Larrabee Harrington Cristando Bil Policastro Luse Pickett Russin Rifkin Grillo CC Cooch
Thursday, December 31, 2009
These appear to be the final year-end lists, but for some stragglers. I’d like to give a gracious thank you to the writers here who submitted their lists early or on time. We didn’t forget about you, you’re just anchoring the joint. I hope everyone enjoyed reading and got turned on to new (old) bands, records, sporting events, snacks, what have you. Of course, if something on these lists does not come with a hyperlink, google the boy. It can’t hurt. Thanks again, everyone. Happy new year!
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Schroeder Esoteric Watson Lynch Racicot Casali Arms Buckley
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Yet more lists. Deep thanks to everyone who contributed. Hope everyone has been into them so far! They are winding down.
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Feola Murphy Morgado Ritter Sayfan, Daniels Berchmans
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Here are more lists. And more are on the way! I just saw the Cro-Mags and they were great. Happy New Year!
Buschgans Falco Trepanier Foster Warwick Chalos Wiltse Van Hest King Gezari
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
And we are back with more best of the year whatsis. The below lists are submitted by people we are proud to call our friends. It is them we call crew. Enjoy!
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Jodoin White Shanahan LaForge Spoiler Sieradzki Baumer Butterfield TOY Perusi Turbow
Monday, December 28, 2009
Below are the first of many lists breaking down the best stuff from this year and the decade. Ten years, during which we were blessed with an Uppercut reunion, the demystification of skinheads, the growth and shucking of ponytails, hamburgers with five burgers on them, and a couple of Gauze LPs. The below lists are from our friends who have written for the site this year. If we didn’t already thank them privately, or with taco-grams, we’d like to, here, profusely. Thanks for writing, and thanks for writing these lists. If it wasn’t for you all, our readers/reprobates would probably be reading something about baseball right now. Or the Clippers. Or Uppercut. Anyways, hope you (readers) like the lists! Stay tuned this week for many more, including one from Ian Larrabee. Thanks for reading! And Happy New Year!
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By Henry Livingston Jr. and Roy Ziegler
Friday, December 25, 2009
This season means different things to different people. For me, a Canadian transplant living in New York, I mostly just miss Boxing Day. Today is Christmas, which I don’t celebrate, though I do celebrate its arrival and the opportunity to listen to my favorite holiday poem, “Twas the Night Before Christmas, Philly Style,” by Henry Livingston Jr. and Roy Ziegler.
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Volume One, Episode One: Google Phone ain't nothing to $&%# with
By Jay Schroeder
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
You are not a game changer. I can say that without knowing anything about you, and I will be right billions of times, and wrong only a handful. When I think of game changers, I think of Michael Jordan. Basketball and the NBA are completely different now than they were before he arrived. That said, when Jordan tried his hands at baseball, things changed not so much.1 So when the Internet collectively shit their pants a bit over a week ago over this supposed “game changing” phone, I responded with a *snort*.
Has Google changed the game of the Internet, or the Internet search, or anything? You could argue both sides. People were searching ably before, and of course, they still search now. Current search are a whole lot better and more accurate than they were before Google’s arrival. One can argue that they’ve created an ecosystem in which all are welcome to participate, what with gmail, Google Docs, and a list that goes on. So if you want to call Google a game changer with respect to the Internet, I can spot you that one.
But that’s where it ends.
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Monday, December 21, 2009
I apologize for only getting to this now, but the pile of mail on my drafting desk is both impressive and beckoning. Well, mostly beckoning. It might be impressive to you, though. Anyways, I was going through my personal video recorder (as in, we were playing tackle football, and I lined up in the slot, took the pass and barreled through the young fellow who personally records my videos), and he (Phil) mentioned a going-on in the Association he thought I might be interested in. To be sure, I haven’t watched much basketball since Penny Hardaway’s second retirement, but Phil was bleeding, so I humored him.
After some hot toddys and an organic chicken burrito, I rolled Phil into the chamber and let him set up the video. Here it is. Jarrett Jack, who I went to boarding school with (though I didn’t know him personally), was playing point for the mighty Toronto Raptors, in relief of the efficient Jose Calderon. Facing the Bulls on Dec. 5, Jack moves the ball upcourt, and as the offense sets, he bends down and ties his shoelaces. Not sure why he did this. The other four move around but nothing happens. The play then stops. Jack had nine assists and a +/- of +13, but this play was confusing.
