Major Matt asks Neil Kelly (Huggabroomstik, Club Mate, Kung Fu Crimewave) 5 questions (#13)

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1. How did we originally meet?
I only remember this sort of vaguely. Dashan definitely introduced us outside of Sidewalk. If I recall correctly, you wore a beard. It was before I had ever seen you play, but Dashan had given me a mix-CD with a Schwervon song ("Breaking In") and a MMM song ("Girlfriend"), so I already knew some of your work. I think this may have been early 2003.

2. 3 things that make you happy?
Exercising my creativity is something I always enjoy. Whether through music, visual art or whatever, working on projects makes me feel good, and productive and important. I enjoy the company of intelligent, open-minded people who can participate in a healthy debate. Jokes are enjoyable as well.

3. 3 things that make you sad? Read more »

At Home He's a Tourist

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Monday night I decided to go to Bowery Poetry Club. I brought my COBY so I could listen to tapes and the radio on the trip downtown. I'm not sure about COBYS, the radio is good and stays functional for a long time but the cassette player gives out after a couple of months. I was listening to a tape and it would play at normal speed, then it would really slow down. I would press stop, fast forward for a few seconds, then press play and the COBY would play at normal speed, then it would slow dow, repeat the process...etc...etc...etc. I'll buy some new batteries and see if that helps but I seriously doubt it. It's strange that the COBY is the only portable cassette player I can ever find retail in New York because the Sony Walkman is an amazing, durable, long lasting cassette player that can last for years, and doesn't eat tapes as often as COBY. The only reason I have the COBY is I got it as a gift. I was going to return it and order a Walkman online but I thought maybe the COBY had improved ( I had one once a long time ago and it was the same poor quality) but it hadn't at all, but since it was a gift it was cool just to check and see if the COBY had made any improvements. Read more »

My Top 10... er, 3... movies of 2010

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A lot of times I am compelled at the end of the year to cook up some sort of Top 10 list of favorite movies. This year is a toughie, though. I haven't seen a lot of new movies, and the ones I've seen have largely been wiped clean from my brain-slate.

So, I won't do a top 10. Here are the 3 films I remember liking best from 2010, in alphabetical order.

And Everything Is Going Fine (Dir. Steven Soderbergh, with Spalding Gray) - Spalding Gray was a unique talent who managed to create a niche for himself, doing pieces that incorporated performance art, stand-up comedy (more like "sit-down" in his case), and something like confession or open therapy. There are already 3 feature films documenting Gray's best-known monologues -- all performed with Gray seated at a desk, while the film directors try to figure out how to keep things visually interesting. Steven Soderbergh (the Ocean's movies; sex, lies, and videotape), who directed the last of those movies (called Gray's Anatomy), here constructs a narrative of Gray's life through a succession of clips from Gray's other monologues, some television interviews, and a few home movies, with no authorial interjection from any other voice besides Gray's. The effect is that of a posthumous autobiography, or as the blurb in the trailer below suggests, a final monologue. Read more »

Major Matt asks Dan Costello 5 questions (#12)

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1. How did we originally meet?
I think we were at Sidewalk Cafe. I had heard your music because I was working there and I found a copy of "Me Me Me" in the back and borrowed it for a few days. I really liked it and then I think I did sound for an OJ night. I certainly feel like I knew of you for a while before we actually met.

2. 3 things that make you happy?
The realization of an ambitious project involving my friends. I'm thinking most recently of Brian Speaker's The Mars Chronicles or Art Sorority For Girls' new album. Both completely mind-blowing albums.

A perspective different than mine, well-articulated.

Deciding what combination of vegetables to put in a pan of risotto. This week it was shitake mushrooms and slivered carrots.

3. 3 things that make you sad?
Adults screaming at or angrily reprimanding children, especially telling them "shut up" or "you ruined it". C'mon, it's a sweater that got chocolate on it. Lighten up
(and stop buying designer sweaters for your toddler.) Read more »

At Home He's a Tourist

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I was in the Bronx on White Plains Road. I wanted to visit some of the record stores on White Plains Road. A few weeks ago I had bought Social Class Volume 2, Dread Meets Punk Rockers Uptown at Moodies and I was in search of Social Class Volume 3. I had thought I'd seen it in a store up the road, but I knew that it could now be a health food store. The last time I had been there it had been half record store half renovation. Now it was half heath food store half renovation. I walked up the road some more to Moodies to double check if it was there, it was not. I walked up the road some more and went to Millennium. I like Millennium, it has many varieties of used records so it's always interesting to browse. I ended up choosing Joy and The Isaac Hayes Movement. I bought Hot Buttered Soul on the street in Soho a few years back after reading a Chuck Eddy book. He considered it an important record and included it in the discography. The book is great, it connects music from all different pop styles through lyric similarity. Different and fun. Millennium had run out of shopping bags so my records were rubber banded together. I hope it doesn't rain. Read more »

