The Incredible Blog

8/31/07

I’ve been eating the lunch buffet at Tandoor a lot lately. At first I thought the restaurant was called Portland Tandoor, but it seems like they are going for Tandoor Indian Kitchen. Other than the India Chaat House, Indian food options downtown have been largely uninspiring since the brief life of Ashoka Palace. My first experience at Tandoor was underwhelming, but I’ve returned a lot lately. Despite my vegetarianism limiting me to three entrees and appetizers at the buffet, I have been really pleased with quite a few of the dishes. I especially like it when they throw in some South Indian specialties. And they’ve been playing non-stop Himesh Reshammiya videos lately, so how can you go wrong?

IK

We will be having Maga Bo back at Atlas on 10/13. When we had him in January it was crazy. I’m too lazy to link to my previous blog post on that party, so if you’re interested, you’ll have to dig for it.

8/17/07

SPOILERS AHEAD

Many posts ago I referred to the Planetary comics series by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday as having ended. I was incorrect. Over the last two days I re-read what I thought was the complete 26-issue series. I was doing a little online research just now before writing some of my impressions on the series, when I learned that there will be a 27th epilogue issue. Well, the “epilogue” part explains why I thought the series had ended, since the major plot gets all wrapped-up in issue 26 (except for the fate of Ambrose Chase). Hell, the cover of #26 has Elijah Snow about to place the final piece into a puzzle.

I was very slow to pick up on what Ellis was doing with this series. I am an incredibly dense, incredibly literal reader. My favorite example of this comes from my high-school reading of John Barth’s “Night-Sea Journey” story from his book Lost In the Funhouse. Until I got to class I thought it was a story about some fish-men on another planet swimming towards a union with a goddess figure. I later learn from my classmates that it is the story of fertilization as told by the sperm.

Oh.

Likewise, when I first discovered Planetary it took me a while to realize how much the series is Ellis playing with other people’s creative properties, whether superheroes, or pulp heroes, in slightly disguised ways. His take on the Fantastic Four is brilliant. In fact my main problem with the series is that Randall Dowling (the Reed Richards analogue) is set up as such an invincibly brilliant, all-seeing opponent, yet he is ultimately defeated far too easily.

The entire Planetary team has already been defeated by the Four in the past, completely off-panel, making it seem like the Four easily took them all down. When Elijah Snow is captured and has memory blocks implanted in order to keep his team alive, Dowling tells him that as opponents, Planetary are merely an amusing diversion. In issue #25, Ellis finally reveals the nature of Randall Dowling’s powers. Rather than physically stretch, like Mr. Fantastic, Dowling’s “mind stretches, and worms out, and lays eggs. And reproduces. Anyone who’s ever been within a hundred feet of Randall Dowling . . .probably is Randall Dowling.” Elijah was Dowling’s prisoner, and Dowling’s opponent, so with a set-up like this, one would assume that he is under Dowling’s control. Apparently not, nothing ever comes of this speech. When Elijah finally confronts Dowling in issue 26, Dowling threatens “I can get into your brain before your powers harm us.” That is all we get from him. He never actually does anything. In 26 issues Dowling has been set-up as the ultimate opponent, and all he does at the end is get outwitted and defeated. He never uses his powers once, in any form. This is a major disappointment to me, as I would have wanted to see these mind-stretching powers in use, in a creative Ellisean way.

That’s it, that’s my complaint. Otherwise, I love the series. So much of it comes down to Cassaday’s art and Laura Martin’s colors. The concepts work because they are so visually effective. Cassaday does a great job of giving new visual interpretations of classic character concepts. I can’t imagine the series working with any other artist. He really is in a class of his own.
IK

8/11

Since I always complain about how the Portland print media usually ignore any sort of international music event, I have to give credit where credit is due. Brett Campbell is a byline that has cropped up in the Oregonian and the Willamette Week in the last year. I have been pleasantly surpised recently to see international music concert previews in the papers, and his name is usually attached to them. If it wasn’t for his write-up of the Andy Palacio show at the Oregon Zoo last Wednesday, I wouldn’t even have been aware of it happening. Thanks, Brett. (I later learned Luciana Lopez wrote it up on her oregonlive.com blog, so thank you, Luciana.  -She later wrote to say, “i just wanted to note that i also put him in my five live column on aug 3 (complete with pic). because, frankly, i totally feel you on the need to spotlight a broader range of music in pdx!” You go, Luciana!)
I am not a fan of Andy’s music, but I am a big fan of Garifuna music aka punta, aka punta rock. Andy is the very mellow, feel-good face of Garifuna music, and the only Garifuna artist available through mainstream music channels in the US. In fact, he announced from the Oregon Zoo stage that his album has officially entered the Billboard world music chart. Let’s say you live in another country and the only Rock’n’Roll artist available is Sting, or Dave Matthews. You wouldn’t know that rock’n’roll could be the Ramones, or Blonde Redhead, or The New Bomb Turks, or whatever. Garifuna music is like that; there are many artists, and many styles, but Andy Palacio is all you will find in the USA. There is one website for punta music called garinet.com, but it has not been working for me lately, so I have to get all my punta CDs from a Garifuna DJ named Oscar who lives in the Bronx. Thank you, Oscar.

