Galvanize

Q-Tip aka Kamaal Ibn John Fareed rips it up with the Chemical Brothers.

Behold the Tonguila

Bring together a Colombian and some Cuervo,
and then before d'ju know.....
Out comes the TONGUILA, menh!
On all attendees befalls a sudden hush.
Children are sent away. Women blush.
A swirl of thoughts... we're in stitches!
The party-meter cranks up a few notches.
The TONGUILA has struck, again.

Cluster F***

Marc Garlasco of Human Rights Watch: "As a comparison in the war in Iraq in 2003, the United States over three weeks dropped 2 million cluster sub-munitions. Israel in the war in Lebanon dropped 4 million in three days. It dwarfs any use of cluster bombs prior. You can take Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo and put them together and you’re not going to come close to what happened in southern Lebanon."

Song of the Day: Blood Witch

Melvins ROCK

buybuybuy

Blood Witch

RIP Alice Coltrane

Journey in Satchidananda

The Low End Quest

François and I have been looking for a new bass, something that would mesh better with our world/ethnic fusion aspirations. At first we were looking at an acoustic fretless like the Michael Kelly Dragonfly.









It comes in 4 or 5 strings and exists as a fretless...seemed perfect! It's a gorgeous instrument and the very first time we tried one we were both blown away by the warm organic acoustic fretless tone. But after doing more research and going back to hear it again it seemed rather poorly made. It buzzed, it sounded tiny and we saw a bunch of bad reviews online.

Then we found out about double stringed electric basses...
John Paul Jones uses an Alembic Series I Triple Omega 8-string in the epic Achilles Last Stand.

















Alembic made a gorgeous re-interpretation of that monster. But it's safe to assume it's a little out of our price range.

Well, the quest continues. In the meantime we can drool at the fantastic musicianship of John McLaughlin and Jonas Hellborg getting the best of both the fretted and fretless worlds with this double necked beauty.

Tones For Jones

Now here's one heck of a dream team doing a pretty radical interpretation of my favorite song off John McLaughlin's phenomenal 1994 After the Rain album which featured The Irrepressible Jazz Machine Elvin Jones in person.

John McLaughlin, Dennis Chambers and Zakir Hussain at the June 2004 Crossroads Festival in Dallas, TX:

The Ramen King

Momofuku Ando, 96, passed away this weekend in Japan.
He invented the instant noodle in 1957 after seeing long lines for fresh noodles. He founded the company Nissin, who brought us Cup Noodle and Top Ramen, spawning many imitators.

Thanks and Farewell Momo!