Far be it for me to add to the exponentially growing hysteria surrounding this current swine flu outbreak – really, I just wanted to make a picture of a pig wearing a mask. So I did – but I felt it was my duty as a citizen of the world to share this PSA with as many people as possible.

Released by the U.S. Public Health Service in 1976, it’s a cautionary tale of how a guy called Joe managed to single-handedly infect the whole world with the deadly swine flu virus, causing zombies to roam the earth feasting on the brains of their victims who they held down with their trotters which had replaced their hands and feet and who liked to listen to Coldplay and U2 and etc etc etc.. Or something like that.

Either way, it’s worth listening to regardless of whether you’re skeptical or susceptible. In the first instance, it’s funny, and if you fall within the latter group, it’s helpful.

Play the clip here.. (60 secs long)

(Still not sure what swine flu is? Have a look at the ever reliable wikipedia page for all the actual facts.)

This type of thing would probably be sufficiently covered in a simple tweet but TweetDeck just spazzed out on me so I thought I’d take it back to the old school and briefly blog about it.

YouCube has a simple premise, and a simple delivery, but it’s rather fun. Load up a cube with 6 links to videos on YouTube and they get loaded onto each side of a cube which you can spin around and rotate as they play back. That’s it really. The fading between the audio channels as you spin the cube is a nice touch and despite a few issues in Firefox for me (the cube doesn’t always seem to actually load up/couple of videos occasionally drop out?), it’s quite smooth. Definitely worth a look anyway. Peep my ‘Wu-Cube’ what I made. It’s great.

So, a while ago, before people like Benni Benassi and Eric Prydz started relying on tits, sweat and slow motion tits and sweat in their promotional material, dance music videos used to be brilliant. You know, back when artists appeared in their own videos, and not just as a seedy looking fat man in the midst of a club of semi-naked girls. Or if they weren’t in the video, it was because the video consisted of groundbreaking 3D animation which more than made up for it. Back when the dangers of strobe lighting effects triggering seizures were irrelevant. When anything was possible. I miss those days.

So in a loose attempt to revitalise the dance music video genre and drag it out of the slump that they’re currently in, I present my top 7 dance music videos from the 90’s. A selection of the best of the best, each one has carefully been considered against the following criteria:

Got any salmon?
How well does it embody the ethos of dance music? Is there a clear use of salmon in the video? (high). Or no dancing at all? (low).

de l’Épée factor
Were the production crew clearly deaf? (high). Or does the video actually have any relevance to the song? (low). (Named for Charles-Michel de l’Épée)

Dworkin-ism
Distinct lack of tits, arse, or any other excessive sexy time allusions in order to try to promote the music. (high). Or, does it look like a promo for ‘nuts’ magazine? (low).

You’re not alone..
Its influence and clones etc.. Also known as the ‘dolly’ element. Because of dolly the sheep. (Two birds, one stone. Genius.) More influence = more sheep.

Sound basis for evaluation, I think you’ll agree. There’s also the factor of whether I like the song or not, but I’m trying to be objective. Honest.

Anyway, Let’s begin by pushing the limits at number 7...

Last night, BBC Radio 1 & 1xtra broadcast 5 hours of hip-hop as part of their celebration of ‘30 years of hip hop’. It was alright.
Most of the quality came from an hour long mix from Jaguar Skills, featuring tracks from the past 3 decades. Superb, and available to download courtesy of the man himself here. The quality of the mix is undeniable, but some of the tracks toward the end (i.e. recent times) are a bit iffy.. Maybe that’s just me and my distaste of modern music, who knows. Either way, worth a listen. Great stuff. I’m not sure how different it is from his ‘Hip-Hop Odyssey’ 1979-2006 mix from a few years ago (I’d need to listen to it again) but to be fair, that was brilliant in itself and pretty hard to beat so he could be forgiven if there are any similarities .