Even though I like my punta percussion-centric, and brimming with hyperspeed-polyrhythms, I went to see Andy Palacio, since I will probably never get another chance to hear live Garifuna music in Portland. The fact that including the bassist, there were more guitarists than percussionists, made it clear that this was not my preferred style of punta. When I saw Garifuna Legacy in Livingston, Guatemala in 1999, I don’t remember a single guitarist, just two keyboardists, and a battery of percussion. The traditional punta group, Los Juveniles de Garifuna, from Livingston, were all percussion, except for melodies played on a conch shell and chanting. -Andy had no turtle shells!- Traditional punta involves turtle shells hanging from a percussionist’s neck that he plays with sticks, in addition to rattles, and several sizes of drums. Andy Palacio’s group did have a guy on rattles, one guy sitting with a traditional drum, one guy with a mixed drum kit, a bassist, and three guitarists. I was really hoping for a stronger rhythmic attack from Mr. Palacio in a live setting. No dice. But Andy is a charming performer with a great spirit, and a real passion for sharing Garifuna music and culture. The crowd was loving it, there were even several Belizean flags, and Andy commented when he saw Belikin beer from the stage. His songs were slowish, with a gentle, Caribbean vibe. The whole time I was watching the stage I found myself wishing that the band would launch into a Garifuna Legacy cover, tripling their pace in the process. I kept singing Garifuna Legacy chants while watching Andy. Despite this, I decided he was probably the best Garifuna musician to spread the music to the middle-aged-with-children crowd in attendance. I might have preferred something harder and faster, but if Garifuna Legacy were to take the stage, they would probably clear everyone who wasn’t up for the speed and intensity. I left with very warm feelings for Andy, and his efforts to share Garifuna culture with us whiteys, but I still left halfway through to go home and listen to Garifuna Legacy CDs.

I love the highly syncopated polyrhythms of punta. I had heard punta rock several times travelling through Belize, and always excitedly asked whoever was playing it, what it was they were listening to. When I heard it booming from the beach in Livingston, I rushed on to the sand floor of one of the beach shack discos, set afire by the punta rhythm. I had heard Aziatic’s “Chatty Chatty” at the Baron Bliss day celebration in Belize City a few weeks before, and promptly approached the DJ to find out what it was, but when I heard it the second time in the disco thatched shack, it was an epiphany of lysergic energy. As I white-boy danced in ecstasy at the center of the dance floor I wondered why all the black Garifuna dancers were staring at me with “What the fuck?” expressions on their faces. I wasn’t the only whitey tourist at the beach shack, so I didn’t think it was because I was a white boy. After dancing for a while with people eyeing me warily as if I was invading their territory, I realize that every single person on the dance floor was coupled except for me. Ohhhhhhhh. -It’s a couples dance- no wonder everyone was tripping out on my solo dance floor exhibition.

To my eyes the dance called punta looks like two people welded together at the crotch, where both hip regions are buzzing like hummingbirds in a locked rhythm, while the rest of their bodies are entirely still. In fact, the men try to look bored and uninvolved while they are crotch buzzing their partner. While the genitals are buzzing against each other, the couple slowly rotates in a circle, although I never saw any foot motion to suggest how their bodies were moving in a circle. It was like magic. I assumed everyone in the village was monogamously partnered, since the dance was so erotic. I later learned that everyone on the dance floor was single, the only signifier of a monogamous relationship (according to Livingston musician Denis circa 1999) is when the woman reverses herself, and grinds her backside up against the man’s crotch.

Thanks to the perreo, that is now just 14-year olds having fun.

