Music for Perfect People

Ok this list is pretty fantastic .. the concerts are broken down by Borough ..

Someone try and argue that it is not so so dope that Man Man, Raekwon, and the Sugar Hill Gang are all on this list of FREE shows this summer. If you can’t find anything to do in the heat wave that will eventually hit us, you are doing something very wrong my friend …

P.S. .. who has the balls to head to Shaolin a.k.a Staten Island to see Raekwon? Come on.

FREE 2009 Shows in NYC Parks listed by Borough

The Bronx

St. Mary’s Park
146 St. & St. Ann’s Ave.
Tuesday, July 7th: Hector Tricoche y Su Orquesta
Tuesday, July 14th: Paquito Guzman y Su Orquestra
Tuesday, July 21st: N’Klabe

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Crotona Park
173 St. & Crotona Park East
Wednesday, July 8th: Soulsonic Force
Wednesday, July 15th: George Lamond / Judy Torres
Wednesday, July 22nd: KRS-One

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Brooklyn

Red Hook
Bay St. btwn. Henry St. & Clinton St.
Tuesday, August 4th: Frankie Negron
Tuesday, August 11th: Lisa Lisa
Tuesday, August 18th: DJ Premier vs. Pete Rock hosted by Danny Castro of Lyricist Lounge

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Von King Park
Tompkins Ave. btwn. Lafayette Ave. & Greene Ave.
Thursday, July 2nd: Kiki Sheard / Keith Wonderboy Johnson
Thursday, July 9th: MC Lyte
Thursday, July 16th: Chico DeBarge

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Brower Park
Brooklyn Ave. & Park Pl.
Wednesday, July 29th: Wayne Wonder
Wednesday, August 5th: CaRiMi
Wednesday, August 12th: Tribute to the Classics: Black Moon and Smif n Wessun w/ Live Band

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Manhattan

East River Park
At the Band Shell along the East River
Between Grand & Jackson Sts.
Thursday, July 16th: Man Man
Thursday, July 23rd: Slick Rick
Thursday, July 30th: Ismael Miranda

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Highbridge Park
174 St. & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday, August 11th: Andy Andy
Tuesday, August 18th: Xtreme
Tuesday, August 25th: Bachata Heightz / Watata

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Marcus Garvey Park
124 St. & Mt. Morris Park
Thursday, August 6th: Jon B
Thursday, August 13th: Joe
Thursday, August 20th: Hezekiah Walker

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Queens

Queensbridge Park
41 Ave., Bridge Plaza, Vernon Blvd. & East River
Tuesday, July 14th: Sugar Hill Gang
July 21st: Lovebug Starski & Friends
Tuesday, July 28th: Rhythm Review with Felix Hernandez

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Springfield Park
184 St. & 147 Ave.
Thursday, July 30th: Chrisette Michele
Thursday, August 6th: Heather Headley
Thursday, August 13th: James Fortune & Trin-i-tree 57 hosted by Hezekiah Walker

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Rochdale Park
Guy R. Brewer Blvd. at 134th Ave.
Thursday, August 20th: The Persuasions

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Staten Island

Mahoney Playground
Beechwood Ave., Crescent Ave., Cleveland St. & Jersey St.
Wednesday, August 12th: Raekwon
Wednesday, August 19th: Naughty by Nature

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Tappen Park
106 Water St. between Bay St. and Wright St.
Wednesday, August 26th: Rhythm Review with Felix Hernandez

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Here is a sweet video of Matt Embree’s trip to Caracas, Venezuela .. it sounds like he covers Manu Chao in the beginning of the jam ..

The crowd sounds so into this. Its awesome.

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THE 5th ANNUAL BROOKLYN HIP-HOP FESTIVAL TAKES PLACE JUNE 20TH 2009

12-8 PM
EMPIRE FULTON FERRY STATE PARK
DUMBO, BROOKLYN

Artists

Full lineup
Pharoahe Monch
DJ Premier
Styles P
dead prez
Smif N Wessun
Grand Puba
J Period
Torae and Marco Polo
Tiye Phoenix
Keys N Krates
DJ Misbehaviour
Metermaids
hosted by Ralph McDaniels

Second Stage
Donny Goines
Nyle
Eagle Nebula
Brown Bag All Stars
Children Of The Night

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Watch the two duel it out in the video below. Thanks to Pigeons and Planes for the reminder of this video .. I had seen this a while back but forgot to post about it.

