jeelago
Two days after the public Michael Jackson public memorial, we visited the former home of the Jackson family in Gary, Indiana. It was slightly surreal. We left a card and took a picture of ourselves in front of the house, even tho it felt strange to do so. We didn’t smile.
Recently I was doing research on the 90s music scene in Hawai’i.
I found this guy JonHawaii2003 had posted footage of Tool and Stone Temple Pilots at the first Big Mele—an alternative music festival that ran in Hawaii for seven years—on YouTube. Turns out Jon was one of the sound guys for the show, and knows a thing or two about getting quality concert footage.
I contacted him to thank him for the hard-rocking flashback, and a week later he reuploaded the Tool footage in even better quality!
Here’s the link to the entire 10-part playlist, or if you just want to hear my favorite (aka most popular on Radio Free Hawaii) song of the day, that’d be Opiate featuring a surprise guest appearance from singer Layne Staley of Alice in Chains:
The one thing you can’t see here is the waves, they are going off(!!) in an area of the island where huge surf is not that common. Despite Kualoa being a Ranch and having an abundance of ranchly things like cow poo (and the fungus that grows upon it), I can hardly imagine a more beautiful backdrop for a killer music festival.
I wasn’t even a huge Tool fan until that day, when the bass in my face—an emotionally blown state since I’d just been dumped that day—rocked my world. Other artists that played the Big Mele were Stone Temple Pilots, Fishbone, Violent Femmes and Primus.
No subsequent Big Mele ever packed as much of a punch as this one did, for me. They lost even the little bit of diversity they had, becoming way too alterna-punk-heavy for my tastes, tho I did go in ’96 (No Doubt! plus Cypress Hill and their ginormous inflatable Buddha) and ’97 (Wu Tang, sorry guys, that is *not* Wu Mountain behind us). Lineups of all The Big Mele festivals on hawaiibase.com.
Am I the only one that missed this Sesame Street Captain Vegetable clip as a kid? This is too funny.
As if the crazed and kooky haired muppets weren’t enough, the dialog has extra snark (“what are you, some kind of weirdo?”) and the silly song gets stuck in my head when I least expect it.
Taking the cake (er, salad?) are those sad looking vegetables! Poor Andy gets his black licorice candy swapped for a plate full of dry, raggedy celery. I dare a cracked-out puppet to try and take my licorice and replace it with celery. NO.
But that’s of course beside the point. The point is to promote good nutrition and not nightmares, so the trippy hippies at Sesame Street reprised the sketch with John Leguizamo as Captain Vegetable.
Leguizamo’s Captain Vegetable comes off awkward in places and to be honest, Elmo was never my main muppet. But it’s still a funny skit and the costume reaches new heights of ridiculousness. Is that corn silk coming out of his head? At least he’s armed with more than two vegetables. Thanks, playa!
The old link was passed on by friend, web designer, music lover, LA denizen Tim Ganter, back when he was still blogging… poke, poke… Thanks for introducing me to Captain Vegetable, Tim!
Funny the small coincidences in life. Like an old friend in Chicago directing music videos for a band formerly of Honolulu. What are the chances?
An Alan Watts animation produced by Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
[mahaloz@Brave New Traveler]
Ti$a – Vote Obama
[via The Rap Up]
Why didn’t Obama Twitter the news of this video?? LoL. He’s got his account set to follow everyone that follows him. Brilliant! and how flattering: Barack Obama is following me! hahaha! No doubt it’s an aide that reads & sends the messages, but still, interesting use of technology. And fun video :~j
The band was in-between songs and there were still tables open when I walked in to the Dragon Upstairs last Saturday, just behind a group of retiree-aged hipsters. “C’mon in,” boomed a voice from a dimly-lit corner; the band gestured for us to do the same. I gamely follow a white-haired man in a pin-stripped fedora into the intimate, match-box sized club.
Ideas from the class reading bopped around inside my head:*
Stressing and pressurizing the local as a site of “critical resistance” posits a more dynamic way of imagining the relationship of a region, nation, and globe in which difference is not subsumed nor reified but circulated and affirmed” (Wilson 14).
I side-stepped the bell of a trumpet held close and low, nodding to the band while snaking past the potentially expectoration-flecked front line, to the raised seating area where Rowen, Miki and Hank sat holding court at the best table in the house.