IK

8/13/07

Thanks to everyone who came down to Holocene on Saturday to give our guest DJ Joro-Boro a sweaty Portland welcome. The wonderful Luciana Lopez of the Oregonian reviewed the show. In the nearly four years Atlas has been around, no one has ever brought a photographer and reviewed our night. Little do most people know that Atlas is Holocene’s longest running dance night. Only Tart comes close to our longevity at that club.

Luciana showed her reporter’s mettle by arriving early and staying until nearly 3am. You are not going to see many music reporters putting in that kind of effort on a DJ event. Thank you, Luciana.

Scene at Holocene Opens a World of DJ Beats by Luciana Lopez

The Portland Mercury wrote a feature on this Saturday’s special Joro-Boro edition of Atlas.  Thanks to Chas Bowie for calling attention to this show.
Check it.

So I still haven’t finished Third Coast, or Blue Monday: Fats Domino and the Lost Dawn of Rock ‘n’ Roll, and instead I tore through Tales to Astonish: Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and the American Comic Book Revolution by Ronin Ro. I realized while I was reading it that I have probably read every book Ronin Ro has written, even Gangster, his collection of hip-hop essays. The only one I may not have finished is Raising Hell: The Reign, Ruin, and Redemption of Run-D.M.C. and Jam Master Jay. In fact, I realized that while I was pretending that I had been focused on finishing the Southern hip-hop and Fats Domino books, I had finished reading several other books, one of which was Ro’s bio of Dr. Dre. He certainly consistently writes about people and things I am interested in, even if I have my criticisms of his work.

The book Tales to Astonish really hit me with just how much of the licensed properties that make billions of dollars for the companies that own Marvel and DC came from Jack Kirby’s brain, and the man was a freelancer who owned the rights to none of them, and made a page rate fee for creating the bulk of the Marvel Universe, and still-vital chunks of the DC Universe (yielding material for the current DC mega-events). What’s so sad is that he co-created characters like the X-Men, Captain America, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Silver Surfer, the Avengers, Black Panther (the first black superhero was wasn’t a 1940’s black face stereotype), and even an early version of Spider-Man called Spiderman which eventually became the character developed by Steve Ditko and Stan Lee, yet he nor his family will ever receive a cent of royalties of all the money these characters make their corporate owners.

Jack Kirby is a legend who blew me away upon first exposure. My grandfather gathered comics thrown away by people while doing his newspaper route and my grandmother gave me an assortment when I visited them once as a child. In the batch was New Gods #2 which instantly wowed me; Metron, his Mobius chair, the gods trapped on the edge of the Source Wall. Boom! (Tube.) I don’t know that I had ever paid attention to an artist’s credit in a comic book before, but one comic was enough to have me remember the name Jack Kirby. Jack was my first “favorite artist,” until some time later I picked up a copy of Uncanny X-Men 140 and discovered John Byrne’s work.

Born Jacob Kurtzberg, the man changed his name to Jack and proceeded to get jacked. Poor Jacob. Stanley Lieber did a lot better. The book makes a point of how effectively “Stan Lee” took credit for all the Marvel characters, and continues to this day as a million-dollar-a-year consultant for the company. To drive the point home even further, I was describing to a friend in Philly what the book was about, and when I mentioned all the superheroes Jack and Stan created, he said, “Yeah, they were all invented by Stan Lee. I’ve never heard of that other guy.” So sad. I got really emotional reading about all Jack’s efforts to stay afloat over the years, while his creations raked in millions for those that had nothing to do with bringing them into the world. At least Stan Lee had a salary; Jack was always freelance, and never owned or received royalties for any of his creations.

As a kid I loved the cartoon series Thundarr the Barbarian, and the book described Jack’s having created many of the villains on that show, which I didn’t know at the time. One of the bad guys, Lord Argoth of a Thousand Eyes, was so visually astounding for children’s television at the time, it makes total sense that he was a Jack Kirby creation.

I was also lucky enough to stumble upon issue number one of OMAC as a child. See the following images for an idea of how much of an impact that had on my little child mind.

I lifted these images from this blog post.

Jack Kirby was the first creator to give me the idea of becoming not just a comics artist, but a comics writer and artist. So many comics are created by separate writers and artists, that as a child, that was my only concept until I read the credits for New Gods #2. Also in elementary school I discovered Frank Miller’s Daredevil, and Jim Starlin’s Captain Marvel and Warlock comics, which furthered my appreciation for comics writer-artists. Up until I graduated from high school there was no other thought in my mind but that I would be a comic book writer and artist. I just thought I would go to college first, and get a solid academic education. After I left for college I never created another comic book again.

IK

Andaz, Andaz, Andaz . . .