Personally, I think Travis Barker’s style of playing is so jerky and somewhat annoying to watch but he sure can move around that drum set.

?uestlove is just an amazing musician … hands down. (eventhough his twittering is by far the most annoying thing ever)

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Cheers to the 16th installment of this mess of information I throw in to an “article” each Wednesday .. The summer is quickly approaching and egads! I am going to a see a lot of music over the next couple of months. There are tons of releases (namely RX Bandits, Portugal. The Man, The Mars Volta, The Builders & The Butchers, etc ..) and some huge tours/festivals/random free shows. Get pumped! I am.

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Check out The Rub for some sweet hip hop mixes. There is a mix for each year from 1979 – 1999 and features an hour of tracks that were hot that year. Pretty cool idea .. now I have 20 solid hours of hip hop to listen to.

(thanks to @saschamaj on twitter for the heads up on this website ..)

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The RX Bandits have announced the first half of their tour and I am excited to say that they will be playing NYC on July 30th and 31st with co-headliners Dredg and opening acts Zechs Marquise (July 31) and As Tall As Lions (July 30).

I am thoroughly looking forward to checking out Zechs Marquise since two of the bands members are the brothers of Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. This should prove to be a most excellente set of shows filled with mulitiple band jams and crazy solo battles, etc .. awesome. Check out the band’s live videos .. they certainly have a “Volta” sound but that means nothing .. these fellas can jam.

(P.S. I already took off work on July 31 so I can fully enjoy my two day RXB run .. you should follow suit and lets have a good time!)

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Speaking of the RXB tour .. Good Old War, the band I praised in last week’s column, will also be opening up on the first leg of the tour. Those lucky bastards that get to see them should be looking forward to their performance. I got the chance to check them out this past Sunday in Amityville, NY and they put on a hell of a show. It was nice to go to local venue, see people’s faces I havent seen in quite some time, AND rock out to G.O.W. … I enjoyed the performance so much that I am going to check ‘em out again this Saturday at the Knitting Factory in NYC for an early 5:30 show.

Anyone interested in going, leave a comment or shoot me a line.

P.S. Good Old War was in a Trojan’s condom commercial not too long ago. It’s pretty hilarious .. there are beards.

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Enjoy the week and check back for some updates.

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Check out the video for Raekwon’s “New Wu” featuring the Method Man and the Ghostface Killa ..

leave some comments ..

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Now I know Ive been posting up White Rabbits a bunch but if you are anything like me and go to bed hours before midnight, you may have missed their performance last night on Letterman … I cannot wait to hear those drums slamming away on the HUGE Bonnaroo speakers .. !!

Don’ forget to go pick up It’s Frightening TODAY suckers!

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Alright so I am posting this late in the day cause if y’all woke up to go to work and this jam came on, youd prob wanna get back to the party .. funky.

Joe Murphy sent this video to me last night .. waking up for work and feelin that funky felt kinda weird in a good way

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On Saturday, I went up to Fordham University, the alma mater of at least a few of the contributors to this site, to see some folks graduate. It was as boring as always, but the most uncomfortably boring and shitty part of it was the speech by the university’s president, the Reverend Joseph McShane, who in his spare time enjoys diving into and swimming around in a pool of gold coins hidden below his office. What does this have to do with Pop Shit?

Well, as you may have heard, a certain Irish rock band played at Fordham earlier this year and, as a result, McShane devoted a (conservatively estimated) two thirds of his speech to talking about U2. That’s right kids, that’s what your college experience can be summed up by: an old dude in sunglasses yelling nonsense. McShane’s speech also seemed to reveal that he took Bono to mean that U2 literally wrote the song “I’ll Go Crazy if I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight” about Fordham. It was painful. Sooooooo here’s a list of pop things that I would rather my college career be summed up by than U2:

AC/DC – “Thunderstruck”: A simple rock anthem to some, a game that results in chugging beer for a minute and change straight to us. It may not have been played on Good Morning America, but Good Morning America kinda sucks.

Ghostface Killah: Because his awesome performance when I was a senior may have not had Mario Batalli serving up Carbonara between songs, but it did inspire an example of one of the things that make Fordham great: stupid white kids complaining about art they don’t even remotely understand.

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five – “White Lines”: I bet all those kids that stayed up all night in order to get to the front of the crowd for U2 had no chemical help at all (alternately, any song by the band Sparks).