It was only the second time I’d met Hank, the owner of both the Dragon Upstairs and Hank’s Cafe, another live music venue downstairs in the same Nuuanu Street building. Last year was the first time we’d met, I’d interviewed him for an article for Hawaii Luxury magazine. He’d impressed me with his charisma and passion for music. I’d sat at the bar drinking chardonnay, asking questions and scribbling notes for my story. Eventually he leaned in and spelled it out: “I want Hawaiian jazz.”
This is a fun video from a poet of hiphop, hot off the front page of youtube. It reminds me not to accidentally turn into too much of a hippie and to take time to nurture art regardless :~j
I’m always down for a live performance. Regardless of event type, seeing things live always adds a new dimension to appreciate, be it a baseball game, stand-up comedy routine or concert of any genre. Last week, I experienced a Broadway style musical, Flower Drum Song on an extended run at Diamond Head Theatre. These performers are working it, singing, dancing, acting… they have my full respect. Having a live, mini-orchestra there was also unexpected and fun.
This youtube clip of a 2006 performance looks like someone snuck it in the theater. Minus the thong(!) it is very much like what we saw at DHT. (The last minute or so appears to be some… thing… else….. perhaps was under the recording?)
The dailies of course loved the show. They love everything that’s locally produced; it’s the CODB in Hawaii. (see comments) Me I’m not really a “musicals person” (and yea those are “scare quotes”). LoL. But I tried to put that aside since I was there for a class assignment to think about the performance in terms of the reading we had done the previous week in a book by Coco Fusco called English is Broken Here.
The task was to consider what Fusco would say about the Flower Drum Song performance at DHT. As concerned as she is with Latino/a issues, I do not think Fusco would speak too directly to the content of a supposedly reappropriated (re-reappropriated?) performance of Asian otherness in a United Statesian* style in the illegally occupied Kingdom of Hawaii. But that’s an admittedly presumptuous guess.
I was always kinda sick I missed this show. What you can see of the crowd in the flashes of light looks crazy. This is “Negative Creep” off their first album, Bleach.
Anasarca at Asita Recordings points out that the closing music on a Current TV show featuring the inimitable Wax Poetics magazine(!) is a funk band from Finland called Nicole Willis and The Soul Investigators. She messaged me:
“I just thought you might be interested in this band, if you haven’t heard of them already. They bring a brand of Finnish funk that is both joyous and soulful. It’s really easy for these new funk bands to sound cheesy but they definitely overcome that. Also look for Didier Sound Spectrum it was an older release from the 90′s that recently saw a reissue. More amazing funky Finnish music.”
No I hadn’t heard of them, thank you for the recommendation, girl!
Here goes the video for “If this ain’t love (don’t know what is).” Yea it’s a few years old, but this can bump all summer long.
Turns out Nicole Willis is originally from Brooklyn (with a solid musical resume), but has apparently studied in Lahti, Finland and blogged about her schoolwork, including philosophy essays and paintings she’s done?! I’m listing to the songs on their myspace and it is enticing me to order their album for real… oh look, here’s a link!
This is the Ducktales theme song, Finnish version. The joker who posted it on youtube offers a, erm, unique transcription of the lyrics in English; I’ve included them below. Silly yes, but made me laugh, which is always good on a Monday.
Morphine makes the holy known
Uncle Lina!
Eyein’ up/down that sappy nun
Uncle Lina!
I’m going to stroke it
Your arms are BROKEN!
Uncut! Ohh!
Hoot all you and an anus, aha!
Uncut! Ohh!
Your school’s stupid! Your school’s BaHa!
Uncut! Ohh!
If I’m not avail you, taco nazi!
Look around and count on Lassie!
Knit and dance and BAKE A CAKE!
Oh, Uncut! Ohh!
Hoot all you and an anus, aha!
Uncut! Ohh!
Your school’s stupid! Your school’s BaHa!
Uncut! Ohh!
And sanskrit ain’t got hoot to say ’bout
Uncut! Ohh!
Real lyrics follow, courtesy of another youtube poster.
Saw this Icelandic group at Hawaii Theatre and have been respectful ever since. I’m only seven minutes in but wholly impressed with ‘Heima’ by Sigur Rós. Visiting Iceland was something like this, I wish.
[youtube video no longer available]
UPDATE 3/18/08: Boooooooooooooooooooo @ them removing the video after it was splashed across the youtube front page for DAYS. >:-[ And their myspace is all bragging about being the first artists to have a full-length doc on youtube. I guess one could actually buy the damn thing, but I really don’t like this bait and switch. If it is an officially sanctioned release on the interweb, it should not go away. IMHO.
