heirloom varieties of seeds have been popular for many gardeners who are interested in preserving traditional varieties of plants, and nay not want modified foods in their garden. now here comes an ubercapitalist who has taken something that most people do from a perspective of love and joy and with the intention of getting closer to the earth and turned it into an opportunity to cause uneasy feelings about the stability of our way of life. perpetuating fear about survival in the future. i understand its the difference in perspective coming from one’s axiological referent but still…
Whitney Houston’s debut album has been re-released as a special 25th anniversary edition. The song Freddie Washington and I co-wrote (Someone For Me) is on the new album twice. The second version is a remix of sorts. I heard a bit of it and was hoping for more of a deconstruction of the song. With projects like the Nina Simone remix project, the Verve Remix series and so many many more, I wanted to hear some adventurous music using the original vocal as a springboard. Especially since there is a whole subculture of remixers in various genres who are doing amazing work accessible at sites like indabamusic.com, acidplanet.com, and others where they have contests and people can share and support each other.
I wanted to give an example of the possibilities that are afforded when you have a great vocal talent like Ms Houston to work with as a basic element of a remix. To that end, I purchased a download of the a capella vocal for the song How Will I Know from the re-release (yes I paid my .99). Since Producer great Narada Michael Walden and I are Facebook friends, I have apologized to him in advance for what I have done with his pop classic masterpiece.
How I got there:
This mix was done in Live 8 with a couple of Reason 4 instruments via Rewire protocol (in layman’s terms, its a way to connect two separate programs to work together). I used many instances of Kontakt 3 sampler for many of the orchestral instruments (from the NI library) as well as a couple of samples from the Ableton EIC collection. The drum kit was a kit from the Ableton Session Drums software package. The metal chime sample was a public domain sample culled from a web search for such a sample. I loaded it into Ableton Simpler (sampler) where it mapped itself and played in pitch on the correct keys.
Influences are Charles Stepney (check the placement of the harp glissandos), arranger Richard Niles, drummer (and friend) Omar Hakim (without the tasty fills), producer/engineer Jason Cosaro and the young Whitney singing her heart out!!
sometimes you think a book or an article is going to be about one subject and then it goes places you least expected. such was the case with an interview i read with Lester Chambers from the Chambers Brothers. he talked about Clive Davis ripping off the group, he talks about how Rhino Records wasn’t paying them (and this was at least 10 years ago), and a bunch of other things i didn’t know he and his brothers had to deal with.
the other day Haiti had a 7.0 earthquake near the capitol Port-au-Prince. It has been devastating to watch any of the reports on the news. Anyone who knows the history of Haiti, the first black independent country in the western hemisphere, knows that not only the USA but more so FRANCE owes the country so much. I made a donation through one of the organizations that I think will get aid to the people quickly. I hope they do. I hope I picked the right one. I have Haitian friends in this country. I am anxious to speak with them but I feel I should wait until the stress of the situation subsides a bit.
Its ironic, one of the black radio talk show hosts was recently talking about visiting the country to investigate investment opportunities.The goal was to spread the black dollar across borders and to get in on the ground floor of investment projects. I just have a feeling that once the country begins to stabilize in a year or two, Haiti has the potential to be realize its greatness. But in the meantime, we wait, we cry, we pray, and donate whatever we can.
I found out that in addition to the many people in Haiti who perished, Teddy Pendergrass passed away. Over the holidays, I’d asked one of my house guests if Mr. Pendergrass was alive. Now, sadly, he is not. When I think of him, I think of the time when I was in Chic and we did a song with him for a film called Soup For One (the title song of the film I have heard played on traxsource.co.uk). Not only did we record with him, he performed the song in the film and we, the band (Nile, Bernard, Tony, Rob Sabino and myself) accompanied him. He did great work and his sound although part of an era of real gritty soul singing from the church infused with undeniable sensuality, has passed, it is still loved and appreciated. R.I.P.
A decade or so ago, I got a call about Spike (Lee) directing RENT. I was going to work with Alex Steyermark the music supervisor producing the musical songs for the film (needless to say this project fell apart but on with my story). I also played piano for some of the actors who auditioned (my sight reading needed a workout and now I know why I am not a pit pianist on Broadway), including my dear friend Australian Superstar Kate Ceberano. But another actor I played for who I really enjoyed her spirit AND musicality was Brittany Murphy.
