my chart for the past week looks something like this:
Rage Against The Machine
The news of their reunion got me all nostalgic. I’m still unsure about the Renegades stuff but it’s a minor blip.
Klashnekoff
I DL’d a new track called ‘Terrorize the City’ featuring Kyza & Kool G Rap, from the Lionheart album coming out soon. At first I couldn’t really get down with the beat but the more I listen to it, the nicer it sounds. So that lead me back to Focus Mode, which I’ve been listening to a lot.
Sean Price Jesus Price Supastar. What more needs to be said(?) It’s great.. a worthy followup to Monkey Barz.
Killah Priest
I haven’t really listened to much from KP for a while, and I haven’t really enjoyed any albums after Heavy Mental, so I thought I’d give something else a chance. Went back and listened to Priesthood and was thoroughly disappointed. Not that it’s bad per se, but it’s just kinda blah.. even the Horsemen track doesn’t save it.
Fall Out Boy
Thought I’d better start listening to some emo-pop-punk-dance-funk or whatever it’s called nowadays, seeing as I’ll be seeing them in a month or so. So I got Infinity On High, the new album, and it’s actually not too bad. But don’t say I said that.
Extra bonus thingy here!
While I’m still struggling to come up with something to make this last.fm thing worthwhile on my site, I’m toying with various ideas.. One of which is this: Featured MP3 of the week! Dunno if it’ll last. We’ll see. But anyway, to kick it off - here’s my most listened to track from last week:
Aries Spears (who was apparently on the sketch show MADtv, and isn’t the latest thing to come out of Britney) does some ridiculously spot on impressions of LL Cool J, Snoop, DMX and Jay-Z. The last two are particularly good but the whole thing’s worth a listen.
There’s nothing like the prospect of a new Wu-Tang Clan album to get my attention and while there’s been plenty of journalists in the last 6 years (since Iron Flag) who have tried to prey on that, it seems like it’s actually going to happen this summer. At least, according to RZA (at least, according to Billboard).
“People want something that gives them an adrenaline rush,” RZA said in a statement. “We’re here to supply that fix. How could hip-hop be dead if Wu-Tang is forever?”
Damn skippy.
I’ve always thought, and always will think that Wu-Tang Clan is nuthin’ to fuck wit’.. There’s just nothing which comes close to the impact they’ve had on hip-hop, and more specifically, on me. I’m not going to turn this into a teary-eyed nostalgia trip, but they’re the reason I got into hip hop and as such, have provided the soundtrack to my life for the last 10 years (in one way or another). Unfathomably dope.
So yeah, here’s hoping to a return to form in 2007. Iron Flag didn’t really leave much of an impression on me so as long as it’s better than that, I’ll be happy. Pretty much all the members have had some quality music out lately, so it shouldn’t be too hard to maintain a decent level should it(?)
Random trivia: the picture used for this post is the same picture I used on my very fist website ever. It used to take about 4 minutes for the whole picture to download whenever I tried to load the page, and then I had several meticulously crafted hot spots on each member (it included every strand of ODB’s hair) which took you to other pages about them. It was great. Humble beginnings and all that..
edit :: Oct 18th
Get the MP3 for ‘The Heart Gently Weeps’ off the new album.. It’s the one with the ‘Beatles sample’.. Download here
Kinda random but I stumbled on this at Spy’s Spice and felt compelled to post a photo from the collection. How much fun does that sloth look(?) And people say they’re ugly!
They’re so odd and yet so great. I’m not sure I like the fact that their fur harbours various other species which live off their dirt but still, I like sloths.
This is great fun. Made by Dassault Systems using their own 3D package thing, Virtools, it’s an explorative (to an extent) look at the Great Pyramid and the theories about how it was built. Very nicely done. You do have to download the appropriate plugin which may not be to everyone’s taste but it is worth it
It seems that the best is yet to come however, because when you try to go inside you get some blab about March 2007. Definately one I’ll keep in mind.