The rest of the show, hosted by Zane Lowe & Tim Westwood, took the form of a top 30 countdown of the ‘most hip hop’ people. It was generated by a ‘consensus vote from influential people in hip hop’ including Dizzee Rascal, Rick Ross, Busta Rhymes, Zane Lowe, Tim Westwood and more. Comprehensive indeed. There are definitely some questionable entries and positions but generally, I was actually surprised at how good it is. Bear in mind this was broadcast on Radio 1 which is generally hip hop retarded, and you’ll share my surprise.

The list, in full, is as follows.. complete with links to their featured songs in case you’re not sure who they are..

30. Q-Tip
Founding member (and the most notable one?) of A Tribe Called Quest.
Featured track: Can I Kick It? (ATCQ) from People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm.

29. N.W.A.
The world’s most dangerous group..
Featured track: Express Yourself from Straight Outta Compton.

28. Ice Cube

Don mega.
Featured track: Today Was a Good Day from The Predator.

27. De La Soul
Started the D.A.I.S.Y. Age, repping native tongues.
Featured track: The Magic Number from 3 Feet High And Rising.

26. Beastie Boys
Known to let the beat.. dddddrooppp!
Featured track: Intergalactic from Hello Nasty.

25. Wu-Tang Clan

From the slums of Shaolin.. The RZA, the GZA, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Inspectah Deck, Raekwon The Chef, U-God, Ghostface Killah and the Method Man! (& Masta Killa )
Only at number 25?! Loco.
Featured track: Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthin Ta F’Wit from Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).

24. DJ Premier
Producer extraordinaire. He IS that boom bap NY sound.
Featured track: Just To Get A Rep (Gang Starr) from Step Into The Arena

23. Lil’ Wayne
Biggest selling artist of 2008. “best rapper alive”? Fucks sake.
Featured track: A Milli from Tha Carter III.

22. LL Cool J
Don’t call it a comeback, he’s been here for years.
Featured track: Mama Said Knock You Out from Mama Said Knock You Out.

21. Snoop Dogg
Laaiiid back..
Featured track: Gin and Juice from Doggystyle.

20. Rakim

He was a fiend, before he became a teen..
Featured track: Paid In Full from Paid In Full.

19. Barack Obama

Featured track: Victory Speech.

18. Run DMC
Featured track: Run’s House from Tougher Than Leather.

17. James Brown
The most sampled man in the world. Praise be to the funky drummer.
Featured track: The Payback from The Payback.

16. Puff Daddy
Don’t worry if he writes rhymes, he writes cheques.
Featured track: Bad Boy For Life from The Saga Continues….

15. Public Enemy

Featured track: Fight The Power from Fear of a Black Planet.

14. Spike Lee
Doing the right thing.

At this point, I stopped listening. Not in a protest or anything, but because things to do and that.. 5 hours is a looong time. I have the final ‘chart’ entries but the featured songs from here on are my choice as opposed to the tracks that were played on the radio.

13. Nas
Half man, half amazing.
Featured track: Nas Is Like from I Am...

12. Kool Herc
The innovator.
Featured track: Old school documentary.

11. Afrika Bambaata
Zulu nation overlord.
Featured track: Planet Rock from Planet Rock.

10. KRS-One

Knowledge reigns supreme over nearly everyone.
Featured track: Sound Of Da Police from Return of the Boom Bap.

9. Notorious BIG
Mo money mo problems.
Featured track: Party & Bullshit.

8. Tupac
Sippin’ hennesy and ridin’ on his enemies..
Featured track: 2 Live And Die In L.A. from The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory.

7. Eminem
How the fuck can he be white? He don’t even exist..
Featured track: Role Model from The Slim Shady LP.

6. Chuck D
Different to Public Enemy(?) Never hear a brother like him go solo.
Featured track: Welcome To The Terrordome from Fear Of A Black Planet.

