Friday, September 28, 2007

London Callin'

Just a personal note:
Everything's fine in London, don't have a flat yet, but the city and the university are great.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Where's the Beef? McDonald's in Kreuzberg

So yesterday it finally opened: the strongly debated first McDonald's 'restaurant' in Berlin-Kreuzberg. Here's the Spiegel International cover story.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Now Online: Jerry Blossom presents Electric Boogie + Jazz Striptease (1975-85)

The 2007 Jerry Blossom tape is finally up 'n' runnin'.
Originally, it was conceptualized as a summer tape -- so listen and shake it as if...

As usual, it contains 60 minutes of Funk, HipHop, Disco and Jazz straight outta the crates;
with a little bit of both Paris and Berlin flavor to it.
You can find it online as .mp3 (zipped twice).


---
Jerry Blossom presents
ELECTRIC BOOGIE & JAZZ STRIPTEASE (1975-85)

SIDE 1:
Kurtis Blow - The Deuce (1981)
Kurtis Blow - It's Gettin Hot (1981)
Alphonse Mouzon - By All Means (1980)
Champaign - Can You Find The Time? (1980)
Kevie Kev - All Night Long (Waterbed) (1983)
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five - New York New York (1983)
Prince Charles - Video Freak (Defend It!) (1982)
The Biddu Orchestra - The Stud (1978)
Ramsey Lewis - Salongo (1976)

SIDE 2:
Gonna Fly Now (Theme from Rocky) (1976)
George Benson - Gonna Love You More (1977)
Mel Brooks - It's Good To Be The King (1981)
René & Angela - I'll Be Good (1985)
Heatwave - Party Poops (1978)
Heatwave - Dreamin You (1980)
Sigi Schwab & Peter Horton - Jagt Den Beelzebub (1978)
Earth Wind & Fire - Runnin (1977)
Werner Müller Orchester - Cherry Blossom Time
Dire Straits - Sultans of Swing (1978)

Sunday, September 09, 2007

Photolog pt. XI - What Happened to the MCees? German Rap 2007

I grew up in Germany when German HipHop was in flower--which was say in 1992-2002. Within the last two weeks, I discovered two of my old heroes in weird contexts: Blumentopf, the high school and student rappers from Munich, appeared at the open day of the German Government, and Samy Deluxe, who used to be the probably most gifted talent of the German rap scene in 1997 and rather of the bad boy type, is playing role model for being legal and paying the cumbersome fees of the German TV Licensing Office (his shirts says "Nedless to say, I pay").
Not that this would have come out of the blue, but the two rap stars changed camps since last year: In 2006, Blumentopf had several (great!) 'raportages' on TV during the soccer worldcup and Samy Deluxe was repeatedly invited as the voice of the youth to Sabine Christiansen, the political talk show every Sunday night.
Nevertheless, it evokes funny feelings...

Friday, September 07, 2007

Important Book Charts - Number 3

After the Bible/Koran and the recently claimed second most important religious oeuvre, the Pope's Jesus book, I just discovered number 3, entitled A Million Random Digits, available as paperback on amazon for 28.5$. Furthermore, they offer a 'Search Inside' function, and you should definitely check out the helpful user commentaries.
My favorite ones
Such a terrific reference work! But with so many terrific random digits, it's a shame they didn't sort them, to make it easier to find the one you're looking for.
and
Valuable, but a flawed translation...

Text-to-Speech and DJ Premier Trackology

I've always been a big fan of DJ Premier, his beats are the mothers of hiphop, and--as I noted earlier--he seems to be back. I found this comprehensive list of what the man has produced.
So take a Primo instrumental and write some lyrics.
If you're not confident in your rap voice, you can text-to-speech synthesize them on the AT&T Labs website - even in Spanish, German and French plus in UK, IR and some other English dialects.