That may well be the longest title I’ll ever use on this blog and while it’s almost certain to ruin the perfectly adhered to aesthetics of this site, it’s worth it.
The Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) program received a flurry of publicity last week thanks to various news stories about it, and I just wanted to add to the linkage. It’s implemented by the Zoological Society of London and, in their words:
The EDGE of Existence programme aims to conserve the world’s most Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) species by implementing the research and conservation actions needed to secure their future.
ZSL researchers will work closely with scientists from countries in which EDGE species occur. The programme also aims to train students from developing countries to monitor and protect threatened species.
On the website, you can find a list of 100 species which are on the verge of extinction and frankly, it’s an upsetting read. I genuinely just feel shit when reading stuff like this. It’s depressing that we (humans) can be so stupid. I mean, every case is a travesty, but it’s the ones which you see are being driven to extinction because of hunting etc which really make you question whether a worldwide plague of bird flu would be such a bad thing.. Humans are shit.
There’s a definite risk of me being hypocritical with this post.. Seeing as I probably don’t contribute to the cause as much as I could but does that really matter(?) Blah.. I’ll save that discussion for another day. Like I said up top, I just wanted to lend a link to this project. Go and read up about these astounding animals and do whatever you can to help.. even if it’s just spreading the word..
If they are lost there is nothing similar to them left on the planet. It would be a bit like the art world losing the Mona Lisa - they are simply irreplaceable.
I’ll leave you with the Bactrian Camel.
There are less than 1000 of these superb animals living in the wild. The area of the Gobi Desert in North China that they call home has been used for half a century as a nuclear testing site and yet they’ve still managed to survive.. They’ve even adapted to be able to drink salt water (making the Bactrian unique among the mammal world) and yet still their numbers are in decline. They’ve done all they can to adjust to humans taking away their habitat and it’s about time we made allowances for them. Goto http://www.wildcamels.com to read more..
So, Rage Against the Machine are reuniting for a one-off performance at Coachella. Good for them. The only band in the world ever who have managed to make repeating the same six lines sound epic (*cough* Killing in the Name*cough*). Really though, Rage are freakin dope. Undeniable.
Seeing them live would be immense. I was even quite looking forward to seeing Audioslave last year at Reading in the vague hope that they’d do some Rage tracks.. although, having said that, I’ve heard Chris Cornell try to be Zack de la Rocha and it’s not pretty so maybe it’s a good thing they pulled out. Even the rest of the line-up looks quality.. DJ Shadow, El-P, the Roots, Ghostface, Pharoahe Monch, Brother Ali.. blows any of the UK festivals out the water as far as I’m concerned. Click the flyer on the left for the full listing. Should cater to any taste.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the main photo up there is by Branimir Kvartuc. It’s nice.
I’ve now successfully migrated to the (gs) at (mt). All is well. It wasn’t exactly plain sailing but at least it’s done. The main problem I had was with my allcity site; specifically handling sessions when users log in. For some reason it allowed people to log in okay but wouldn’t actually store the username variable. Well, it would store it, but wouldn’t echo it onto the page. Fairly easy workaround, using other variables to store the name blah blah blah.. Took ages.
The other problem I had came when I upgraded Wordpress to 2.1. Yes yes, the text you’re reading now is my first post using the latest WP version. Hopefully you wont notice any difference, because I spent quite a bit of time trying to get it all working as it used to work and looking like it used to look. A couple of plugins no longer worked / I accidentally deleted the entire images directory / my .htaccess file went a bit iffy / and I kept getting 500 Internal Server errors. All got solved eventually but I could’ve done without them to begin with.
Just a quick one to say that I’m finally upgrading from the shared-server to the grid-server hosting thing from mediatemple. They released it quite a few months back but I’ve held off; partly because of the things I’ve readaboutit, and partly because I didn’t realise it was a free upgrade for existing customers. Foolish me. Still, the delay should pay off, because hopefully by now they’ve had enough time to iron out the creases. I’m looking forward to a smooth transition (fingers crossed).
Pop back in a few hours and we’ll see how it went..