5. Kanye West
Seriously?
Featured track: 2 Words from College Dropout.

4. Grandmaster Flash
Grandmaster! Cut-cut-cut faster!
Featured track: The Message from The Message.

3. Russell Simmons
Bigger and deffer.
Featured track: EPMD – Rampage ft. LL Cool J from Business As Usual.

2. Dr Dre

The motherfucking D R E.
Featured track: Keep Their Heads Ringing from Friday Soundtrack.

1. Jay-Z
Meh.
Featured track: Can’t Knock The Hustle from Reasonable Doubt.

And that’s that. If you’re in the UK and reading this within the first week of this being posted, you can go and listen to the various hip hop shows that formed this mini celebration over at the BBC here. The Sarah Love UK hip hop show is a standout. Live cyphers from Jehst, Verb T, Mystro and some others..

Word.

^ That is a blue whale’s eye, at actual size. Courtesy of the WDCS.

They’ve made this piece of flash that lets you float around the whale’s ample body – life sized. It’s huge but doesn’t actually seem as big as I thought it’d be. It doesn’t really help that you can only ever see a tiny portion of it at any one time, so it’s hard to put it in context. Nonetheless, mildly fun to play around on, and it’s for a good cause so no complaints here

A little, previously unknown and quiet Buckinghamshire village by the name of Broughton has hit the news for ’standing up’ to Google in the latest example of hysteria surrounding their much vaunted (by me) street view service. A handful of residents there successfully managed to deter the Google camera car by forming a vigilante type mob and waving pitchforks and crosses at it. Or something like that..

… once Paul Jacobs spotted the Google camera when he glanced out his window on Wednesday, the photographers did not get far. The car was an unmarked black Opel, but the 360-degree camera on the roof was a bit of a giveaway. Jacobs rushed round banging on neighbours’ doors, and soon had a posse surrounding the driver. When one of the residents called the police, there was a swift U-turn. Jacobs said there had been three burglaries in the last six weeks: “If our houses are plastered all over Google, it’s an invitation for more criminals to strike.“

via

In fact, since the UK version launched a few weeks ago, there have been a multitude of privacy rows in the press and plenty of nervousness in affluent leafy suburbs. This idea that being able to see a photo of a house will cause crime is all too oft cited. I don’t know if anybody has pointed out to Paul Jacobs that burglars have been successful on at least 3 occasions in recent times, without the benefits of street view, but it seems that he’s made his mind up, and has possibly also never heard of logic. So who am I to argue? Also, the fact that burglars are generally opportunistic creatures slightly puts a dampener on the idea of stripy-topped villains looking for targets on their iPhones and then driving to them with the built in satnav.

Nonetheless, the media love this type of shit. I don’t remember such a fuss over the initial launch of street view, but then maybe that’s because it wasn’t in my country. I mean, there were some complaints about photos but most people seemed to accept Google’s promise that they blur any faces and personal stuff and that they would remove any image on request. They still have that promise, and a few people here have taken them up on it. Notably, the guy spotted coming out of a sex shop. Incidentally, how did he find himself on Google? Surely he must have started up streetview and went straight to look at the shop front of his local porn merchant? Who does that? Anyway, at least some people are content with letting Google continue their work and waiting to see the results before getting all twisted. Also, who the fuck cares about a house in Broughton? And surely the place is even less private now that it’s been all over the news(?) The residents don’t seem too fussed about having their soul captured by the evil beings with cameras, as long as those cameras don’t have a multicoloured company name in a bad font on the side.

(* not original ‘John Holmes’ face. replaced to maintain his privacy.)

I for one, love streetview. I’ve been using it for years now; mostly fueled by holiday planning (the views of L.A. are great) but also just because it’s there. I’ve literally spent hours looking at film locations, places I’ve heard about in songs, potential holiday destinations, places I’ve been, random interesting sights, etc.. I’m not trying to pretend that that’s a cool way to spend time, but it can be fun, and more pertinently, it’s harmless. The technology is great, and until the court case that features a burglar confessing about the map he created of spots to run up in (complete with directions), then I will maintain my view that Broughton is one village that has the idiot/normal ratio the wrong way ’round.

