Category

Rant

• 08.10.08
  New Feature For Taking Tiger Mountain: Twitter!   Rant (1)

  

  RSS feeds are out. Now we have what everyone loves to hate: a Twitter Feed!

  Yes, I’ll now be contributing to the wonderful website with a mysterious profit model in hopes of promoting this wonderful musicblog. Subscribe to the OFFICIAL Taking Tiger Mountain feed to get updates on when new blog posts go up, recycled links from other more frequently updated music sites, and quite possibly, my musings about the chicken burrito I had for dinner tonight. (I ordered it without sour cream, it was good, and I ate it alone…glad that’s out of the way.)

  Click the link below to find the new limb of Taking Tiger Mountain:

  

  Oh yeah, I’m bringing the BLINK tag back, too. Just so ya know.
  

• 08.02.08
  Oh Hai, Internet. I See You Were Here While I Was Out - Post Comicon   Rant (2)

  

  The day job called me a way for a significant length of time to deal with the thrill ride that is Comicon International. About a month and a half of prep outside of my normal book load, followed by 5 days of blissfully uncomfortable nirvana that is akin to being forcibly penetrated by a rainbow.

  

  Yeah, that was from the final day of SDCC ‘07. It kinda feels like that after you work from setup to breakdown.

  Anyhoo, I was drinking a solitary whiskey on the rocks of the evening, sitting outside at the Hyatt (yeah, too lazy to adhere to the boycott…it’s ok I didn’t pay for the drink) checking Google Analytics out of nervous boredom. Thanks primarily to Demi of This Next and her massive Stumbleupon influence, I found myself with a sizable spike in traffic. Moments later, my friend Andrew came running up looking like he’d witnessed the birth of his child, when he’d actually bumped into a slightly inebriated Joss Whedon *and* had a chance to chat with him.

  Comicon is full of fun moments like that; it’s a surreal, democratic blend of fan, creator and furry all waiting in the same slow-moving line for a shitty convention center hotdog. Now that the madness is finally over, and the job has subsided a bit, I’m back to bring the posts up to a more regular frequency. Thanks to all those that have been stopping by!

  

  This year I had a new phone around to snap a bunch of wacky pics. Enjoy the blurry fun over at my Flickr

• 06.29.08
  (Potential) Mashup Alert! - The Cool Kids & Sebadoh   Rant (0)

  

  I’m a fan of mashups just everyone else. Audiobytes For Autobots is a charming new addition to the scene (anyone with a penchant for sampling the Talking Heads that much is o.k. with me). The new Girl Talk is enjoyable enough, a bit of a retread of the same concepts…but fun none the less. We could even trace it back to 2 Many DJ’s if you feel like digging through to the vintage.

  But, in these modern times, we need more mashups. This year has seen the release of The Cool Kids debut EP Bakesale, another fantastic feat of Chicago hip-hop. This fun bit of minimalist hip-hop shares the same title as 1994’s proto-indie classic Sebadoh release. See what I’m getting at?

  Someone needs to bring the two together. Now, my song chopping skills are intensely rusty otherwise I’d screw this up myself. Instead, I’m reaching out to you, Internet, to take on the task. There’s got to be someone out there with the time and the chops to mix some of Lou Barlow’s manic lyrics with the sparse beeps and claps from Chuck Inglish’s production.

  Pretty please?

  There’s even 2 mp3’s down here to get the ball rolling.

  I look forward to what you have to offer, Anonymous Internets.

  
  

  The Cool Kids - What Up Man?

  
  
  

  

  
  

  Sebadoh - License To Confuse

  
  
  

• 06.20.08
  I love the Beat Drop - Metal Lungies’s in-depth discussions of Kanye and J Dilla   Rant (1)

  

  A random click today landed me at the hip-hop tinged blog Metal Lungies. Much to my delight they have a reoccurring feature entitled Beat Drop. The site gathers writers to do a round table discussion examining the production skills of a particular hip-hop producer.

  The most recent focuses on the great polarizer Kanye West. This discussion has of course garnered more comments than any of the other Beat Drops. Love him or hate him, Mr. West has a fantastic sense and feel for giving life to samples, at a level which belies his campy ego-driven persona. If I’d ever have to pick a bone with the man, it’d be that he chose to be the only man in hip-hop to sample Can and use it for the crappiest track on Graduation. I’ll forgive him…his almost equally strange choice of sampling Steely Dan’s Kid Charlemagne was an charming flip-cum-ploy for the ears of nerdy, white scenester kids. (See also, A-Trak). Weather you like his persona or not, his skill is undeniable. Listen to ‘Spaceship’ off Late Registration and try to say otherwise.

  (On a related note, check out this Portfolio article on Steely Dan’s arrival into the world of samples)

  For an even better dissection of a great career, their Beat Drop for the late master J Dilla is a wonderful exploration into catalog cut short. I became a fan quite late, well after his passing. One night a friend showed me the beautiful, Mixtape Club directed video for ‘Nothing Like This’.
  

  
  
  The track is a kind of musical Schrödinger’s cat; something that is simultaneously hip-hop and not. The song, in combination with the beautiful video, blew my mind open and I began to probe the back catalog. There’s something startling about many of his production choices; combining elements both slinky and gruff to make unique compositions.

  All of the Beat Drops are insightful & engaging bits of writing, something rare in this age of the McDonalds-esq music blogging. Where else are you going to find a statement like this:

  I believe that people don’t truly change your life until your life has gone on for some time without them — only then do you realize the difference that they made on you.

  It’s hard to find writing with such introspection in most corners of the internet, it’s even nicer to see such words written about hip-hop. Both posts alerted me to tracks loved but had no clue either had a hand in producing. (Kanye produced Goodie Mob…really?) Give them a read and I guarantee you’ll learn something…

• 05.10.08
  Nom Nom Nominee - Happy Cat Approved!   Rant (0)

  

  R. Stevens went and created the above macro, featuring a mindblowingly content looking Obama chowing on tacos along side a classy ‘nom nom nom’ gag. This brightened my evening.

  I couldn’t resist a tweak.

  

  There, my hat is in the political/catmacro ring.