Four Things #4
Four things #4..
Welcome to all my new subscribers, thank you for signing up and hope you find something useful in here! I've been playing around with the formatting a bit but I think I like it now.. After a couple of weeks in the studio zone here in DC I'm off to Australia/New Zealand for 5 gigs including Boiler Room at Sugar Mountain in Melbourne and my first gig in Auckland which I'm very much looking forward to. I will take laptop and extra keyboard so perhaps I can do another Four Things from Down Under. Also I pre-recorded a new Darkest Light show for NTS, which should air later this week, and finished a track with Maxmillion Dunbar aka Dolo Percussion, for the Future Times FIGS Compilation. The DC label releases one track every day, so make sure you check back regularly on their Bandcamp. If you like to amplify Four Things, tell your friends to subscribe and check out the archive https://tinyletter.com/Martyn-Deykers.
Martyn,
Oct 9, 2019
FIRST THING: NORMAN JAY IN GQ
Norman Jay MBE has an autobiography coming out, "Mister Good Times" (via the excellent Dialogue Books), a.k.a. a history of black music culture in the United Kingdom. In this GQ interview with the 61 year old, Jay talks about the intersection of music and politics, definitely not taking any prisoners and calling out the forces that tried to keep him down throughout his career. But he is also hopeful about the current generation of musicians: "We were the first generation [of black people] that became visible. Before that, we didn’t exist. We were always there, but we’ve been airbrushed out. I love it now, this generation refuses to be airbrushed out." https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/norman-jay-mbe-interview
SECOND THING: COMEDY WORMHOLE
A lot of discussion lately around the state of comedy, spurred on by the return of Dave Chappelle on Netflix, cancel culture on Twitter, today's political discourse and #metoo. Turns out a lot of (white/40+) comedians that used to be "edgy" have now become self-victimizing whiners ("you can't say anything anymore"), and few have found ways to tread the delicate path of finding humor in delicate subject matter. Todd Phillips (The Hangover) left comedy behind altogether to make The Joker, while Marc Maron says you just have to be a better comedian nowadays to stay on top, The always excellent New York Times' Still Processing pod does a good analysis of Chappelle's latest show as well as discussing a new wave of minority comedians who are worth checking out. Alison Herman at The Ringer reviews the show less favorably. For the Dutch (or Google Translate) readers there's this classic interview between comedian Theo Maassen and Black Pete activist and filmmaker Sunny Bergman, laying bare how Theo missed the memo; being white and making fun of the disenfranchised in front of your white audience just does not work anymore. This is what Chris Morris (Day Today, Nathan Barley, IT Crowd) also points out most brilliantly in this Channel 4 interview: Comedy is not about picking the low hanging fruits, the easy (minority) targets to comfort middle class hipsters with so-called edginess, it's about analyzing and ridiculing the situation we are in, and "whether the people you're lancing can get off your spike". (cheers Musa and Job for digging up some of these links, pic is Chris Morris in the fake news show The Day Today)
THIRD THING: GOLDIE ON PASSENGERS
The other day I had a conversation with the drum'n bass producer Zero T about the book I'm working on (about Goldie's Timeless - don't worry I won't mention it EVERY single news letter!), and he reminded me of this brilliant nugget of drum 'n bass history, Goldie's 1995 appearance on the Channel 4 TV show Passengers. While the sound of DNB was gaining a foothold in England's inner cities, shows like these impacted youths far outside these urban centers. They provided a glimpse of a fresh new music, helmed by a star in the making. The hilarious scene of G getting a haircut, him mixing records in his apartment overlooking London (= coolest thing ever), generally being on top of the world at this point in his career, must've spoken to the imagination of many at the time. Who knows how many of them are now music producers themselves. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXtjE4nAKEw
FOURTH THING: HUMAN NETWORKS
Dutch quality news/opinion site the Correspondent has recently opened up its English version and is recruiting some excellent writers to tackle issues with a broader, more interesting perspective. Thinking about solutions rather than problems, Nesrine Malik's essay about "human networks" is fascinating. Where government often fails to take care of people's problems, small-scaled initiatives take over. But instead of seeing these networks as stopgaps or charities, last resorts, what if you incorporate them into existing government structures?
https://thecorrespondent.com/53/politics-is-failing-but-human-networks-could-show-us-how-to-fix-it/5195162555-ae55ade7