To be honest, I don’t really remember what new albums I listened to before June.  That’s when my world seemed to start spinning out of control and I felt comforted by the Bon Iver record, seen by the Shabazz Palaces record and made to move by the TVOTR.

Since then, I’ve made a point to pay attention to what I put on repeat, obsessively.  Anyone who’s ever shared an office or workspace with me knows the over and over is nothing new.  This year, though, I felt like I made a better connection to the visceral reaction.  I appreciated and understood the physical and emotional without overly intellectualizing it.  I learned to cherish and revel in it, actually.  I’m not on a release schedule or synced up to a critics poll. I’m connecting to a piece of art or I’m not or I know that it’s a later situation.

These are albums I played like crazy cause they touched me deep, made me cup my headphones tightly against my ears, fed a want and need for a lyric and a beat.  They made and make me happy.  I think the coolest way for me to say goodbye and thank you to 2011 is to plug in the headphones and press play.

n♥

Van Hunt – What Were You Hoping For?
St. Vincent – Strange Mercy
Bon Iver – Bon Iver
TV on the Radio – Nine Types of Light
Shabazz Palaces – Black Up

Van Hunt

St. Vincent

Bon Iver

TV On The Radio

Shabazz Palaces

Man…  I really should have seen The Other F Word in the theater.  I know the title popped up on my twitter timeline, but I was just catching up on old eps of The Treatment with Elvis Mitchell and realized I HAD TO SEE IT.  All director Andrea Blaugrund Nevins had to say was punk doc, but punk dads?  I’m in.  Of course, it’s already left the theater here in LA.  I guess my Netflix queue’ll have to do.

It’s in limited release,  check your local spots.  It opens in DC and Philly on 12/2.  You can so still see it.  And if you’ve already missed it like me, it comes out on DVD at the end of Jan.

n♥

Elivs Mitchell in conversation with director, Andrea Blaugrund Nevins.

A little more backstory on the making of the doc… IFC interview at SXSW

Yay!  The Fishbone doc “Everyday Sunshine” opens in LA today.  I’m excited and nervous.  Fishbone was huge for me.  If there was ever a band logo to be tattooed on any part of my body, it would have been theirs.  No, really.  Of course, I thought better of it, but still.  It’s love and it’s complicated.

There was a great article in the NY Times earlier this month about Fishbone and “Everyday Sunshine.”  I hadn’t read it until today because even though I’m excited to see the film, I’m anxious about what gets left out.  I’ve become a bit protective of the music and the stories of musicians whose work spoke (and speaks) to so many parts of me since the Tribe doc.  It wasn’t that it was bad, I just felt like something was missing even as I rapped along to every song.  At a really important time in my life, when I needed to see the complexity reflected and only saw one and two dimensional ideas of black, I was lucky enough to find Fishbone.  The NYT article captured so much of what I think about when I wonder why so many people didn’t see and feel what I couldn’t resist back then.  If Jody Rosen’s piece was following the film’s lead on the issues as well as the drama, then I really think this could be something great.

This weekend, I get to see a story that needs to be told.  And, man, I hope it’s told well.

n♥

Saw Meshell Sunday.  She was one of the featured performers with the Miguel Atwood-Ferguson Ensemble at the JazzReggae Festival at UCLA.  She did Love Song#2 from Comfort Woman as well as a tribute to Gil Scott-Heron.  I haven’t been able to get her out of my head since.

I’ve been feeling out of sorts since Thursday.  The death of Gil Scott-Heron, Friday, deepened whatever funk I’d wandered into.  Then, she played and I wanted more.

At some point this morning I figured out how to shake the ache.  It was Bitter.  Her meditations on desire, fault, blame, longing and pain that seductively and beautifully paint the dull persistent ache of melancholy louder than any all-out wail of loss.

She lets me be in my sadness without sinking further into the grips of despair.  She doesn’t tell me it’ll be better.  She just quietly lures me away, toward a bit of honesty, vulnerability and hope.