Almost 5 years. July is technically our five-year anniversary, since it was July of 2002 when we threw our first bhangra dance party at Lola’s Room. We celebrate our anniversaries in November, because that is when we started at the Fez Ballroom.

Anjali’s first set was a very atypical (for Andaz) selection that included the new State of Bengal and plenty of British Asian hip-hop. I went on at 10pm and promptly cleared everyone with my first song. And they stayed cleared for quite a while. I worried that no one would dance until Anjali went on in an hour. Often I will get people to dance from 9pm-10pm when I am DJing the early slot, so playing to an empty dance floor from 10pm on was really unnerving. (Flashback to opening for Karsh Kale years ago. Other than one bhangra song, people kept off the floor for my whole set. When Anjali went on everyone mobbed the floor. Pay no attention to the white boy in the corner choking on a shotgun.) When I finally got people back on the floor I would clear them again with my next song. The whole first half of my set was like that. I don’t know if I have ever failed so badly at keeping people on the floor at Andaz. New Shinda hip-hop didn’t work, Bombay to Goa did. The night was very slow to get started. I don’t think the dance floor was really going until I dropped “Do U Wanna Partner” from the Partner soundtrack, which is ironic, because I am suspect of the song’s cheeziness, and not at all sold on it. I played it out of curiosity to see how it would go over. Very well, apparently. The only stellar mix of the night I can take credit for was going into “Bluffmaster” after that. Easy enough, since they ride the same Pon De Replay-derived riddim.

There is so much new filmi I never quite get around to playing at Andaz, and I really wanted to make sure that didn’t happen this time. The tricky part is that no one is really looking to hear my new favorite Bollywood songs. Everyone wants Dhoom 2 and the Don remake which do nothing for me, to put it mildy. People request songs from these soundtracks so much, they probably think we don’t know them, or aren’t up on them. The joke is that for months before they were released I was going to Indian stores in different cities asking if either of them had come out yet. When I finally got my hands on them I was quite disappointed, especially with Dhoom 2, which I thought didn’t have a single decent song on it. Of course when they came out, no one was requesting them, but a year later, that is Portland Hindi-song requesters’ idea of what the latest, hottest stuff is. Yuck. Against my better judgement I did play the “Khaike” remake very late in the night, but by the time I played it I doubt anyone who requested it was still around.

Normally I don’t play much filmi until later, when the Desis start arriving in force. However, I was getting such a positive response from the new filmi I was playing during my early slot that I ran with it for the rest of my set. I got in “Dekhoon Tujhe To Pyaar Aaye (Remix),” “Imaan Dol Jayege,” and “Thare Vaste (Remix)”(which got a lot of screams when the chorus came in), but didn’t make it around to the songs I love from I See You, amongst dozens of others. Unfortunately, since many of the Desis weren’t there yet, they missed out on the most concentrated filmi block of the evening. Once the Desis arrived, it was the Panjabis who ran things so aggresively from the stage, it was hard not to want to keep them happy. That means filmi lovers suffer.

In my first hour I got a Daler Mehndi request. There is usually at least one person requesting his songs at a typical Andaz. In five years only one half of a Daler Mehndi song has ever been played at an Andaz night. Anjali would never bring him or play him. I once played half of a dhol-heavy remix of “Ek Dana” and then felt so mortified, I pulled it. This time I told the Daler-requester we save Daler for weddings, and the requester actually laughed. Normally I get nothing but hostility when I explain that there are certain artists we don’t play at Andaz. I took it as a good omen that the guy took my refusal with a smile. No one else requested Daler Mehndi all night.

Anjali was all over the map, even throwing in “Reggada” from the new Outlandish, and a Panjabi 2-Step track from Panjabi MC’s Steel Bangle in honor of DJ Tarsier, who was in attendance. We used to play a lot more Panjabi 2-Step at Andaz, but because of the narrow focus and aggressiveness of both the bhangra faction and the filmi faction, little else gets played. Atlas becomes our forum for those sorts of sounds now.

Like I said, the Panjabis were running things this time. The stage was packed with bhangra dancers, and who wants to clear a stage full of dancers? Anjali and I still managed to squeeze in a fair amount of filmi, but no doubt nowhere near enough to please the Dhoom 2 and Don remake crowd. Anjali keeps saying we should throw a separate filmi party. I think filmi-lovers are so convinced that all we do is play bhangra, that they wouldn’t believe us even if we did throw a filmi-only party. They’d probably think we would still be playing bhangra.

