http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WzjWtCRTQU

Archived Music

Since I don't have the multi-tracks of 99% of the music I made from 1998-2006 anymore I decided to go through the hundreds of CDs I had burned over the years and see if I could save selected songs and update the sound quality a little. Updating the quality was a waste of time but the stuff I came across took me waaaaaay back.

I've worked with a lot of people over the past 11 years and I thought it would be cool if those people could take a trip down memory lane with me. I selected as much variety as possible (given the fact only certain stuff was on those CDs) and tried to leave the most terrible stuff on the CDs so as not to embarass my homies (or myself).

Given the SAVAGE recording conditions/facilities/equipment/techniques used back then I'm still pretty impressed with what we were able to accomplish. These people all have talent. Many of them still make music to this day. If you are sleeping on any of them you are doing yourself a great disservice.

People always say that good (hip hop) music is hard to find these days. Well, from what I've been told over the years there's some pretty good stuff on those CDs. They are posted now so you don't really have any excuse.

Enjoy.

Old Songs
Instrumental Pieces
Old Instrumentals-Unused

WATCH THIS DOCUMENTARY!!!

I know people like everything fast, easy and disposable these days but if you claim to be an adult and/or like music pre-2000 in any fashion you have to watch this documentary at some point in the near future.

Noel Pointer

Noel Pointer was an amazing classically trained jazz violinist. His foundation is a lasting testimate to his footprint in the world of music. Give his music a good listen and you'll hear some familiar tunes.

Lenny Breau

Lenny Breau (August 5, 1941-August 12, 1984) is a very under-the-radar guitarist. I didn't even become aware of his music until 3 years ago even though he died the same year my sister was born. In a time when most musicians came from places like the Deep South, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago and NYC, he hailed from Auburn, Maine of all places.

His sound was very reminiscent of the jazz and bossa nova craze of the mid-20th century but had a particular feel that made it different. It's hard to describe but worth investigating.

Click the link above to get access to many other links that will fill you in on the unsung career of a talented musician. Also, check out his biography to understand his transition from a country-western background to the Canadian jazz scene.

Take a look at this scene from a documentary on him as well. (Peep the swig before he plays! Classic.)

Prison Reform

This is a must-read (I don't endorse Sprint however. I have Verizon. lol). I don't normally read The Economist but I came across this article recently. I just saw Jim Webb (D-Virginia) talking about his bill that centers around prison reform in America. He's got some big shoes to fill because prison is Big Business in this country.

Look at some of the statistics and disproportionate ratios as far as different ethnic and socioeconomic groups. What was really surprising were the data on mentally ill inmates and their ratios with respect to criminal lockup vs. treatment stays. As far as I'm concerned the "War on Drugs" a.k.a "The War on We" is B.S., pure and simple. 7 years for a bag of weed with no parole?! Who ever O.D.'d on Refer? What about the cocaine addicts that run companies into the ground, ruining thousands of lives? Or the pedophiles that only get 6 months in prison and 1 year of parole then turn around and molest again?

Something is terribly wrong here. I'm glad somebody has the balls to at least make an effort on this issue, no matter how futile it may be in the end (old habits die harder than petrified forests).

from The Economist, April 2, 2009 by writer Lexington...

___________________________________________________________________

Lexington

A nation of jailbirds

Apr 2nd 2009
From The Economist print edition

Far too many Americans are behind bars

Illustration by KAL

THE world’s tallest building is now in Dubai rather than New York. Its largest shopping mall is in Beijing, and its biggest Ferris wheel in Singapore. Once-mighty General Motors is suspended in a limbo between bail-out and bankruptcy; and the “war on terror” has demonstrated the limits of American military might.

But in one area America is going from strength to strength—the incarceration of its population. America has less than 5% of the world’s people but almost 25% of its prisoners. It imprisons 756 people per 100,000 residents, a rate nearly five times the world average. About one in every 31 adults is either in prison or on parole. Black men have a one-in-three chance of being imprisoned at some point in their lives. “A Leviathan unmatched in human history”, is how Glenn Loury, professor of social studies at Brown University, characterises America’s prison system.

Conditions in the Leviathan’s belly can be brutal. More than 20% of inmates report that they have been sexually assaulted by guards or fellow inmates. Federal prisons are operating at more than 130% of capacity. A sixth of prisoners suffer from mental illness of one sort or another. There are four times as many mentally ill people in prison as in mental hospitals.