But then, we know the rumors that allege that Jack came to Toronto to keep his best friend Chris Bosh happy and keep him from leaving the Raptors, like so many have in the past. Maybe he can do whatever he wants?
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So Icey/Asylum/Warner Bros., December 8, 2009
Friday, December 18, 2009
Gucci Mane, now behind bars, is no longer coasting on reputation garnered from “So Icey.” Still, the heir apparent to Juvenile has put out a good record — albeit less a 400 Degreez than a G-Code. The albums’ respective production both share an in-house feel. Juvenile, and I have no way of confirming this, received the best of Mannie Fresh’s beats during his Cash Money tenure. (400 Degreez was as much a debut record for the label’s in-house producer as it was for the rapper, or even the label.1) I feel like the same goes for Gucci and Zaytoven. Our esteemed contributor AJ calls attention the signature producer’s subdued presence on the record, and while I can’t argue with facts, I don’t think it makes for an unrepresentative listening experience. This sounds like a Gucci record — or, more specifically, it sounds like a an album version of a Gucci mixtape.2
For all the money behind the album — Scott Storch, and yes, Mannie Fresh, chip in on some of the 19 other, non-Zaytoven tracks on TSvRD — Gucci’s bubbly and effortless rhymes flourish unrestrained and quite close in subject matter and style to the stuff on the mixtapes. Gucci’s free and easy routines are represented as well here as anywhere, better than could have been expected. Indeed, this is no average rapper. The lights are shining bright, and there are more distractions when making a proper record for a proper label, but you couldn’t guess it from listening.
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So Icey/Asylum/Warner Bros., December 8, 2009
By Matt LaForge
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
I confess that I didn’t become properly acquainted with Gucci Mane until early 2006. I was at the mall, buying work clothes, and during a quick detour to HMV I happened upon the Trap House CD. I further confess that at the time I took little more than momentary interest in what I saw. I did recognize Mane’s gold frames and Andruw Jones jersey from the previous year’s “Icey” video — which I had only half seen only one time, at a friend’s house in Massachusetts (he had MTV Jams; Canada, you understand, has former-East-Bloc-grade rap radio and music-video stations), and which I, along with many others, had blithely assumed was a Jeezy track — and I do remember thinking to myself that Gucci Mane was the best of all possible names for a Southern rapper (probably for any rapper, period). But as for the CD itself, well, the iconography, the song titles, the vibe of the thing seemed to be of a moment that was either passing or already in the past. I remember feeling a vague and fleeting pang of pity for him: “His name is pitch-perfect and he looks totally cool on the cover of his album, but by next year he’ll be as well-remembered as Mystikal.” People remember Mystikal, of course, but mainly in terms of squandered momentum and unrealized potential.
It bears pointing out that I was thinking these thoughts in the immediate aftermath of 2005 – the year of “Mic Check,” of “Draped Up,” of “And Then What“; the year of “Fireman” and Wayne’s verse in Paul Wall’s “March & Step,” of We Got it For Cheap Vol. 2, and of, it has to be said, Late Registration; the year of “Stay Fly” and of good old Pitchfork bending the rules such that December 2004’s Purple Haze could occupy #9 on their year-end top 50. My personal 2005 ended at a New Year’s Eve house party in Toronto at which not one but two of the male guests were clad in Juicy J’s green-ghoul all-over-print T-shirt. It had been a monumental year for a type of rap that hadn’t yet been condescendingly saddled with the putatively affectionate but actually dismissive label of “ignorant.” But from where I stood, on that February morning in that record store, mere weeks before Three 6’s spot-blowing, era-ending Oscar win, I believed, in the sweeping, self-satisfied manner of a dilettante attempting to stake an intellectual claim on something he’s only recently discovered and thus doesn’t understand,1 that a critical backlash against materialistic bounce music was imminent (it was) and that, ipso facto, I was taking my first and last look at an also-ran, a bit player, a never-was (I was not).
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