At Home He's a Tourist

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The Saturday before Christmas is the busiest shopping day of the year. So Saturday night Dina and I decided to do some Christmas shopping. We walked up to 125th Street to shop for CDRs. We were shopping to buy some Jazz mix CDRs from the street merchants set up all along 125th street. It was getting late so with most of the merchants packed up we had to go on shopping elsewhere. We took the A train downtown. We went to the Columbus Circle Holiday market. The market was also closing(I guess people like to shop mostly in the daytime) but we quickly shopped the booths. There was jewelry, leather goods, scarves, candles, t-shirts, and even beauty products made out of salt from the Dead Sea. What a cool idea. I have been watching a show called The Rift on Natural Geographic Wild which is awesome so when I saw the Dead Sea products it made me think of the show. Flamingos have adapted to live and thrive in inhospitable and toxic habitats along the Rift connecting/disconnecting Africa and Asia. I thought it was cool that people had the ingenuity to create something beneficial from another inhospitable habitat like the Dead Sea. Read more »

Major Matt asks Betsy Cohen (The Best) 5 questions (#11)

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1. How did we originally meet?
You know I'm not exactally sure how we met. I remember meeting people back in 1999 when I first started going to the Sidewalk. But I guess I started to really get to know most people (and you) when I sort of re-entered the scene when I started hanging out with Jeff Lewis around 2005... So I guess it was then :)

2. 3 things that make you happy?
Love. Love makes me really happy. Being around people that I love, channeling love, sending love to people, showing my love, and of course recieving love!

My work makes me feel really good. Emptying my mind and being a channel for information that serves people's highest good is an honor. Also knowing that people and the Universe trust me to assist individuals in strengthening their connection to Source Energy and their own soul is deeply humbling.
Reciently, when I hear a live choir it makes me so happy and filled with love I cry.
Also animals!!!!!

3. 3 things that make you sad? Read more »

At Home He's a Tourist

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It was cold as I left for Bruar Falls Sunday night, but this is the Northeast in December, so why not? I got on the D train and was reading a copy of Art in America that Jon Glovin gave me. I love to read art magazines, between all the pictures and all the words I don't know the meaning of, they're really a quick read. At 14th Street I transferred to the L train, I had to stop reading Art in America because I didn't want to be ridiculed for reading Art in America instead of the art section of the Brooklyn Rail. I got off the train at Bedford but I had forgotten to get a hop-stop so I asked for directions. While I was getting directions I must have been blocking the sidewalk because someone shoved me out of the way. I made it over to Bruar Falls and it was cozy. I saw Toby end his set with a ballad. Preston showed a video he made for Toby. It is really a great video. An animated, personified, Hindenburg flies through all this great old footage of N.Y.C. Anyway, the video was fantastic and really enjoyable. Sam and Simon played next as The Wowz, it was understated and precise. I felt like i was listening to the third VU record. I listened to Read more »

Anti War Protest in Times Square 12/16/10

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Last night I attended a War Protest in Times Square that was followed by a small civil disobedience act in support of a similar rally that in Washington DC where 135 people were arrested for chaining themselves to the White House fence. http://www.opednews.com/articles/135-Arrested-For-Civil-Dis-by-Rob-Kall-....

I'm sorry to report that I was among some of the younger people there. But I found the event very inspiring and I'd be interested in learning about or even helping organize a group of younger people or musicians that could help draw a bit more attention to this very important issue. At the end of the protest a small group of people blocked the the traffic in Times Square in an act of civil disobedience against US involvement in various wars around the world. After about 5 minutes they were arrested and placed in a police van. Here are some pictures of people I consider real American Heros!
IMG_0822 Read more »

Self-Published Awesome Book-A Question of Values by Morris Berman

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Why here and not in the message section?
I thought about that, and have decided to leave it here.
Morris has not been able to find a publisher for this book.

The fact that Bush's book is a bestseller and Berman has to use a print service (Amazon) to make his available shows how weird the world is.

A NYT reviewer smeared his last book (which I have not read)--maybe because the reviewer couldn't take Morris's honesty.

“A Question of Values” is an alternately sobering and inspiring collection of essays by noted historian and cultural critic Morris Berman. Berman pulls no punches in laying bare the truths about who we are, not just as a nation, but also as individuals wrapped up in the destructive pursuit of material excess. In the unswerving style of his other writings, he rips apart the national illusion of greatness.---Nomi Prins

http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/america_the_material_20101126/

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