As well as being brutal, prisons are ineffective. They may keep offenders off the streets, but they fail to discourage them from offending. Two-thirds of ex-prisoners are re-arrested within three years of being released. The punishment extends to prisoners’ families, too. America’s 1.7m “prison orphans” are six times more likely than their peers to end up in prison themselves. The punishment also sometimes continues after prisoners are released. America is one of only a handful of countries that bar prisoners from voting, and in some states that ban is lifelong: 2% of American adults and 14% of black men are disfranchised because of criminal convictions.

It is possible to pick holes in these figures. Some of the world’s most repressive regimes do not own up to their addiction to imprisonment (does anyone really believe that Cuba imprisons only five in every 1,000 of its citizens?). No sane person would rather be locked up in Russia or China than in America. A country as large and diverse as America boasts plenty of model prisons and exemplary training programmes. But all that said, the conclusion remains stark: America’s incarceration habit is a disgrace, wasting resources at home and damaging the country abroad.

Few mainstream politicians have had the courage to denounce any of this. People who embrace prison reform usually end up in the political graveyard. There is no organised lobby for prison reform. The press ignores the subject. And those who have first-hand experience of the system’s failures—prisoners and ex-prisoners—may have no right to vote.

Which makes Jim Webb all the more remarkable. Mr Webb is far from being a lion of the Senate, roaring from the comfort of a safe seat. He is a first-term senator for Virginia who barely squeaked into Congress. The state he represents also has a long history of being tough on crime: Virginia abolished parole in 1994 and is second only to Texas in the number of people it executes.

But Mr Webb is now America’s leading advocate of prison reform. He has co-sponsored a bill to create a blue-ribbon commission to report on America’s prisons. And he has spoken out in every possible venue, from the Senate to local political meetings. Mr Webb is not content with incremental reform. He is willing to tackle what he calls “the elephant in the bedroom”—America’s willingness to imprison people for drug offences.

Does Mr Webb have any chance of diminishing America’s addiction to incarceration? History is hardly on his side. For most of the 20th century America imprisoned roughly the same proportion of its population as many other countries—a hundred people for every 100,000 citizens. But while other countries stayed where they were, the American incarceration rate then took off—to 313 per 100,000 in 1985 and 648 in 1997.

Mr Webb also has some powerful forces ranged against him. The prison-industrial complex (which includes private prisons as well as public ones) employs thousands of people and armies of lobbyists. Twenty-six states plus the federal government have passed “three strikes and you’re out” laws which put repeat offenders in prison for life without parole. And the war on drugs has pushed the incarceration business into overdrive. The number of people serving time for drugs has increased from 41,000 in 1980 to 500,000 today, or 55% of the population of federal prisons and 21% of those in state prisons. An astonishing three-quarters of prisoners locked up on drug-related charges are black.

Up for a fight

But Mr Webb is no ordinary politician. He packed several distinguished careers into his life before becoming a senator—as a marine in Vietnam, a lawyer, a much-published author and secretary of the navy in the Reagan administration. And he is not a man to back down from a fight: one of his best books, “Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America”, celebrates the martial virtues of the clan to which he is proud to belong.

Some signs suggest that the tide is turning in Mr Webb’s direction. Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act in 2003. Barack Obama’s Justice Department has hinted that it wants to do something about the disparity in sentencing between blacks and whites for drug crimes. Support for both the death penalty and the war on drugs is softening: a dozen states have legalised the use of marijuana for medical purposes. If Mr Webb can transform these glimmers of discontent with America’s prison-industrial complex into a fully fledged reform movement, then he will go down in history as a great senator.

Philadelphia International Records

Philadelphia International Records is amazing. Their music catalog is bonkers. If you thought Motown was impressive you have to check out what this record label did in the 70's and 80's with acts like The O'Jays, Teddy Pendergrass, Lou Rawls, The Intruders, Jean Carn, Patti LaBelle, The Jones Girls, & Phillis Hyman. They also had the Stylistics in later years among other notable groups.

Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff were and are genius producers and I truly believe have not received the props they deserve on the national and international stage. How do you even begin to come close to rivaling the Funk Brothers in terms of volume-to-quality ratio?! Insane talent, that's how.

I encourage everyone to dig deeper into the music that was created during their tenure in the forefront of a golden age of music. Not just for sampling (I know that's why most of you listen to old stuff) but for your soul. There is a song for any kind of mood you may be in; music that will get you through a tough day or help you come up with the words to tell someone how you feel. Plus they have tons of great "baby-making" songs too.