Somehow, I’d forgotten what Bitter does for me.  Maybe on purpose.

N♥

I don’t even have a record player, but I want this Sonny Clark record.  On VINYL.  Must have it.

It all started because I was trying to suss out a particular visual reference for something I’m working on and ended up tooling around the Birka Jazz Archive looking at old album covers.  I checked out some old Columbia stuff first, but I knew what I was looking for was probably either from Verve or Blue Note.

I still don’t know if Blue Note was what I wanted, because I got all caught up in the work of graphic designer, Reid Miles. Oh, my word.  Talk about a day well spent.  He created these amazing album covers that frequently stopped the scroll.  It’s like my finger said “Girl, you might want to wait.” His use of color and type elicited audible reactions that I hope nobody else actually heard.

I’m getting all giggly & screechy over records from the mid 1950s to late 60s.  I haven’t been this excited about a record cover since I was little and I hid in the closet with that Nikki Giovanni just to stare my name in print.  Seriously,  I don’t even need to listen to the albums with the covers that send me.  I kinda just want to hold them and look.  I’m already intrigued and inspired.

A googly-bingish search for more on Reid Miles sent me to Hard Format where I studied the well curated display of some of his most beautiful work.  A link at the bottom sent me off again.  Now, I’m listening to previews of old jazz records on itunes and staring at the cover of every Blue Note record released.  Crazy.

From this tangent: I get another GENRE of freaking music to absorb and another interesting website for me to explore… great!

N♥

I can tell you where I bought my first issue of Wax Poetics.  I was here, in LA, on vacation.  We were at some sneaker shop on La Brea.  He was eyeing the wares and I was looking at the pubs.  WaxPo got the music dork in me mad giddy.  Putting current obsessions in historical perspective.  Turning me on to people, places and movements that inspired folks I respected.

I devoured it.  Every page.  Every article.  Every photograph.  Issue after issue.  Until, I moved.

I guess I didn’t handle the big change that well.  Honestly, there was a lot going on.  When I left NYC, I shut down.  I really wasn’t listening to anything or anyone that wasn’t already close to heart.  I wasn’t going to shows.  I wasn’t reading and making connections to why I love what I love.

Coming out of that space was slow going and I’m so excited to be open again.

The fix: i♥waxpoetics, hardcore.  still.

I need the back issue bundle and a subscription.  Loved that the issue on the stands when I was about to go to Jamaica for the first time was the Reggae Issue.  It was in a carry-on by the door when we decided to postpone the trip and avoid a torrential downpour.(♥:When is that happening now?) I was curled up in a corner reading it a few weeks later in DC when my mom tells me she’s getting rid of her vinyl.  I ended up all dust covered begging for EVERYTHING; flipping through more Gregory Issac’s records than I remembered she’d had.

If I don’t support what I dig, in whatever way I can, should I really expect it to be there when I find my way home?  I don’t want there to be a next time to find out.  Where’s my wallet?

N♥

I’ve been working on an another UnderTheInfluence piece for a while that has a bit about the first time I saw Miguel earlier this year.  I’m still kinda fascinated by my intense reaction.  Since then, I’ve tried to catch him whenever thehermit hasn’t taken over and kept me home, safe and cozy in front of some machine with light emanating from its screen.

As luck/chance/Grand Performances would have it, he’s playing a holiday concert with his string quartet up the hill from me today at noon.  Um, yeah.  Love that.  

So.  Miguel Atwood-Ferguson.  Composer.  Arranger.  Multi-instrumentalist.  To me, he’s like this conduit that allows you to feel music, while bypassing, even transcending, the limiting and self-segregating nature of genre.  He embodies the interconnectedness of all sound.  And inhabits what are still “different” spaces with such contagious passion, that even the possibility of discovering something new leaves you open to wherever his muse takes him.  It’s kinda wild to be so excited to venture somewhere with only his hand to guide.  So, yeah. I’m going to see a dude play his viola with his string quartet at lunch.

