Lost the morning to a parent-teacher conference at Microkhan Jr.’s school. Now on to shaping my next Wired feature. Back to this space as soon as humanly possible.
Entries Tagged as 'R&B'
Progress Report
November 14th, 2011 · Comments Off on Progress Report
Tags:Earth Wind & Fire·Japan·music·R&B
Goals and Problems
October 24th, 2011 · Comments Off on Goals and Problems
Last day to take advantage of a sweet childcare situation. Trying to churn out a good thousand words worth of book between now and 5 p.m.—four thousand words less than Sinclair Lewis produced during his eight-hour writing stretches, but we can’t all be geniuses. Back soon with the delectable stuff; in the meantime, I once […]
The Next Thousand
September 28th, 2011 · Comments Off on The Next Thousand
Big writing day—if I don’t get this chapter out the door by Sunday morning, the whole house of cards may come tumbling down. Back tomorrow with something choice.
Tags:Dee Edwards·music·R&B
Back to the Land of the Golden Arcs
August 25th, 2011 · 2 Comments
Winging my way back to Queens today, after a truly epic reporting trip in Southern California. Can’t wait to clue y’all in to the narrative I’ve been piecing together—it’s a doozy, to say the least. As I hurtle eastward through the air at slightly subsonic speed, enjoy a classic Sean Price track—yet another example of […]
Transition Game
August 8th, 2011 · Comments Off on Transition Game
One step forward, two steps back with the book project, alas—try as I might, can’t quite seem to make the first-chapter transition from my opening scene to the requisite view-from-30,000-feet riff. Dedicating all of today to hammering my way through the wall, no matter how many thousands of useless words have to get deleted in […]
Tags:Ike & Tina Turner·Ikettes·music·R&B
Scrolls and Combinations
March 22nd, 2011 · 1 Comment
Apologies, but squeezed for time today—have to bolt early to record a segment for Here & Now, as well as arrange a trip out to East Texas for next week. A classic above to tide you over, as you surely count the minutes ’til tomorrow’s post about the new Great Game and the madness it’s […]
Tags:music·R&B·Sylvia Striplin
The Ultimate Tribute
March 14th, 2011 · 6 Comments
I just split my morning between two fruitless tasks: the first an investigation of pending nuclear projects in the developing world, the second an attempt to understand naming conventions in the world of cattle breeding. My curiosity about the latter issue was piqued by news of a bull auction in North Platte, Nebraska, where bovines […]
You Don’t Have to Be Alone
December 6th, 2010 · Comments Off on You Don’t Have to Be Alone
Microkhan has a bunch of A-plus material lined up for the coming weeks, including looks at gossip in Borneo, Korean marathoners, chess hustling, and Orissan labor songs. But today’s a wash due to a Wired deadline, so please ease into your Monday with a humble musical offering: New Birth‘s “You Don’t Have to Be Alone.” […]
A Singer’s Burden
October 27th, 2010 · 3 Comments
I recently bought a bevy of vinyl off a guy in my building. He just showed up at my door with a crate full of records, which I purchased for a relative song after giving the contents only a cursory glance. Turns out there was a lot of junk in there—I am now the not-so-proud […]
Tags:addiction·Esther Phillips·music·R&B
A Queen’s Edge
October 5th, 2010 · Comments Off on A Queen’s Edge
Scrambling to prep for a key interview and finish a Wired essay, so just a quickie this morning. The clip above features the coolest drummer ever to brush a cymbal; the snippet below reveals how a young woman named Courtney Larkin was able to triumph in this year’s Miss National Peanut pageant: On Monday, Larkin […]
Tags:beauty pageants·Bill Withers·food·music·National Peanut Festival·peanuts·R&B
By the Time I Get to Arizona
September 14th, 2010 · Comments Off on By the Time I Get to Arizona
Heading to the rural Southwest this morning for work, so please absorb this dreamy slice of soul as I zoom through American airspace. Back tomorrow, motel WiFi willing.
