Music

I am by no means calling myself a Macklemore & Ryan Lewis apologist. Or am I saying the Seattle rapper and his producer who have sold over 1 million copies of their latest album “The Heist” really need an advocate. But, I did spend the bulk of Wednesday going to their show at the Value Center Arena half-heartedly justifying my attendance at the concert. My Macklemore & Ryan Lewis defense centers around 2 things: Their championing of gay rights on the song “Same Love,” and also them being ambassadors of Hip Hop culture in the mainstream. For “The Heist” Tour, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis brought Big K.R.I.T. and Talib Kweli as their opening support which is pretty Hip Hop. Granted I am the same guy who said “Hip Hop Hooray” when Miley Cyrus claimed to be having Juicy “Slob on My Knob” J’s lovechild on twitter. Def Jam Recording Artist Big K.R.I.T. performed first, backed by a deejay. After couple of songs, the humble but charismatic Mississippi rapper had the Value City Arena making driving motions with their hands to his song “Rotation.” I thought this was pretty impressive seeing that K.R.I.T.

Breaking my nightly Downton Abbey couch-potato addiction, I spent four evenings grooving at the Newport last week. I could've been immersed in a world of post-Victorian 1 percenters upstairs and their devoted and un-embittered inferiors downstairs. But no, you all needed to know what goes on behind those black Newport doors and I am just the musically ravenous young man to put his delicate sensibilities to the not-so-tender mercies of our murderous pop culture. I did not go through the Downton cold turkey shakes. I did not emerge unscathed either. One of the lineups qualified for Worst Ever Heap O' Stink and I've been reviewing shows since Moses wore short pants. Read on, lazy bones. Steve Vai is a guitar god, no getting around it. Tuesday night he was so hot, I kept thinking, that's right Eric Clapton, stay home hiding under your bed, Vai's in town and he's SMOKIN'. Hey, Joe Boner-Master, you're a Vegas-wannabe, go blow Wayne Newton. Eddie Van Halen, please take a number and wait your turn for a lesson in the art of the six-string symphonic solo. Satriani, you are fit only to roadie. Get a life. Vai's da man, yo. He's different. He's sort of weird but positive.

Didn't the Halloween season seem to last forever this year? How do people come up with so many costumes ideas for all the different events? I can never think of anything to wear so I went out as grown and sexy per usual. On Thursday, I went to the Atrocity Party at Sugar Bar 2, which is in a location that’s part of one of my fondest memories, centered around Dipset’s residency when Chubbie Baby owned it. Then it was called the Red Zone. When I arrived at the downtown nightclub, former Roc-a-Fella Producer Just Blaze was playing a block of Dipset songs. It felt like the good old days of the Red Zone. Just Blaze ended his Dipset segment with Cam’ron’s mention of him “I’ll take a couple bars off/ and let Just live” from the Blaze produced “I Really Mean It.” Before I could say “you crazy for that Just,” the New Jerusalem producer switched up and played a Jay Z song. After a few more Hov and Ye songs the evening became awful. Blaze looped up Biggie’s self-loathing “When I die/I want to Go to Hell/ I’m a piece of shit/It ain’t hard to tell” from “Suicidal Thoughts” over some sort of electronic dance music.

Sue Harshe is a founding member of the post-punk band Scrawl, who released seven albums between 1986 and 1998 on such labels as Rough Trade, Simple Machines, and Elektra. Last year they were invited to perform at the All Tomorrow’s Parties festivals held in New York City and Camber Sands, England. She also performs in the rock band Fort Shame, who released a full-length CD in the fall of 2012. Since 2003 she has composed music for nine films in the Wexner Center’s silent film series, the latest installments being The Farmer’s Wife and Champagne, part of the Hitchcock 9 series shown this fall. Last year she scored and performed music for the 1920 movie The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which was commissioned by Shock Around the Clock, Columbus’ annual 24-hour horror-film marathon.

Thanks to a southern mother and time spent as a boy growing up in the heart of Dixie, I have a devotion to the region. This, I think, helped me understand the fertile cultural and emotional soil from which the rock 'n' roll and soul music revolutions sprang. Maybe, maybe not. But I like to think so. Southerners are not like Northerners. Margaret Yates was born beautiful, stayed that way her whole life and had a whole lotta soul if not a whole lotta education. Second eldest of 11 kids, she grew up in Richmond, Virginia, during the Great Depression, dirt-poor and left-handed, two things the tender mercies shown by the Catholic nuns never changed though they left painful memories from the trying. But that part, as they say, is another story. I was my mother's son. We moved around the country a few times. Dad was an up-and-coming steel company manager frequently promoted and transferred. Which is how I came to live in northern Alabama for a few precious boyhood years, Gadsden, to be exact. We were pegged for civil rights workers at first, it being the early '60s and with Ohio license plates on our '63 blue Mercury.

