mark lafaro

A vinyl copy of Voodoo by D’Angelo

what a masterpiece

“songs in the key of life” level of musical perfection

his music changed it all. there’s everything before Brown Sugar, and then everything that came after

a black and white picture of D’Angelo with smoke billowing in the background

devastated. so glad i got to be alive while this man was making music

so glad you dig it Marc!

All three 70s Tincoãs albums on vinyl

this picture was a long time in the making, props to Selva Discos for helping me complete the set this past weekend.

if you’re unfamiliar, all three albums are brilliant, some of the finest music to ever come out of Bahia and some of the most beautiful, haunting harmonies ever recorded

David Mancuso

A picture of the hardcover edition of Pynchon’s Shadow Ticket held up in front of a bookstore

*finally*

Junior Mendes - Toque Tropical [Brazil, AOR/Funk/Boogie] (1979)

Junior Mendes - Toque Tropical [Brazil, AOR/Funk/Boogie] (1979)
https://redd.it/hggawe
https://youtu.be/8WGKX-COVFo

rotation: 09.2025 by Kel on Apple Music Playlist · 16 Songs

september playlist is ready....

very apropos that Rodney got no respect

so help me god if Rappin Rodney isn’t #1…

Rizzo the rat holding a slice of pizza

in my head they all sound like this guy

A reminder of how much great writing late-stage capitalism has robbed us of.

Facebook post from Kaleb Horton, September 18, 2017: Toys R Us is probably going out of business this year. I'm fascinated by the collapse of retail, because what it really signifies is the collapse of the 20th century. The reason I pushed to profile guys like Harry Dean Stanton, Merle Haggard and Chuck Berry, was that writing about them is a way of writing about the 20th century, and how different it was from where we are now. How shockingly different, in retrospect. The migration out of the south, the descent of the Dust Bowl, which was a Biblical plague; the millions of people who were killed during World War Two. Monoculture, and the idea that a great episode of a television show would be seen by *half of all people.* The arrival of flight, and the end of horses. Homes without electricity. Coming of age without computers, without television. Listening to the radio for entertainment. The 20th century was a long time ago and it's a ghost now. It's a ghost you see in the places you wouldn't expect. It's seen in towns that were bypassed by the freeways, the dusty little towns out west that still have old diners and motels and payphones. It's seen in the places that we left, places where mines shut down, places where tourist attractions died off. It's seen in Bakersfield with Buck Owens' Crystal Palace and it's seen in Roswell, which stubbornly maintains the relics of the '90s UFO boom. Things like that won't be around forever. Someday owners will die and towns will burn and they won't be rebuilt. And it's difficult to suss out what those things are, because they're on roads, physical and metaphorical, that we no longer travel.

The ghost sightings happen in stupid places, unexpected places, and uncool places. A few months ago, I went with Marie to the Toys R Us on Victory Blvd. in Burbank, which still looks exactly like it did in Back to the Future in 1985 somehow. It's not nostalgia that you see there, it's just a customer base and economic model that's aging and won't be around a lot longer, and it's *boring.* There's no reason for anyone to ever go to Lancer's, the little diner by that Toys R Us. Because it's not good. People go there out of tradition, and old habits. 80 and 90 year olds go there. We were lining up for a Nintendo, which is still a hard thing to keep stocked in stores. Toys R Us was actually the best place to obtain one, because it's no longer a place children beg their parents to take them to. When we went in, wham, there it was. The ghost of 1996. I was 8 years old, for a fraction of a second. The feeling wasn't nostalgia, it was a kind of temporal dislocation. A confusion. But it wasn't an immaculate 1996, it was a fading 1996. It was lonelier than I remember it. It's time for Toys R Us to go out of business. It was time ten years ago, fifteen. There are reasons to be nostalgic about the 20th century. We weren't plugged into so many wires, so many screens. We were a little bit closer to the process of manufacturing and agriculture than we are now. We made more things by hand, and our goals as people were uniquely audacious and driven by mad, desperate power that was temporary and had to end.