Speaking of bhangra, “Putt Jattan Da Jawan” off Original Edit went OFF! Twice. Anjali didn’t realize I had already played it, but the second time through the Panjabis went so crazy you would hardly know it was the second time. This was very notable to us, because when Anjali last played that song at Basement Bhangra in NYC, the Panjabis there hardly moved. I decided then and there that it must not be a big hit. Well, I was wrong as far as the Oregon/Washington Panjabis are concerned, because the energy level was nuts the two times that song was played.

I squeezed in four tracks from the new Sukshinder Shinda throughout the night, so at least I did something right. Sukshinder Shinda, Preet Brar, and Surjit Bindrakhia finished off the last dancers. It used to be that filmi dominated the last hour at Andaz, but all the Singhs in attendance are shaking up the format in a big way.

I like playing both bhangra and filmi at Andaz, but the bhangra and filmi factions in attendance have very little patience. Often Panjabis will be in our face complaining the moment we play a filmi song, and filmi-lovers will complain the second there is a bhangra song. Just because the two musics are “Indian” doesn’t mean they are a natural fit for a party. It is difficult for me to accept that people might leave our party unhappy because we try to cover both bases.
IK

As long as you accept that everything is a fiction, wikipedia can be such a great tool for referencing lots of different information. I was talking out of my ass to Anjali about how Himesh Reshammiya came out of nowhere to rule Bollywood. Tonight I pull out 2002’s Humraaz and see Reshammiya’s name on the cover. According to the wiki his music director credits go back to 1998, by 2004 he cranked out 12 in a year, and according to my half-assed, bleary-eyed accounting, he has been credited as music director on a Bollywood soundtrack 36 times since January of 2005. It was also 2005 when he started doing playback singing, and all of a sudden his career and his prolificness just explode. The wiki does a pretty good job of summing him up positively and negatively, from my experience. I totally understand why people would dislike his voice, and his style, and his music. I totally understand how monomaniacal he his in writing a certain song over and over, but amongst all his songs, I can definitely find plenty that I adore, despite all the chaff. (And honestly, a lot of it comes down to Akbar Sami’s techno-house remixes, who despite operating in a style I am not drawn to at all, manages to take melodic songs and consistenty turn them into stompers that I appreciate far more than the originals. Himesh is smart to work so closely with the guy. They’re a great team for electro-techno-pop-vocal-house songs, something that makes me cringe just to write it.

Turns out that he seemed like a mystery to me because he waited until July 2007 to give his first media interview. All according to the wiki, of course. But my favorite part is his commitment to creating a new music school system: “Reshammiya is planning a “Himesh Reshammiya School Of Music”, which will have ten divisions including Rock, Sufi-Rock, Indian classical vocal, instrumental, pop etc. Each division will have three kinds of curricula (professional, amateur, and hobbyists). Reshammiya is planning eight schools, each on a 25,000 sq. ft. premises in the four Indian metros^[18].”

People who hate Reshammiya should be terrified now. A multi-city school system devoted to teaching his course in music instruction. He agrees with Ravi Shankar in practice, since Ravi said the traditional student-teacher relationship would have to change if Indian classical music is to survive in the 21st century. He realized most people couldn’t do the whole-life-devotion thing, and would have to study as part of a busier lifestyle. Himesh offers three levels of instruction, based on time commitment. I appreciate the awesome utopian societal transformation education model. Placing something in society that’s functional, that can teach a great many people. Good thing to do with his money. Wonder how the idea will survive the transformation to reality. I hope it results in more songs like “Dekhun Tujhe To Pyar(Akbar Sami Remix),” and less like “Just Chill.”

Despite my cringing at the use of English in his songs (“Shaka Laka Boom Boom”) he will break the English language market in a big way, eventually.

“The first is of the launch of the H.R.School Of Music. We have state-of-the-art malls and multiplexes but no such school for music. My father, Vipin Reshammiya, who is the backbone of my success, had dreamt of this way back in the ‘70s when he was a musician and composer and had pioneered the use of electronic instruments in Indian film music. I have been fortunate enough to be in a position to make his vision a reality.”

“When I first came in as an 18-year-old TV serial producer with Andaz they wrote me off saying that a kid like me could not survive among giant producers. But Andaz and most of my later serials were huge hits and they had to eat their words, since I was also the story writer and the music director of their hit title-songs.”

-Himesh Reshammiya

IK

The wonderful Luciana Lopez of the Oregonian wrote a feature on us in the 7/27/07 edition of the A&E.