Taisy took me on a tour of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the historic industrial park where the battleships USS Maine, Arizona, and Missouri were built. The NYC Economic Development Corporation is engaged in its transformation to modern industrial use, while its massive dry docks continue to service ships, and its wharves provide a base for the Fire Department. I took the phone, instead of a high resolution camera. I'll have to go back with the Nikon.
Visionary hip-hop producer J Dilla never found mainstream success during his brief lifetime. But in the seven years since his death, Dilla — who would have turned 39 today — has come to represent a major inflection point on hip-hop's evolutionary tree. At his peak in the late 1990s and early 2000s, he suggested syntheses that hadn't seemed possible. He played fresh games with texture and tone. He recast the sample as a malleable component, rather than the monochromatic backbone it had seemed to be. And he injected a softened, swaggering humanity into the rigid slap of classic hip-hop drumbeats.
His magnum opus, Donuts, was reissued on vinyl last month, and the posthumous Music From the Lost Scrolls Vol. 1 came out on Tuesday — the first in a series of previously unreleased recordings. In Detroit on Saturday, the rapper Talib Kweli, violinist and arranger Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, and a handful of other artists will perform at the second annual Dilla Day, a concert celebrating Dilla's career.
Dilla's reach stretches way beyond hip-hop: For one, he's recently cast a long shadow over contemporary jazz. He never belonged to jazz's inner circle, but since his death in 2006 from a rare blood disease, his legacy has helped pull the genre back into kissing contact with modern popular music.
"He's so important," says jazz drummer Karriem Riggins, who collaborated extensively with Dilla and is himself a hip-hop producer. "Herbie Hancock and Tony Williams and Miles [Davis]: He's in the same category to me."
Candy - that's what we called my sister Kathryn Therese, born December 14, 1952. Kathryn lost her battle with addiction to cigarettes a year ago, dying at 62, three days after our mother Clare died at 92. I had my own struggle with Marlboros, the deadly product perfected by Philip Morris. I miss my sister terribly - even though she drove me nuts. Here are some pictures from 1989-1990.
Millvale Waterfront Trailing
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Tuesday – photo by Mitch Waxman How did the humbly narrating chicken cross
this road? Carefully. Millvale, a Borough of Allegheny County which sits
opposit...
Sitka Nature Show #361 – Starling Birch (encore)
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Download Radio Show The February 22nd show featured a conversation with
Starling Birch, videographer and mountain adventurer. Originally recorded
and aired...
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Ahoy dear friends and fellow sailors! It's been far too long - but I am
happy to report we are still under sail (although currently on the hard in
Bridgew...
Rumour has it…
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Rumour has it that I was sailing this yacht last month on the Baltic Sea
and that they have started to build a very similar version for a third
attempt at ...
The End
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After almost two months at sea and more than 5,000 miles, Issuma reached
Norfolk, Virginia. This was both my longest passage and my longest
singlehanded p...