But the 20th century was hopelessly cruel and soaked in blood. The 20th century gave us flight, but it also gave us bombs that can end the world and Richard Nixon and his evil sidekick Kissinger and it gave us new mutations of slavery and race and class subjugation and it gave us useless, disgusting monuments to Confederate slavers and traitors and cowards. It gave us President Trump, who wouldn't exist today without New York City's collective cocaine addiction in the 1980s. I want to find the ghosts, not because I miss the past -- the good old days can't return because they're imaginary and what you really miss is youth and if you're lucky a warm feeling of safety -- but because I don't even know what things we'll lose, or when we'll lose them, or how long we have to document them. I know ghosts when I see them. Toys R Us for the mundane side and the Salton Sea for the widescreen wasteland side. But I have absolutely no idea how many there are. I figure people go first, then places. Those are the things we have a limited time to physically document and historically examine and preserve on film. The ideas will go away much slower, and some of them may be eternal, like cold wars. But those are a lot less fun because you don't get to drive to them.

And now I'm just spelunking around and here's this Facebook post by Kaleb Horton from September 2017. It was three months after MTV dumped its freelancers. I'm sure it would have been a piece there; instead he posted this on FB just to have it written out: Toys 'R' Us as societal microcosm.

i remember this piece when it came out, and thought of it when i just recently came across this video of George modifying the lyrics to “Here Comes the Sun” to honor his friend Emerson Fittipaldi

what a fun writer, and what a loss for all of us

m.youtube.com/watch?v=lqj2...

samurai/kung-fu vhs is becoming as big of a problem as the records 😅

been looking for a copy for a while now, was hesitant to pull the trigger on eBay for $30-40 — happy i waited, this was $2 at a flea market.

A movie poster for Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance depicting Ogami Ittō cradling Daigoro

but THE find was this Japanese OG poster!

it’s like i was a magnet for Ogami Ittō ephemera

VHS copies of Ghost Dog (The Way of the Samurai), Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance, and David Lynch/Julee Cruise/Angelo Badalamenti’s Industrial Symphony No. 1 DVD copies of Shogun Assassin 1&2, Shaolin Rescuers, and Five Deadly Venoms

legendary run of in-the-wild finds while i was between apartments

#vhs #dvd #physicalmediaisking

THIS IS THE ORIGINAL 12" MIX OF FEEL THE REAL. IT FEATURES JOHN CLEVELAND HUGHES ON KEYBOARDS, RANDY BRAMWELL ON BASS, PAUL DELONG ON DRUMS, BOB AND FRED BOYER ON VOCALS, KUNG FU ON VOCALS, MEMO ACEVEDO ON PERCUSSION AND DAVID BENDETH ON GUITAR this was recorded in 1978 at Thunder sound in Toronto Canada. Later, it was released on Type A Records and became a #1 jazz funk record. Clayhalll music/Socan Type A records Tunecore COPYRIGHT. DAVID BENDETH "FEEL THE REAL" ORIGINAL 12" MIX

a thread of sickass bass lines you say?

m.youtube.com/watch?v=A5l4...

between those two words you have the vague descriptor for most NZ hops

“dank”

Hermeto Pascoal, Eccentric and Prolific Brazilian Composer, Dies at 89

"As word spread of Mr. Pascoal’s fondness for complex harmonies, dense orchestrations and zigzagging melody lines, as well as his versatility and unusual appearance, he became an object of fascination among musicians, a phenomenon that continued until the end of his life."

haha stealing this 😂

RSD Picture Disc inevitable, flippers will have ‘em up for $80 on eBay in minutes.

i’m waiting for the standard black 💅

“it’s not entirely clear how this happened.”

friend, it is a straight line from the election of Ronald Reagan

people: you been keeping up on current events?

me:

thanks for opening up my eyes 🙏

Oh 100% there were some tears of joy in there

Ace of Base 🤝 Wu Tang

For the Children/Is Forever