I just read that Brittany passed away today. So sad to hear. From the one day I met and worked with her, I knew this was a special lady. My condolences to her friends and family.
the following is a response to comments made about a scathing review of precious:
after reading many of the comments i am convinced that white supremacy is on the job. once again the powerless are so starved to see themselves on screen that will they accept and absorb anything that’s in focus, reasonably acted (and sometimes not), etc. from an approved brand (ok so that wasn’t the case with beloved but there are limits) and get defensive if someone has a perspective that isn’t supportive of the work.
precious is the type of film that should have people discussing it afterward, but to what end? i have much compassion for the people on here who were brave enough to discuss either being abused or knowing others who have had it happen in their own lives. but does this do anything but rip away healing scabs to reveal the raw pain? i can see the hurt and emotion in some of the comments (i guess that is why rather than argue salient points, some reverted to name calling or insulting the writer who btw got paid for his opinion). why would you want to spend two hours in a dark room being dragged down to that even though you do get a triumphant arc in the story? that cathartic journey is fun? is that how you choose to spend your discretionary money (and will you buy it on DVD and play it more than once)? me? not so much.
unlike many on here, i am not an avid movie goer. but when i do go, i like to laugh, i like to be entertained in a positive manner, i love a great story that has great dialogue. but what i see in black cinema in the early 21st century is a lack of diversity from the American film companies. i see a lot of put-downs between characters. yes the TP films have a moral tone and stereotypical characters and someone who has a fantasy kind of relationship with their mate. i do understand the need to provide the target audience with the hope of a fantasy relationship. yet there are hardly any LGBTs with non stereotypical strong character development tho. just sayin’…
the diverse experiences of people of African descent in the west and in the motherland hold a wide range of stories that will be developed over time. not just the horrendously unhappy ones with a glimmer of hope. white film makers are using our ancient history in their films and denigrating it, i.e. the mummy series, national treasure etc.. as the world’s original people (and storytellers) we have to be reminded of the longer time overview (there are records of our ancient ancestors recording the paths of stars over thousands of years). what i am saying is, the religious and historical stories of ancient Africa (before this current time of folks still singing Lord make me whiter than snow, lightening their beautiful brown skin and a film about “good hair”) could be fodder for much creative story telling without there being an issue about skin tones. there can be science fiction that develops without a fear of the end of a planetary cycle (2012) featuring brown skinned folks and not as the first ones to die from a calamity. someone needs to tell the story of Zumbi dos Palmares in Brazil. Or the slave revolts in Suriname where the Dutch eventually had to have signed treaties with the escaped Africans who fled to the hills so that they would co-exist without being murdered by the Africans. How is that for a story overcoming adversity and cheering for freedom?
But these are not things that a typical film company will green light readily. like TP saw an avenue to create a new path. others can and will forge those roads so that in the future, the next film about a beat down, teenage black mother, with a horrible mother/grandmother type wont be the only choice one has in theaters to see black people (or will the direct to home film be the next way to view niche projects?).
why oh why do some people feel a need to engage in conversation when quiet would be so much more enlightening? yesterday, someone wanted to engage me in a conversation about baseball player sammy sosa making an appearance where he was looking closer in skin tone to desi arnaz than say, himself a few years ago. i told the kat who wanted to discuss this that mr. sosa is completely useless to where i am at this point in my life.
but after i got home, i thought about something i read recently. it might’ve been something historian rununko rashidi wrote or it might’ve been at a travel site but i distinctly remember reading that a majority of black people in the dominican republic do not consider themselves black.
mr sosa, being from DR would of course have been exposed to that mindset and maybe as he gets older holds onto the concept that a black man should aspire to be lighter toned. charles barkley obviously didn’t get that memo as he was getting his makeup lightened on television, clowining sosa in the process. but i wanted to give a link to something that backs up what i am saying about the level of awareness of one’s skin hue regardless of tone being a beautiful God-given gift. i didn’t have to do much searching.