Tags:Arizona·Black Ivory·music·R&B
The Vanishing Artist
July 19th, 2010 · Comments Off on The Vanishing Artist
(Cross-posted from Ta-Nehisi Coates) I’m eternally fascinated by great artists who seemingly fall off the face of the Earth. Many disappear because they lose battles against their demons, but others simply decide to change paths and opt for stability. Bettye Swann certainly falls into the latter category, as detailed in this excellent 2005 piece from […]
Tags:Bettye Swann·Las Vegas·music·R&B
The Sacred Exchange of Knucklebones
June 11th, 2010 · 6 Comments
We’ve been lassoed into some emergency parenting today, and Microkhan Jr. is tugging on the hem of our deel as we type these very words. So let us just quickly share with you two things that bring much gladness to our collective heart: the above Donny Hathaway gem, an Afro-Cuban spin on “The Ghetto,” and […]
Tags:Donny Hathaway·Genghis Khan·Jamukha·Medieval history·Mongolia·music·R&B
The Sons of Gumby
May 25th, 2010 · Comments Off on The Sons of Gumby
Our beloved WEFUNK just celebrated its 600th show in grand fashion, with sets dedicated to late ’60s soul, Clinton-era hip-hop, and the fine art of locking. Given the show’s Montreal base, they also couldn’t help but throw some north-of-the-border rap into the mix, including the gem above from DJ Format (whose British by birth) and […]
The World Beyond Atlah
April 13th, 2010 · 3 Comments
Tied up in downtown meetings for the rest of the day, so we’ll leave you with the classic Ruby Andrews track above. Back here soon, provided that Microkhan Jr. lets us get a decent night’s sleep. Suffice to say we’re operating at quarter-strength today, due to his 3 a.m. shenanigans. We do wonder how Genghis […]
Days Like This
February 22nd, 2010 · 2 Comments
At some point in the not-too-distant future, we hope that the considerable time we spend on Microkhan will lead to some sort of remuneration (apart from the obvious psychic rewards). But until we figure out a way to turn y’all’s interest in Hmong beauty pageants, Medieval drinking habits, and boxing kangaroos into some sort of […]
Tags:housekeeping·Marvin Gaye·music·R&B
“Make Them Understand the Cost of a Helping Hand”
January 28th, 2010 · 4 Comments
We’ve long been planning a meditative post on an axiom that’s caused us no shortage of angst these past few months: “People always run from what they’re best at.” Those musings will follow eventually, once things on the paying-work end have settled down a bit. In the meantime, take the above soul cut, off The […]
R.I.P. Teddy Bear
January 14th, 2010 · Comments Off on R.I.P. Teddy Bear
This morning’s news that Teddy Pendergrass has passed on comes just months after we first started to discover his silky genius. For years, we considered Teddy Bear the epitome of old-person music, and rarely listened to the records of his that we’d somehow accumulated over the years. (When you’re a vinyl geek, you have a […]
The Tuxedo Years
December 10th, 2009 · 2 Comments
In our never-ending quest to improve Microkhan Jr.’s rudimentary dancing skills, we’ve recently had to call out the big gun—the oeuvre of the Godfather of Soul. In doing so, we stumbled across the gem above, apparently taken from one of Mr. Brown’s early television appearances (back when he treated the medium with far more seriousness). […]
Tags:James Brown·music·R&B
Gone Too Soon
November 11th, 2009 · 2 Comments
We first got turned on to Donny Hathaway by reading the liner notes for The Chronic. We were amazed by how many of the samples were copped from Extension of a Man, and so we saved up some hard-earned cash to buy the album. It’s since become one of our favorites, a platter we’ve spun […]
The Mysterious Mr. Mason
July 15th, 2009 · 2 Comments
Talk about one-hit wonders: the above tune, famously sampled in a couple of hip-hop gems, appears to be the only single ever churned out by Lee Mason & His Orchestra. The group is so obscure, in fact, that it’s often not even credited with “Shady Blues”; the song was apparently re-released in the U.K. under […]
“Feel My Blood Pumpin’ in My Veins…”
July 7th, 2009 · Comments Off on “Feel My Blood Pumpin’ in My Veins…”
Though we’ve largely shifted over to using the Grooveshark widget when sharing music with y’all, YouTube remains a go-to place for some truly rare cuts. A good case in point is Spanky Wilson‘s “Kissing My Love,” which we recently heard while trolling through WEFUNK Show #246. It’s a great prime example of the sort of […]
Tags:Daptone Records·Gabriel Roth·music·R&B·Spanky Wilson·WEFUNK