Vitamin C – “Graduation”: Daddy Mac actually used the phrase “heady stuff” to describe U2 lyrics. The Vitamin C song is corny, obviously, but it’s no less profound than U2 and the Prez quoting this would have been LOL weird and not “you’re making me uncomfortable” weird. Forreal tho, if you haven’t seen this video in a while, click on the link, shit’s hilarious.

Apparently Bloomberg was there too and made a “Beautiful Day” joke. Goooo Rams!

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Well I don’t know about all of you but its Friday .. lets make it funky.

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In honor of the bike trip through “Coolhattan”..

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Due to a leak last night, the band Wilco has decided to stream  their latest album Wilco: The Album for free at the band’s website.

TRACKLIST:

Wilco (the song)
Deeper Down
One Wing
Bull Black Nova
You And I
You Never Know
Country Disappeared
Solitaire
I’ll Fight
Sonny Feeling
Everlasting Everything

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The RX Bandits have graciously shared the new album artwork with their fans and also given us more album details … on July 14th, the band will release its latest album entitled Mandala. The artwork, shown below, was done by Sonny Kay and it looks oh so delicious ..

Also, check out the new promo .. so dope.

In case you were wondering,

mandala has become a generic term for any plan, chart or geometric pattern that represents the cosmos metaphysically or symbolically, a microcosm  of the Universe from the human perspective.

I’m pretty cool with that.

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Wednesday … hello my friend. I am quite excited to pull some sweet bands out ye olde bag of tricks .. enjoy and continue on to the tunage ..

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The first of the three new bands i would suggest you check out is Good Old War … because we all know “it’s not a fight .. its a good old war.” These fellas hailing from PA have done a beautiful job on their album Only Way to Be Alone. I had given these guys a listen a couple months ago and at the time I liked them but didn’t fully get into them .. as times a change, so do our musical tastes . Good Old War’s resemblance to Simon & Garfunkel and other folk artists eventually grabbed my attention back and I am very glad for it. The beautiful guitar work, soothing drums, and full-band and vocal harmonies are certainly something to make note of ..

“Weak Man” is the song the pulled me in to this band .. i am a big fan of the lyrics throughout the piece and the appearance of Anthony Green (solo artist, The Sound of Animals Fighting, Circa Survive) really made me excited. The video just reminds me of a bunch of fellas making great music and enjoying themselves to the max.

GOOD OLD WAR will be playing on Long Island this upcoming Sunday, May 17th .. if anyone is interested in going, leave a comment! I will be there supporting these guys!

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The second band would be the White Rabbits. The first song I heard was, of course, “Percussion Drum” off their upcoming release It’s Frightening, which is due out later this month. Now bands that use pianos can sometimes have a tendency for cheesiness (in my opinion, look at Coldplay, etc ..) but White Rabbits are a band that uses two drummers, guitar, bass, and pianos .. now that’s just cool. The range of instruments really adds to both their albums, Fort Nightly and It’s Frightening. They have a resemblance to Spoon and their rhythm section is so on point. I really enjoy the deep bass lines that run throughout both albums and the calypso/punk/ska/rock drums and guitar that accompany it. Below are a couple of videos of the band’s music and also a behind the scenes look at the their Buschwick, Brooklyn loft where the Missouri-based band now resides.

“Percussion Gun” is from It’s Frightening.

“The Plot” is from Fort Nightly.

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The third band, Hello Electric, is the one that I have not been able to find alot of information about .. truthfully, I heard about the band through a twitter message from Portugal. The Man that the two bands were playing basketball together and that P.TM wanted to take these fellas out on tour with them .. of course I was intrigued. On the bands website, you can listen to both the band’s releases. Soundwaves is a 19 song gathering of tunes that the band first put out .. I have yet to listen to the album since I purchased it the other day as a “digital download” but have not received the “digital download” link .. I wont pass judgment on the band .. they are streaming the album anyways. Their latest release, E.P. Pilot, I have listened to and enjoyed very much .. I am not really sure how to describe these guys .. they have simple guitar and bass lines that sync up with their drum machined beats and the end product is quite tasty .. I would suggest checking out “The Bear King” and “Pilot” from their E.P. Pilot ..

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That’s all I have for this week but it sure does feel good to show off these three bands .. they have been rolling through my iphone/ipod/computer/speakers/etc  all week and will continue to do so.

Leave some comments below if you like ‘em, hate ‘em, or if you have any suggestions for me to listen to! Hoozah!

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