It's just like...a mini...mall!

"Oh yeah!" goes the refrain. I'm not going to mince words: this fool can lay down a rhyme. As some of you know, I occasionally listen to the hippity-hop, but rarely do I come across an MC so funky fresh as the proprietor of Flea Market Montgomery. My fresh-to-death colleague Brad put me onto this rhymesayer - you won't be disappointed.

Methinks a visit to Alabama is in order.

Blue Scholars

growing up in spokane and portland, two cities that will always be relegated to runner-up status to king of the mountain seattle, i feel just a little animosity towards the town on the sound. seattle is a little too caught up with itself to be considered healthy.

that's why it comes as no surprise that a seattle hip-hop group would want to remix not just any sell-out indie band, but a seattle indie band.

More Ghostland Observatory

like Al Green below, Ghostland brings it with the soul. this is all the more amazing since they make their music mostly with lifeless Casio or maybe even KORG keyboards. i've never been one to object to synth. in fact, a lot of synth usually isn't enough for me. but this isn't a problem, because Ghostland uses a metric-fuck-ton of synth.

Comment Sections

fear not, this is not a departure of BDCDCDBDC's new found function as a music blog. we just have some other thoughts to share.

this track is off Ghostland Observatory's new album coming out March 4. why do i know that? because i'm actually really excited about this album. the last album i marked on the calendar was Radiohead’s In Rainbows. the one before that was Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible and before that, TV on the Radio’s Return to Cookie Mountain. i say this because Ghostland has suddenly found themselves in some pretty illustrious company—in my mind at least.

the point of this post is comments, though. while riding the interwebs 3.0 infobahn we absorb a very different experience than we did in the day’s of napster and yahoo’s dominance. We no longer simply consume the internet, nor do we simply subscribe to it. In this the-future-is-now era, we create the internet. this post is itself an example of that. But everyone has a role to play in the future, not just bloggers, thus the comments section.

comments sections are often the best part of a blog post or news article. google recognized this early with blogger and recently even The Economist caught on to the magic (sorry, no link, but it is announced on page 17 of the print edition, jan 25-feb 1). comments allow people to speak their minds and often times their minds are hilarious and honest. the comments section of a DCist post from last year on crime in Columbia Heights had one of the best documented discussions of gentrification I have ever seen. over 220 people voiced their frustrated, frightened and concerned minds by the time it was all said and done. comments ranged from defensive to accusatory to passive. I don’t think anyone would argue that this comment section was much, much better than the actual article to which everyone was responding.

but not all comments sections need to be serious. another one of the best comments sections I’ve ever seen was in response to a WK12 project. WK12 is an advertising school within wieden+kennedy’s portland studio. in 2006 these students were approached by GOOD Magazine to create a spread on “I *heart* America.” the project was interesting and I enjoyed the video they made documenting it. but it was the adweek blog post sharing the video really got it going. the commenters on this post had nothing but hate for these kids. some gems include, “It was like the cast of 'The Real World--Williamsburg, Brooklyn'" and “Good for that girl who got fed up with advertising. Way to put your foot down, walk away from it all, and enroll in advertising school. At an advertising agency. That makes ads.” people expressed their cynicism with advertising, their frustration with their careers and the industry and (dare I say it?!) their jealousy of w+k.

now, you can argue that the purpose of these stories is to get these dialogues going and I wouldn’t disagree. news and advertising are both forms of communication and communication really shouldn’t be a one way street. and that's why comments sections are the bombdotcom.com. comments sections make the dialogue we’ve come to love possible.

The Other Side of the Room

Elvis

elvis has such a ubiquitous presence that i think most of our generation fails to realize he at one point rocked. when i think of elvis the first think i think of are the flying elvises. second, i think of crappy, fat elvis. and third, i think of blelvis, who is a crazy homeless guy (pictured) in DC but knows every elvis song by heart.

simply put, this is wrong. elvis rocked and there's a reason why a google search of his name returns more than twice as many results as a search of "the beatles." his face may be on countless plates and he may have died on a toilet, but we can't discount his contributions to music. he did after all bring blues to the mainstream... or was that clapton? i can't remember, but that's not important.

yesterday was elvis' birthday (i think) so let's celebrate graceland with a jam in his honor.

Daft Punk

occasionally in our daily life we have the opportunity to witness something amazing. we usually have an idea going in that what we're about to experience will be incredible, but sometimes what we see is so spectacular that just knowing we were lucky enough to be there at that moment in time seems miraculous.

on august 9, 2007, just such a moment occurred.

We Are Human

Where is everyone?