Once again, I awoke early in order to see Marc&Mark of Morning Sedition at the ever-so-comfortable Tea Lounge. The guests of honor Nelson George, who has a new book, Chuck D, who showed up by surprise, and DMC of Run-DMC. It was worth sticking around to the very end for them. When asked what he listened to these days, DMC confessed that he didn't listen to hip-hop anymore, but rather, was listening to classic rock, and specified who he meant as Creedence Clearwater Revival, Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen. He has recently made a record in which he covers Jimi Hendrix's "Machine Gun," and he said that he thought it was important that contemporary artists make music relevant to the war, and that GIs can relate to. Hip hop, he said, is all about parties, not about anything important that's going on. That is true of most contemporay hip-hop, though there are few out there still talking about the issues.
One of them is .... Chuck D, who was lamenting the depature of the oldies format on NY's CBS radio station, and talked about how the music of the eighties (he mentiond the Cure and Scritti Politti as examples) were why he started making rap records himself. He doesn't listen to hip-hop when his children are around becase, he says, it's "too grown" for them.
To read about "Machine gun" go here: http://mywebpages.comcast.net/loudfast/writeweb/mgun.htm
For Nelson George's new book "Post-Soul Nation," go here:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0670032751/qid=1119640822/sr=8-3/ref=pd_csp_3/103-2942250-5324647?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
(Sorry, for some reason, my handy html commands don't work on the public library computer. Just one more way that the digital affects us.)
And so kids, to comment...what are your views on hip hop or other music new or old? What are you listening to these days? For me, it's been Chet Baker, Charles Mingus and PJ Harvey.
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