Wayne & Wax

a sticker on a light blue bicycle that reads "hot girls hate fascists" with the first 3 words in white and the last on red

thinking the kids might be all right

a car just drove past me (in Durham NC) bumping Marley Marl's "The Symphony"! sounds fresher than ever nearly 40 years later.

I wish I could tell you. it's a wild one. waiting on a ruling on this current phase.

poster for a talk I just gave at Duke Law about the lawsuit over dembow. pictured: Bad Bunny, yours truly, and a bit of our reggaeton book cover

the perfect meal to follow a talk about reggaeton and copyright at Duke Law School ;)

my pernil plate from Boricua Soul (American Tobacco campus, Durham, NC): roasted pork, PR style, with tostones, pickled onions, greens, rice & beans, Mac & cheese, & pork rinds

in Durham, the pernil comes with greens, mac and cheese, & pork rinds #BoricuaSoul

gutted every time I hear it played on the biggest local Spanish FM station. they must be paying good, with our money. so gross.

oh, I should add that Hogan's deal was for sheet music, not for player piano rolls. I'm definitely curious now to know how those deals compared. (and, yeah, discussing "c--n songs" is always a huge can of worms. but they affected Joplin's musical marketing too.)

yeah, composers were generally cheated out of fair royalties, unless they had leverage, which Joplin may have had at that time. (Ernest Hogan sold 'La Pa Ma La" for a flat $25 in 1895; it earned thousands. In 1896 he negotiated a royalty deal for "All ----- Look Alike" and made over 100k in a year!)

I hear that, though it would have been cooler if they functioned as a (self-programmable) steampunk DAW rather than a steampunk Spotify

an advertisement from a 1910 issue of Everybody's Magazine for "The Piano That Means Music--The Pianola Piano." The ad copy reads: When people buy a piano nowadays, they buy it for music. The day when pianos were bought as ornaments is past. It is the PIANOLA PIANO that has wrought this change." It continues, in a new paragrap: "Everyone can play the PIANOLA Piano--artistically, humanly--from the moment it comes into the home. Naturally, there, people prefer it to the old style of piano, that took so long to learn to play."

see, e.g., Timothy Taylor, "The Commodification of Music at the Dawn of the Era of "Mechanical Music" (Ethnomusicology
Vol. 51, No. 2, Spring/Summer, 2007, 281-305), which includes the following advertisement from 1910

AI marketing is beginning to echo the makers of player pianos who, a hundred or so years ago, labored (with ads) to convince the public they wouldn't be giving up on their own musicality by letting machines do it for them

a sloppy ad (Bluesky post) for a gen AI "sentence rewriter" that allegedly "simplifies complex sentences and keeps your work unique"; the add is full of hashtags and features an AI generated image of a fetching, light brown skinned student hard at work (smiling broadly)

"and keeps your work unique"

this track is so good. I was actually thinking about it earlier today. totally hear you on the "post-dembow" openness.

Lecture 3 is called "Bass" !! (and will feature Meshell Ndegeocello!!!)

they're going to be showing it at the Carpenter Center soon (!) alongside this (first lecture tomorrow)
mahindrahumanities.harvard.edu/steve-mcquee...

that would make a lot more sense !

lyrics from Rauw Alejandro's track "Caribeño" giving props to Jamaica, Cuba, and Haiti for such music as reggaeton, salsa, and merengue

Rauw really goes there on his new homenaje, "Caribeño" (though Chan Chan is an odd choice for "afromambo"), affirming longstanding Caribbean cultural exchange
open.spotify.com/track/3AMxTv...

we use one a lot for roto-tilling where the tractor can't reach -- and for sickle-bar mowing. the design is a little odd in places, but they're good workhorses.

BCS gang!

and *that's* why he (James Brown, but as "Little Richard") was (originally, ironically) called the "hardest working man in show business"!

a heaping purple bucket of chinese broccoli side-shoots

a blue bread rack holding 10 cleaned napa cabbages, sitting on top of another blue bread rack (overturned)

blue bread rack holding a dozen large leeks

in today's harvest: chinese broccoli, napa cabbage, king richard leeks

Pure bloodlines? Ancestral homelands? DNA science says no. — Harvard Gazette Geneticist explains recent analyses made possible by tech advances show human history to be one of mixing, movement, displacement.

"People’s stories about their history are almost always wrong"
news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...

I was literally just telling/playing students this very thing today!

"fuck ice" if you're nasty ;)

that clip is fantastic, though I wanted more audience. (maybe that was prohibited?) Boston punk 1979!

it's amazing how Canvas will autocorrect things that need no assistance and then fail to help me out when I type "exxcellent"

"Ron Carter Quartet" (with Renee Rosnes, for sure). he was in fine form back in the spring, a true master.

post an unpopular opinion that is correct

going to see Ron Carter in December, for the second time this year

This Meme Reveals Rappers 'Real Names,' Including Cardiga... Do you know the name of your favorite rapper? No, their R...

actually, Cardigan Backyardigan is canon
www.complex.com/music/a/alex...