I stumbled onto these videos by Keith Loutit sometime last year and thought I’d blogged about them back then. But apparently not. I should’ve done though, because they’re great. Then I saw them mentioned again last week and I’m captivated again.

I’m assuming that they’re made from video footage which has been split into frames which have then digitally edited to look like tilt-shift photography, and then put back together again as a complete film. Regardless, they look brilliant and every one is worth a watch.

Go and take a look at the series on vimeo. Superb stuff.

(photo from here)

* or, most of the ones that end up on TV are

Firstly; protests should happen. Protests can be good. Get out there and get heard. etc etc etc. But do it properly.

Having been semi-raised on on a diet of NWA and Public Enemy, I’m always down for fucking the police and pointing out their jokeness. In the last few months alone there have been plenty of reasons to criticise police tactics/methods/fuck ups: such as this, and this, or this, maybe this, or this, and definitely this. All awful examples of what can happen when you give a badge to a bigoted fuckwit and each of those fuckwits deserve to share a cell with a Schillinger for a long long time. But they’re not representative of police in general. Some po-po (that’s what I call them. It’s affectionate) are believe it or not, just trying to do their job, and we’d be massively worse off without them. But that’s not really the point (I seem to have diverted myself).

My point is; Protest = good. Protesting about bent cops = good. ‘Protesting’ and needlessly targeting cops = bad. Also, ‘protesting’ in the wrong direction = very bad. It negates the original aims of the demonstration and makes me want to side with the opposition just because I don’t want to be associated with wankers with poorly designed banners and kazoos.

Take this twat for example.

I would happily advocate any and every attempt by that police officer to break that guys nose.

Similarly, there was some footage on the BBC news last night from the G20 protests in London yesterday, that had a bloke in a mask, repeatedly blowing what sounded like a kazoo, really loudly, inches from a policeman’s face. As a quick test, I’d like you to think of the most irritating person possible. Think of how angry they make you. Think of how much you’d like to smash their irritating little twattish face in.

Now give them a kazoo.

(artists impression)

Can you imagine what that policeman felt like?! The man has surely redefined what ‘restraint’ means.

It’s people like that, and people who smash up computers from RBS branches who give protests a bad name. Unsurprisingly, they’re the ones that end up on the news and in the photos because a bit of violence goes a long way toward making a story exciting and newsworthy. But it consequently takes away airtime from people who have the ability to actually articulate why they’re protesting and why people should support them.

Quick example:

• This video of people ‘rioting’ outside the Bank of England and chanting what sounds like ‘arsekicking’(?) has 2,574 views.
• This video of ‘Low Key’ actually speaking about stuff has 301 views.

That means that riots are technically 8.5 times more exciting than dialogue. Of course.
(Incidentally, the lyrics at the end of that Low Key video are from this track – ‘Long Live Palestine‘, which is dope. Score 1 for hip-hop maintaining a political voice in 2009. And it thankfully has 54,000-odd views which makes hip-hop 20 times better than riots! Brilliant.)

Ugh. I dunno. I’m just increasingly baffled at the number of people who vent their frustrations/anger/opposition in ways that just simply do not help. Why can’t they just stay in and write a blog post about it? Much more productive.

I’ll leave you with a piece of media from the G8 in 2005, just because it timely popped on my iTunes and still seems apt.

Fuck it, rioting can be fun

Saw this today and marveled at the genius of it for a while. Thought I’d share.

It’s basically a collection of songs that have been produced from audio snippets off of YouTube – and the corresponding music videos which are made up of the actual original video footage. I’ll let Kutiman explain it himself;

It’s really nicely done and actually surprisingly listenable-to. It’s also a nice touch having the credits (i.e. links to the source material) because watching the original clips on their own highlights how much of an achievement this project is. Rather mundane videos of people playing guitar in their bedroom or singing to themselves come together to form a decent piece of music. Go watch. http://thru-you.com

Inspired!