People Under The Stairs

First saw these guys put on a legit show in the Gobi tent at Coachella. They had the crowd going, everyone yelling awwwwwwwwww shit! in unison. People Under the Stairs are from LA, been around for awhile, making hip hop with that classic sound, like Tribe. The perfect kind of sound for those orange nights in The Bay after the sun is done scorching the hell out of the place, and all that golden mass of land exhales, cooling it off to make for well...a warm San Franciscan night. Check it outtttttttttttt

people under the stairs - san francisco knights

people under the stairs - acid raindrops

Fresh Daily - Hard Work

Brooklyn based raper Fresh Daily drops a raw, recession concious flow, but the main reason I like this track is because hearing any flow over a FlyLo beat is the shit. If this is what FlyLo produced hip hop sounds like, I can't wait for more tracks with his production to drop.

fresh daily - hard work

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Yacht - Psychic City

Described on their lame blog as a "subversive damaged zombie pop banger", Yacht's new single off their forthcoming See Mystery Lights fufills none of those abstract descriptive adjectives yet still is a great song. It's bubblegum, it's saccharine, it's a sunny day. The kinda song that'll inspire pasty kids everywhere to shed their hoodies and get some Vitamin D. Yay!

yacht - psychic city

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What the fuck is a Veckatimest? Part 2

I wanted to like Veckatimest, I really did. But with the album’s pretentious, abstract-proper-noun name and all the press hype, I doubted the music would deliver on any of its promises. I could tell first off that the album was trying to be big. It was ambitious, layered, complex – I decided to withhold judgments based on my first intuition: that the album is a slow, meandering bore.

Repeated listening only consistently reminded me how dull it is with every revisit. I mean, it sounds good but it doesn't sound interesting. Singer Daniel Rossen’s vocals sound like a heartbroken wounded animal attached to a reverb pedal. The kind of wounded animal that you wish Papa would go out and back and shoot with his rifle to put out of its misery.

For a band named after the California state animal (Rossen is a LA expatriate, NYU alum), Grizzly Bear doesn't come off sounding very fierce. Two Weeks’s poppy piano melody is catchy, but the rest is just this anamorphic melacholic haze. And this is supposed to be their accessible record? Their sound is known to be whimsy, dreamy. I agree, it’s a summer album that's like a dream, but one during a nap in the shade and forgotten 15 minutes later.

As for all the other songs, they all sound like endings to sad movies. I’ve imagined my own ending to Veckatimest: the band riding off into the Western sunset, fading into the distance until it’s nothing more than a black speck on the memory of this summer’s better moments.

grizzly bear - veckatimest

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Ian Barry is the Rosa Parks of Weed

Remember that story about kid who smoked a joint in front of his class that I blogged about a couple days ago? Apparently it has gained worldwide attention and Ian Barry, above, has done much for opening up the national dialogue on marajuana legislation.

Yes, ladies and gentleman, you are looking at the Rosa Parks of weed.

Thanks to blogs, Ian's statements have been multiplied and amplified far beyond what a single individual, much less a 17 year old high school senior, is capable of. A video of the historic deed has surfaced as well (warning: this video is not suitable for minors or people with a low tolerance for young whippersnappers).

And so, the Internet has turned what was doomed to be a stunt worthy of merely yearbook notoriety into a potent statement of rebellion. Is this what political activism looks like in 2009?

Michel Polnareff - Love Me, Please Love Me (1967)

Lykke Li sings 'Little Bit' on the Beach

Use Yooouuutuuuube 2 Trippify Ur Vidz

Props to my bro for showing me this. Basically yooouuutuuube.com converts the youtube video which you input from the url and shows a frame by frame Warholian image in motion. Like, woahhhhh, man. The effect is quite mesmerizing, especially for videos that sync well to music. See for yourself:

• The Clear Light
• Alice by Pogo
• Around the World by Daft Punk
  

Never Knows Best presents: The Clear Light

This is a video I did for my friend rioux called "The Clear Light." It is made entirely of stock footage from a film version of Timothy Leary's The Psychedelic Experience and various other clips I found on public domain. The music is an original song made by rioux in colloboration with Nuuro and Felix Snow.

High School senior fights law, law wins

A fellow lover was seized by The Man today for smoking weed inside a classroom after presenting an essay about the legalization of marijuana. According to the article,

"He then finished his essay, sat down, finished smoking the joint and then ate the end after it was fully smoked."

Not only then did he give up his freedom for The Cause, but like all operatives undercover, promptly disposed of the evidence. Unfortunately, The Man and all his mysterious, omniscient psychic ways knew the crime he had committed and proceeded to arrest him.

The article tastefully mentions his 3.7 GPA and posts the full text of the essay which he read aloud to his class before going right ahead and smoking weed in front of his teacher.

To his credit, the essay is rather good read. He opens by quoting many famous stoners and lovers throughout history, ending his first paragraph with a quote from statesman Immortal Technique:

“Government ties is really why the government lies” – Immortal Technique, The Cause of Death

He then provides a salad of information, debunking many pot-related myths with the appropriate UCLA medical studies while making the classic case that alcohol and cigarettes are far more dangerous substances. He also writes about how much money the U.S.A. would save by easing costly weed patrols (which target minorities) and how much money America could actually make by selling not only the bud, but the hemp product of the cannabis plant.

After presenting a solid case full of legitimate facts, he goes down like a champ with joints blazing. Bravo, 17-year old Ian Barry of Ms. Napier's 1st Period class. You truly don't gibba fuuuck.

Now enjoy this track by Peter Tosh (pictured above) about sticking it to The Man, then light one up for all yo homies that couldn't make it, brah.

Peter Tosh - Legalize It [download]

What the fuck is a Veckatimest?

I've only listened to Grizzly Bear's new album, Veckatimest, once but so far, so deep. It's a trip. A journey down a dark well, as Haruki Murakami might say. So far, they sound like a cross between The National, Beirut, and Sufjan Stevens. Repeated listens may be required before any judgment can be made, but a lot of critics have already blown their load over this album. These sort of critical circlejerks make it a bit hard to form any sort of original opinion on the art without second-guessing your own intuition. It makes the listener ask him or herself, what am I missing? Why don't I "get it?" At that point, the only option is to go deeper into the auditory rabbit hole until you find the right words to describe the mess.

Anyways, here's the album's poppy, upbeat single. It's hard to hate, and easy to love.

Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks [download]

Oh, and Veckatimest is apparently an island off the coast of Massachusetts. Duh.

It's a tightrope, Spud

This morning my local paper, the San Jose Mercury News, ran this story:

Economic downturn makes finding summer jobs tough for teens

As of April, the national unemployment rate is 8.9 percent. But for teenagers ages 16-19 — who are actively, but unsuccessfully looking for work — it's 20.9 percent, more than twice the national average and the highest in a decade, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The "youth labor force" rises sharply in latespring and early summer, as large numbers of high school and college students take summer jobs and newly minted graduates enter the labor market.

But economists note that in a downturn, young workers are often the first to lose their jobs — or not get hired in the first place.

So Me makes good videos

French video artist/graphic designer crew member So Me has got the touch when it comes to making things look fresh. He works primarily with Ed Banger, designing a lot of their flyers and album art, and hes most known for his sick videos with Justice, Kanye, and most recently Kid Cudi. I like this Day N Nite video better than the video for the Crookers version. I think it captures the feel of the original song a lot better.