(for FB readers where the link isnt clear: http://www.miamiherald.com/multimedia/news/afrolatin/part2/index.html)
two days ago i went on my annual trek to Fry’s electronics. over time, there is less of a need to go to duluth for electronic toys. since phones play mp3s and most other things can be bought online, i rarely make the trek. in woodland hills ca (where i used to live), there was a fry’s down the road and that place was filled with geeks and gear heads. but the economy has changed in both cities and the duluth store was for me as a customer, wonderful. why? because i had salespeople in every dept., helpful and non frazzled, courteous and downright pleasant. mainly because there was hardly anyone else in there. in fact much of the adjacent mall was boarded up (movie theater, dept. store, restaurants, etc.).
anyway, i was able to get the 1gb of additional memory i needed to run win 7 as well as a copy of the program. it was strange tho, they had the software in a locked case. a salesperson had to unlock it and give it to you in a locked plastic box where it was then unlocked by the cashier. it really aint that serious. but after installing it (a 2 hour process), it runs like a mac. if this was the vista release of 3 years ago, microsoft would’ve had far fewer complaints from its customers and more people willing to upgrade from xp (maybe LOL). i especially like the shake function where you shake an application or web page and everything else minimizes. and its FAST. so far, the hard drive isn’t spinning an interminable amount of time and then popping up with all kinds of questions like a hyperactive child. even the magic jack dongle loaded a lot quicker. i think work can now get done easily.
this is the first part of documenting my making the journey from windows vista to windows 7. before someone says, “get a mac” im already on that bandwagon. in fact, i am typing this out on a mac thank you very much. if reading about pc’s is not interesting to you, no worries, we’ll catch up later. but in the meantime…
when windows 7’s release was imminent i went on the ms website to see what the requirements would be to run it. turns out i needed to upgrade my os to at least vista sp1 but preferably sp 2. since i have had the nightly automatic upgrades option turned on, i was surprised that none of this was already done. this began my journey down the rabbit hole with hp and ms. i contacted hp via live chat and ran through as many steps with them as possible. at the end of the hour-long chat, i was still unable to run the downloaded sp 1 and 2 software packages. a few days later (i have a host of other things going on besides dealing with tech support issues), i contacted microsoft via their windows 7 upgrade help line. i spoke to a tech in india (?) who walked me through some shortcuts to make the computer run the upgrades. fascinating tips but alas, they didn’t work. after an hour and a half of those parlor tricks, we agreed that i would contact hp and request that they send some vista os dvds to me to do a system repair.
a week ago, i got in late (actually early in the morning) and decided before going to sleep to contact hp and request the dvds. the process was quick, dirty and painless (but 15.00 for s&h via regular mail for a few dvds without cases? c’mon hp). fast forward another week and the disks came in. i spent thursday trying to repair the os but it wasn’t having any of that. “wipe me clean or leave me alone,” it seemed to be saying (with a neck roll and a hand on hip). so i backed up all of my files with the enclosed software. that failed. so i backed it up manually, putting some documents into the “cloud” and most on an external hard drive and then doing another copy to my server (all of this had been synchronized on a regular basis in the past so there wasn’t too much to do).
after that, i wiped the hard drive clean and began to install the os. a prompt came up saying there was some boot file missing which led to a black screen and a circle of ctrl-alt-delete messages. still using the dvd from hp, i reinstalled again and this time the os installed. after that happened, vista wanted to install some necessary updates. 74 crucial updates. at 32 i went to bed. the update log stated at 5am or so it completed the updates. the next day i plugged in the external drive which had until that point been disconnected from the pc. the computer didn’t recognize the hard drive. so i plugged in the hard drive to another computer to make sure it hadn’t been corrupted. it read just fine. i then reconnected it to the vista machine and it was recognized.
i then ran service pack 1 from the external drive. when i realized it was going to be awhile, i left the house. when i returned it had installed and rebooted (numerous times from what i can tell). then windows wanted to do some more crucial updates. i ran those and began to run the service pack 2 installation which had also been downloaded to the external drive. that ran smoothly yet sucked up another hour of time.
my next thing is to reinstall the software i need on this computer (itunes, firefox, word, sound forge-the only pro music app i use on this box). after those have been installed, it will then be time to install a little bit o memory and windows 7.