Blog date March 26th , 2010.
I’m sitting at Southside Coffee drinking a cortado; for those who don’t know that’s a little less milk than a Cappuccino and a little more milk than a Macchiato. In plain talk, the brew is that real dope. Places like this make me feel like the world has a fighting chance of not slipping into a digital void. It reminds me of the Chinese tea houses I read about years back in a book called The Search for Modern China. The tea houses were places where people could come and drink tea, smoke, sit all day shoot the shit, play mahjong, and generally pass the time with their neighbors. At Southside I can buy a cup of coffee, work on my computer, go out and take a little stroll, exchange eyes with interesting people (some of which happen to be female and not unpleasant to look at), and listen to some music I might not otherwise have heard.
The people who pull the shots over at Southside have good taste in tunes. Right now the dude behind the counter is playing The Shins, never heard of them before but they sound good. The other day the barista put on Things Fall Apart by the Roots, I got a LOT of love for that album. Axel Niehaus who mixed half my album, Focused Fire, also mixed half of Things Fall Apart; including my favorite track Dynamite.
One thing that kind of gets my goat about Southside is that they refuse to play my album in the shop! They feel that they don’t want to pick favorites out of the many musicians that frequent the joint. I hear them but I think it’s a bit jive at the same time. A relationship between MetroSonics and Southside would a great way of doing some good-natured local co-branding. If we respect each other’s respective crafts, and business ethos, we could work out a distribution deal in which both parties benefit. But aside from the business aspect there's another issue of principle that arises here: people shouldn’t be afraid to express their opinions! The critical quality of New Yorkers is what has defined the city as a great place for artists to test their metal since this place was a pirate town. I feel like there’s a new trend in the city towards being totally neutral; a sort of paranoia to offend. In terms of live music, many acts that are tolerated in clubs in NY these days would have been straight up yoked or yelled off the stage when I was coming up as a teenager. So it goes, I'm not going to rant about that now. I'm just telling it like I see it.
In other news, I just purchased a book called "Spaced Out" by Alastair Gordon. Before I get into my thoughts on the book I’d like to point out that I bought the thing at St. Mark's Bookshop in Manhattan : www.stmarksbookshop.com. My cousin, Ben Gerson, who is a former writer for Rolling Stone magazine, former op-ed editor of New York Newsday and has as held positions at many other major publications, pointed out as we walked through the shop that places like St. Mark's Bookshop are essential as the filtering point for thought. He said, “You can come to a place like this, spend a couple of hours a week browsing the books, and get a good grip on the most important current trends in art and thought. It's the polestar of the downtown intelligentsia." We agreed that the dissolution of these nexuses of thought and ideas cannot be compensated for by the mass of information accessible today on the internet. I look at it like a division of labor in some ways; it's difficult to be a master of a lot of things. There are people, many of them, that spend a lot of time reading, going to museums, seeing films, traveling and otherwise keeping abreast of the most current trends in art, literature, and thought. These people are experts at perceiving, what literature in this case, is most worthy of presentation. That's a valuable resource. It's a skill that we as a culture should support. I for one spend most of my time making music, performing, working on my business, teaching, practicing tai-chi, cooking, and enjoying the time! I like to be able to count on well studied members of my community to point me in good directions and save me the time they've spent sifting through the muck. My tai-chi teacher, C.K. Chu, pointed out that after 36 years of having his school, the students he is currently teaching are getting a much more refined system because of his own growth over the years. Bottom line, we benefit from supporting people who do good work to educate us and keep us informed of the most important trends of our culture.
Now back to Spaced Out, that book I mentioned that led us down this winding and well-winded path we've found ourselves on. It's a book about the psychedelic movement of the 60's with a focus on the physical spaces that were built, which reflected the trends of thought at the time regarding liberating the mind from the ego and sharing in communal ecstatic experience. Looking at the pictures alone is inspiring me to take my musical events to the next level, physically. Get ready for the MetroSonics acid test party! ; - j
That's all for today.
Great to vibe with you!
Paul
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