If you’re around, come by California Plaza | Downtown LA at noon.  Otherwise, keep pressing play.

Nikki♥

MoreMoreMore:

There are a couple of really cool pieces over at The Qualities of Light.  There’s a kinda, but not really, solo performance and an interesting profile.  Vtech has footage of Quartetto Fantastico celebrating the music of John Lennon w/ “Happiness Is A Warm Gun” shot by Mochilla‘s B+.

Timeless Concert Series | Suite For Ma Dukes Orchestra

w/the wondrously talented Bilal Oliver (Vtech has a bunch of great MAF clips)

Grand Performances July 2010
Miguel Atwood-Ferguson Ensemble f. Flying Lotus

I cried at a New Edition/Bobby Brown/Al B. Sure show.

Ummm, yeah.  The girls around me thought I was all boyband overwhelmed.  Naw. General Admission.  A couple thousand girls packed together trying to get some dude’s attention.  I was being pushed and, hello, had nowhere to go.  Oh, and I was having problems catching my breath.

Of course, the crying made the breathing thing worse.  I thought I was going to DIE.  No, really.  I thought I was going to die alone at a New Edition concert.  Die surrounded by girls who thought I was hysterical in anticipation.  Like I couldn’t wait for Ronnie, Ricky, Ralph and ‘nem* to be thrusting mightily towards me.  Umm, no.

Maybe it was those furrowed brows of pity that got me to stop hyper-everything-ing.  Cause at some point, stuck in the middle of the coliseum floor, I figured I might as well enjoy myself in the swell.  I sang along to every word of every song on Heart Break like every other girl there.  Okay with not knowing where I’d be standing once the music stopped.

I went to many a rock show after that and dudes in the pit had nothing on those chicks.  Those girls taught me to hold my own.  They taught me well.

Nikki♥

*Sorry, Mike & Johnny.

♥:Wait.  You do know this story is like 20 years old, right?  Not ashamed, but, ummm… I want to be REAL clear…

I have been writing.  Writing lots of different things.  Just not finishing.  I haven’t been able to put my head around the sentences and paragraphs that confound me.

I’ve been getting stuck on purpose.  Why am I writing what I’m writing?  Is outcome more important than getting it out?  I’m trying not to worry about what comes after.  Ehhh, I’m not there yet.

I’ve been big on the 4 Agreements this year.  I write them down everyday.  I’m working on keeping my word.  Being impeccable with it.  I just can’t seem to do it  with myself.  I’m the easiest and the first person to let down in a pinch, or hell, on the regular.

But this, R&C, is the place I can do whatever my heart and head desires.  They both need more attention paid.

So, I’m back.  If only to remind myself that I get joy from so many things and that Mommy taught me to share.

Nikki♥

I’m going to burn some incense now… Here’s Todd Rundgren & The Isley Brothers doing “Hello, It’s Me”

Don’t ask me where I’ve been on Flying Lotus.  I could say that I blame the dj friends  who used to hip me to EVERYTHINg, but it’s not their fault I’m so out of it.  My heads been in the no-no place on a lot of good music. (♥: chile…)

Won’t explain it.  Can’t describe it.  Just experience it.

Who says you can’t rock the fuck out of it live?  And at some point I’m going to have to write about my weeks long obsession about Miguel Atwood-Ferguson.  Don’t take that the wrong way.  I didn’t know that this amazingly talented man walked the earth with notes dancing on his soul until I watched Mochilla’s Timeless DVDs.  Seriously, give that man a bow, or hell, just watch him feel music.

Right now, the neighbors and I are dancing to Do The Astral Plane off Cosmogramma.   Okay, I’m dancing and they’re nodding heads behind thin walls.  I think.  (♥:They better…)

Nikki♥