DJ Pos 2 and I sat down to talk about his monthly gig at the Rehab Tavern Vibes N Stuff which has its 4 installment Friday. “We wanted to do something different than Buggin' Out.” said the Hip Hop veteran comparing it to the successful bi-monthly Hip Hop showcase at Carabar that Pos and Zerostar have been promoting for two and a half years. “We just want to do something for the older crowd. It was just, 'let's do jazz fusion. Ohio funk.’ Just something different from Hip Hop.” In addition to Pos spinning jazz fusion staples such as Miles Davis and Donald Byrd, Vibes N Stuff also incorporates down-tempo music such as Flying Lotus and Diabese, which Columbus instrumental Hip Hop producer Maggz will be playing. Envelope will also be doing a guest deejay set of rock and soul classics. If Vibez N Stuff is different than Buggin’ Out, a beloved Hip Hop showcase that has had performances by some of Columbus’s finest such as Illogic, P.Black, Path, J.

Last Wednesday I visited the Basement to watch Los Angeles Hip Hop producer/rapper Jonwayne and British electronic critical darlings Mount Kimbie. Jonwayne came to Columbus just as his album “Rap Album One” is being released on Stones Throw Records. Things I knew about Jonwayne: He came up in the L.A.

I was born in Camden, Alabama, raised in Marion, Ohio where I attended school. Ran away from home with a friend to New York City at age 16 because the Beatles Let It Be was opening at a movie house on Broadway...we went to see it. Dropped out of school to go on the road with Ted Nugent as an opening act in Canada, moved there for about 3 years. Came back to the states to take my physical for the draft to see if I qualified for ‘nam. Failed…only weighed 97 lbs. I played in a bunch of bands, put out a truck load of records. Got signed to a major label, made no money, got happy, started more bands, made more records. My current band is Blues Hippy and the Soul Underground with Myke Rock on bass, Jimmy Johnson on drums and Dan Ro James on rhythm guitar. And rock ‘n' roll, along with love, still pumps oxygen in to everything that I do. #1 Put together your fantasy band - it can contain any musicians dead or alive: My fantasy band would run a line up something like this…Jim Morrison on lead vocals and slam wordist. John Coltrane shootin' up some space saxophone in to the arm of the studios' vein.

What’s in a name? I decided to ask 22-Year-Old Columbus Hip Hop artist P. Blackk aka Pro Blackk what it means to be Pro Black in 2013. His response? “The actual definition of being Pro-Blackk in 2013 or 2014 is being for your people. Having knowledge of your past. Being aware of who your oppressor or oppressors are. Honestly, my definition of being Pro-Blackk has always been me. I’m P. Blackk. Striving to get my ideas out there without being too influenced by the world around me.” P.Blackk’s aka Pro Blackk’s October 2013 has been pretty productive in terms of getting his ideas out there. Blackk released a self-produced EP “Two” on Sunday via http://pblackk.bandcamp.com.

Monday found me floundering musically to fit the mood--and what was that mood? Normally, I'll wake up, trundle downstairs, start my coffee, open my patio door to sniff the air and the temperature, turn on NPR, then go down to the basement and fire up some vinyl on ye olde turntable. Yes, I let the morning news team compete with my records, so what? I began with an old Atlantic Records sampler that had Sergio Mendes and Brazil 66 doing a samba-esque medley from the play, Black Orpheus. As light as he can be, Mendes does some heavy arranging on the three-part mini-suite, wordless vocals by his smoothly sensual backing singers floating over lightly percolating rhythms just right for a grump with creaky knees. Outside, the bushy-tailed neighborhood groundskeepers bounced from acorn to acorn, hoarding for the winter. What would I be reincarnated as next lifetime? Memo to me: improve karma, do it today. As NPR's Morning Edition with Renee Montagne and David Greene roll along, I am plagued by a returning uneasiness, particularly with Steve Inskeep the Washington NPR correspondent (he and Greene are the weasels to Montagne's more credible badger).