Going to 'Nother Territory

One of the things that our role models have in common is that they all know it's so high you can't get over it, and so low you can't get under it. They are the proof that it goes on and on and on and on... So we are big fans of Noz and the whole movement @ T.R.O.Y. Since they are always on the lookout for that 'nothering place, we will always rep their threads.

We thought we would take the luxury of a free Thursday and a slow Friday to follow in their direction. We gathered up all of the tracks in Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune* and spilled 'em out in alpha order by artist using the magic of music management software. All we wanted was out of the ties that bind when you dig through the crates in chronological order.

We weren't through w/ the letter a when we found that source of inspiration we were looking for: some gangsta sh*t straight outta the dirty south by Alphonso Trent. I put a few bullets in the clip for your edification, and then loaded some Li'l Jon up next to 'em just to put the obvious in front of you more plainly. This is club music @ its best. It is as distinctive as bounce,† or gogo, or music from the yay, or any of those territories we go to when we look for the unnaground.

Here's the all about it, 80 years apart: big crews taking up space and getting loud, call and response, get your stuff off the wall and an excess of move in the groove. And when you get up, you've found your fresh again.

• Alphonso Trent & His Orchestra, "St. James Infirmary."‡ Straight up gangsta. She's dead. He wants to look good when he's in a coffin.
  
• Alphonso Trent & His Orchestra, "I Found A Brand New Baby." You gots to be heartless to lay her out on a cold white table and then follow up w/ this. As outrageous as anything coming from the club floor these days.
  
• Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz, "Throw It Up."
• Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz, "Get Low."

We'll let the scholar's sort out the difference between Alphonso Trent, Walter Page and Bennie Moten. They'll wake up 80 years later and get the book on the differnece between Lil Jon, E40 and Project Pat. You got the point: it's regional music on the move, mang.

And as for that alpha list, we'll keep you posted. Two days in, we're to the letter d.Throughout the procedure, we will rise again and and again w/ new fresh.

P E A C E

* Rumor has it that Allen Lowe is gonna do his thing w/ a 36 disc blues set. Long overdue. Someone has to school our ears on that sh*t. We'll keep you posted on those devils.
† And where is that 10th Ward Buck book, anyway?
‡ There is a long post on this song coming from somewhere. If you make a list of the great songs of the 20th century and this one's not on it, the problem is with the list.

Do You Know the Meaning of Being Sanctified?

Almost as an afterthought, Marvin throws down the pop quiz @ the end of "Let's Get It On." We find that quiz @ the end of the first track on a slab that veers off into the deep blue every track. Since the question comes at the beginning, we think all of those blue tracks that follow are the answer, and that Marvin's not kidding us.

Marvin's got four albums too big to contain themselves: What's Going On, Let's Get It On, I Want You, and Here, My Dear. There are days when we find In Our Lifetime and Midnight Love in that crate, too. Each one of them is so high you can't get over it & so low you can't get under it. In pieces and in their total, they are each their own hunk of the tower of babel.

And all of 'em answer after answer to the quiz that's the all about of Marvin: "Do you know the meaning of being sanctified?"

Carpetbagging biographers leap out of the cut to take advantage of the facts of his tawdry life, punishing him for not living like a saint, and then sanctify him as a martyr to this or that. It's like that pitcher of him as a ghost we throw up on the head of this post. He's like brovah Nas dead hip hop in that one. It's the wrong way, the wrong way. When stare at him in this fallen condition, it just lives up to the masochism Marvin lived for in the first place.

The first thing to do when trying to come up w/ the answer to Marvin's quiz is undo yourself from the life, undo yourself from the street, undo yourself from the club, even undo ourself from the game. There's too much of that in every other place you look. Marvin's work makes better sense when you go there.

Then you gotta put on the headset. You'll hear the answer Marvin's got to offer, 'cause he offers it again and again. Like when he says "My body wants it," and says "Help me," in the same overdubbed breath.

Or this one, where he's trying to make math in "Just to Keep You Satisfied,"

Though the many happy times we had
Can never really outweigh the bad
Oh I'll never love nobody like I loved you baby

He keeps it up w/ the scales 'til he gets to this question, which is just another version of the quiz we been riffing on here:

How many hearts, baby...
Have felt their world stand still

Millions never, they never never
And millions never will baby
They never will.

And after he counts up to the millions who will never see what he knows to be salvation, he finally tells us the formula.

Oh, If I should die tonight
Oh baby, though it be far before my time
I won't die blue, sugar yeah
'Cause I've known you.

The all about it. The what we've been looking for. "I won't die blue." The what it means to be sanctified. Jyeah.

In light of that clear unnastanding, here's a clip of sanctified bullets:

• Marvin Gaye, "Let's Get It On"
• Marvin Gaye, "Please Stay"
  
• Marvin Gaye, "If I Should Die Tonight"
• Marvin Gaye, "You Sure Love to Ball"
• Marvin Gaye, "Just to Keep You Satisfied"

P E A C E

Destination: OUT

They been running the age old prove-it-jazz-isn't-dead thread over @ Destination: OUT. We left a couple of pennies over there.

Those pennies speak for themselves, and we got nothing more to say about all of this Lazarus stuff. But two things are in order.

First we got nothing but respect for everything happening at the d to the O. We go there for some of our fresh, and we commend the site to you.

Second we wanna load up a short clip to footnote the post.

• Nas, "Money Over Bullshit"
• Z-Ro, "Life is a Struggle and Pain"
• Charlie Haden & Hank Jones, "Go Down Moses"
• R Kelly, "Trapped in a Closet, Pt. 1"
• Pyeng Threadgill, "Come On In My Kitchen"

It goes on and on and on and on.

P E A C E

Found Object

Evening Rendevouz, Norman Lewis (1962).

Found Object

Swing, Sam Williams (1969). He means that kind of swing.

Found Object

Death of Cleopatra, Edmonia Lewis. This is the mothership connection.

Found Object

Just rolled out underneath the skyway in Desert Palms. Was that a smoothjazz cover of "Natural High" I heard as I made my exit? Soul poetry is errywhere.

• "Natural High," Al Campbell.

P E A C E

Found Object

Kerry James Marshall, Untitled (2008). He's perpetrating deep. Dig?

Found Object

Unidentified Artist, Head of a King, (1525-1575).

Found Object

Edmonia Lewis, Bust of Longfellow (1871).