theory would likely be thrown in.
Add on suggestions. The course is broadly in semiotics and cultural studies or semiotic approaches to cultural studies, which opens up to just about anything really.
I've just received an offer out of the blue to teach a course in cultural studies and literature at the Australian Catholic University in a field only tangentially related to my field. The offer came without even a job interview so either they're just looking for anyone or my CV totally impressed someone for the first time. The money is not great in that the 120 and 100 dollars an hour wages - one for the lectures, the other for tutorials - sounds amazing until you realize that it's only for 4 hours a week, marking inclusive.
I only really sent out my CV to these unis for tutorial jobs not to actually teach something but I guess I have to start somewhere. I feel like I've been away from undergrad classrooms for too long to remember how they even run anymore but I guess I could just take the money and run.
I'm a little scared of the whole thing since I think I'd be a pretty shitty teacher at first. Well, maybe we could just talk about television and music a lot? The extra money would be aces and it would totally piss off my dickish supervisor.
Feb. 7 - Melbourne -> Brisbane Feb. 8-9 - Rhizomes III conference, scout the scene in Brisbane, party, maintain Melbourne Massive reputation, stay in dodgy hostel Feb. 10 - Brisbane -> Sydney Feb. 11 - Free day in Sydney, try not to riot at Cronulla Feb. 12-14 - The Value of Knowledge conference, determine if Sydney sucks as everyone says it does, party, stay in dodgier hostel Feb. 14 Sydney -> Melbourne Feb. 15 onwards - rest
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