Category: MUSIC

An EMP in Lagos

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UPDATE: More here. ORIGINAL POST: Seriously, I get this weird feeling someday people might just be willing to support something like a sequestration of Lagos from the Internet, or some sort of EMP that would knock out all the computers there, creating a hardware shortage and making it difficult for Nigerians to replace their computers… maybe even getting other nations to forbid export of computers to Nigeria. Then again, how much spam comes from Korea? No, really. Maybe that EMP was a  bad suggestion. The other night, some Nigerian scam artist like the kid mentioned in this article hacked the …

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In Seoul? Love Jazz?

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Here are two bits of news for you: This Friday and Saturday (June 11th/12th) there’s an international jazz festival on in Seoul. There are free shows in the park. Not sure if there are pay concerts also — I wish David Sanchez would have a giant 3 hour gig but I doubt it.  Maybe at some other venue, while he’s here? Seems like a shame to come just for 6 songs, no matter how extended the improvisations might be. I just found out about this on Marmot’s , need to look into it more. A jazz fan among my students …

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Saxophonic Memories

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The other day, I posted about memories of being teased because my name had been used for the alien in the TV Alf, whom I remembered as a sax player, like myself. My hunt for the saxophone version of the theme song led me to this website, where many examples of the “sax solo” that became a trend in 80s popular music are available for your listening pleasure (or pain, as the case may be). I now must say, it was not only because of that scene where a weirdly bejewelled Tim Capello plays saxophone in the vampire film Lost …

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The First Album I Ever Bought For Myself

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It was an LP. It was a soundtrack. I had that whole thing memorized a few days after I bought it. Later would come Glenn Miller (my mom’s choice, since I was about to start playing the saxophone), and then Bon Jovi (yes, Slippery When Wet, I’ll admit it), Miles Davis, Guns’N’Roses (and then the famous backpatch jacket), and then John Coltrane (and then the tenor sax I still have with me), and much more… … but this was the first album I bought for myself, with my paper route money, and man was I happy to have it so …

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They Don’t Make ‘Em Like That No More… or, on the Soundtrack ofLes Liaisons Dangereuses

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Maybe I’m exaggerating. But it seems to me movie soundtracks, however danceable they may be, no matter how much they may support a film’s action sequences, very rarely stand up on their own as art anymore. I do have a copy of the Lola Rennt soundtrack, but I can’t really call it art, not except in that cheesy industry way that any dipshit in skimpy or stylish clothes who can lipsynch becomes a “recording artist.” Not like, say, the soundtrack of the 1959 Roger Vadim film Les liaisons dangereuses. I mean, Art Blakey and the friggin’ Jazz Messengers? (As well …

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Satchmo Blows Up The World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War by Penny Marie von Eschen

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This is a book I bought to have some background on the use of jazz as part of Cold War-era promotion of America abroad, primarily for research on a longer work I was (and still am) considering writing set in the world of “Lester Young and the Jupiter’s Moons’ Blues.” Interestingly, during the Cold War (from the 1950s through the 1970s) jazz music and jazz musicians were used by the American government in the same way circuses were used by the USSR, as part of what we now so often call a “hearts and minds” campaign carried out throughout the …

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“Jazz? Yes Please… As Long as There’s No Actual Jazz or Colored Folks!”

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UPDATE (17 April 2010): I feel I ought to clarify one thing, but if I put it here, it won’t make sense, so I’m adding it to the end of the post. ORIGINAL POST: There’s isn’t quite a sign up at the Incheon Airport saying that, but there might as well be. Maybe I’m exaggerating, but I was talking with a student I know about this. He was scrambling for a topic to do with Korea reception of Western popular culture (past and present) and I asked him who the most famous American rapper is in Korea. Who is it? …

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Banned in China: Your Assurance of Quality Content

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The title of this post is a throwaway comment Bruce Sterling made in his lecture, “The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole” (mp3, video with terrible audio), in the course of mentioning that most scientists who are able to do the scary stuff that frightens Bill Joy are unlikely to be willing to take up residence in the caves of Afghanistan or up in North Korea just to get the freedom to research things that have been banned by everyone else. It reminded me of a funny thing an ex-student in Beijing told me — this blog is blocked …

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Star Wars: 스타워즈 프로젝트 컴필레이션 (2008)

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This entry is part 29 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

Quite a long time ago, K-indie insider helikoppter of Indieful ROK emailed me to let me know about an album she figured I’d be interested in. The reason she thought I’d be interested was, you see, my ongoing series about SF in Korea. (How she stays on top of music in Korea is something everyone paying attention is amazed by, considering she’s not actually in Korea. Such is the power of the internet… and strong passions.) Now, this is going to be delicate. See, there’s such a thing as genre-media-inspired music in the West. It’s called filk, and it generally …

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