In 1987, I had just graduated high school and moved from San Jose to Long Beach, CA for college. I chose Long Beach State because I assumed it would be a party school since it had ‘beach’ in the name. My parents helped me move all my belongings which were my clothes, 2 turntables, a mixer, speakers, an amp and probably around 10 crates of records. I was into hip hop, but wore vintage clothes from thrift stores and had a mushroom haircut so wasn’t really accepted by the other college students who never understood me. So I was a loner who pretty much stayed in my dorm room and made music all the time. I remember saving my money once I got there and eventually bought a 4-track recorder and a Casio drum machine that had 4 pads, each with a split second of sample time. I got the drum machine used for like $300 and was very excited. Next step was to find a rapper so I put an ad in the paper. I said my influences were Schoolly D, Just Ice, Scott La Rock, and Ultramagnetic MCs. ‘Hardcore rap.’ That’s how I found Spunky Spunk Dogg, a Cholo rapper from Long Beach. A few years later when Snoop Doggy Dogg came outta Long Beach, I wondered if he knew Spunky Spunk Dogg, but that’s another story. Spunky had more tattoos than I had ever seen on a human, especially for 1988 and I was always kinda afraid of rolling with him cuz I didn’t really know his background, but he always treated me with respect and admiration. I made the beats and did the cuts. This recording is the only one I have with him from back then and we performed outside at the backyard of a BBQ on a Sunday afternoon for an audience of around 15-20 people. We did around 5 or 6 original songs we had made and 1 cover and for the cover, we chose the biggest rap song in LA at the time. My turntable kept skipping as it wasn’t a 1200 and nobody even really cheered. I don’t even recall people really paying attention, but we were having fun and it was our first and last show together as a group. This was in the summer of ’88, and soon after, I moved back to San Jose, where I eventually met Charizma and started all over again. — PBW 8/14/2015
The New York Times on laptop computers, 1985
WHATEVER happened to the laptop computer? Two years ago, on my flight to Las Vegas for Comdex, the annual microcomputer trade show, every second or third passenger pulled out a portable, ostensibly to work, but more likely to demonstrate an ability to keep up with the latest fad. Last year, only a couple of these computers could be seen on the fold-down trays. This year, every one of them had been replaced by the more traditional mixed drink or beer.
Was the laptop dream an illusion, then? Or was the problem merely that the right combination of features for such lightweight computers had not yet materialized? The answer probably is a combination of both views. For the most part, the portable computer is a dream machine for the few.
The limitations come from what people actually do with computers, as opposed to what the marketers expect them to do. On the whole, people don’t want to lug a computer with them to the beach or on a train to while away hours they would rather spend reading the sports or business section of the newspaper. Somehow, the microcomputer industry has assumed that everyone would love to have a keyboard grafted on as an extension of their fingers. It just is not so.
But the real future of the laptop computer will remain in the specialized niche markets. Because no matter how inexpensive the machines become, and no matter how sophisticated their software, I still can’t imagine the average user taking one along when going fishing.
Seven hours of guy lip-synching during a long road trip
White Rhino’s sister is not too excited about his lip-synch performance during their 7-hour road trip or his choice of music.
Brian Wilson On World Cafe
You’d think it would be difficult for Brian Wilson to pick his favorite Beach Boys song, but he’s decisive: It’s “God Only Knows.” In this conversation on World Cafe, he also says that while he loves the new Wilson biopic Love & Mercy (out Friday), there are parts that were hard for him to watch.
The full conversation is at the audio link above. You’ll also hear music from Wilson’s new solo album, No Pier Pressure, plus extraordinary exclusive live performances of Beach Boys classics.
How The Beatles Changed Album Covers
A great look at the most iconic visual supplement in the history of music.
Why ska is the mother of reggae
If there’s one musical style that epitomizes summer, it might be the loping island style of ska. It caught fire in early ’60s Jamaica, a precursor to reggae.
But ska has gone through a few iterations.
Ska is really a fusion of American R&B with Jamaican jazz, says Brad Klein, a Minneapolis-based filmmaker who traced the history of ska in a documentary, “Legends of Ska. Without Ska, there is no reggae.”
“Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Jimmy Cliff … all started in ska as teenagers. So, ska is the mother of reggae,” he says.
Klein’s love affair with ska began when he was working at a reggae record company, selling, doing publicity and promotion. His documentary includes three crucial early ska tracks.
“My goal was to teach people and to show the world that there’s much more to Jamaican music than Bob Marley,” says Klein.
Not only has ska had worldwide revivals in the punk 1970s (think The Specials, Madness, English Beat) and the 1990s (think The Mighty Mighty Bosstones), it still is popular. Klein says it’s most popular in Mexico and Latin America and endures in Japan as well.
Via PRI
The reason every meme uses that one font
This video explains why most internet memes use the typeface Impact, designed by Geoffrey Lee in 1965.
You can now buy 3D printed cochlear implants for your kid’s toys
Building on their Toy Like Me accessories, Makies has shipped 3D printed cochlear implants for your 3D printed custom doll, inwhite or pink. Makies come from Makielab, a company Boing Boing’s Cory Doctrow’s wife Alice Taylor founded and serves as CEO. I love these dearly and going to get a few of them for friends who have children that are hearing-impaired.
Your must-read for the end of summer: How Music Got Free
Stephen Witt’s How Music Got Free is a riveting story of obsession, music, crime, and money, featuring visionaries and criminals, moguls and tech-savvy teenagers. It’s about the greatest pirate in history, the most powerful executive in the music business, a revolutionary invention and an illegal website four times the size of the iTunes Music Store.
Journalist Stephen Witt traces the secret history of digital music piracy, from the German audio engineers who invented the mp3, to a North Carolina compact-disc manufacturing plant where factory worker Dell Glover leaked nearly two thousand albums over the course of a decade, to the high-rises of midtown Manhattan where music executive Doug Morris cornered the global market on rap, and, finally, into the darkest recesses of the Internet.
Through these interwoven narratives, Witt has written a thrilling book that depicts the moment in history when ordinary life became forever entwined with the world online — when, suddenly, all the music ever recorded was available for free. In the page-turning tradition of writers like Michael Lewis and Lawrence Wright, Witt’s deeply-reported first book introduces the unforgettable characters—inventors, executives, factory workers, and smugglers—who revolutionized an entire artform, and reveals for the first time the secret underworld of media pirates that transformed our digital lives.
An irresistible never-before-told story of greed, cunning, genius, and deceit, How Music Got Free isn’t just a story of the music industry—it’s a must-read history of the Internet itself.