M Is FOR MASHUP - RERUN - July 24th, 2013
Massive Merriment Motivates Motown Mashups
By DJ Useo
Over at the SoundUnsound bootleg forum, we're constantly mixing. Early morning, or late hours, we're putting acapellas to instrumentals. It's just what we do. The best part is we come together as community of like-minded individuals. Long in the planning has been the latest SoundUnsound themed mashup compilation. In the past, it's been Punk ,70s, 80s, Divas, and many others. This latest project comes from the nimble brain of SUS super moderator mARKYbOY, who desired an album featuring Motown label artists paired with anything else. It's a highly satisfying feeling to hear the final release of a full album from various international bootleggers. I was witness to mARKYbOY's first utterances upon the release of this new assortment. He simply exclaimed "EXCELLENT!"
I've been involved in the process at most levels and did the final production mastering for 'SoundUnsound Motwon Mashed', so I think I know it better than most. I say it's a hoot and a hollar well worth the hearing. It's been almost three months since the project was begun. Three months of joy, email and phone interaction spent arranging the constant stream of new music, art, and info into a final cohesive success. As soon as it begins you know you're on the right track. The Motown attraction is on full display alongside the thrill of the paired tunes. You get the Temptations, The Supremes, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and plenty more, all skillfully blended into new configurations that tickle your ears. For a quick look at the full tracklist, and a listen to two full disc length preview mixes simply click this link
( www.groovytimewithdjuseo.blogspot.com/2013/07/soundunsound-motown-mashed-all-new.html )
Personally, I had a pretty tough time adjusting to mixing Motown. My first three tracks were just not good enough, I felt. so I began again. That time, I hit paydirt by placing Bob Dylan singing over Martha and the Vandellas. I had created 'Nowhere To Run All Along The Watchtower' (Bob Dylan vs Martha and The Vandellas). Now I was feeling the groove. Many others seemed to thrive with the style as killer mixes like DJ Spider's 'I Wish for Another 25 Miles' (Edwin Starr vs Stevie Wonder) and Voicedude's 'Forever In The Name Of Love' (Level 42 vs The Supremes vs Vanilla Ice) revealed the positive effect the Motown had on us all. Now that the collection is posted and available, I've heard much positive private reaction. In fact, two super-fine bootleggers have asked me to be involved in assembling two additional new themed comps of their own. You know I'm up for it!
Enjoy this Motown Mashed comp, and please tell your friends!
After all, it's FREE!
Mix Of The Week
Chocomang has created two disc long mixes from the Motown comp as previews for y'all. Perfect for streaming while swimming, jogging, or goofing off at work.
Get them
here.
( official.fm/tracks/ohey )
( official.fm/tracks/db9S )
Mashup Tip
Don't mash in the subway. (Don't mash in the pouring rain)
Latest Useo Thing
''Editions Of You Rate' ( Men Without Hats vs Audiosweep ) finds Men Without Hats doing a cover of Roxy Music while accompanied by 60% of Audiosweep' 'Rate'. It gets very lively, and is already known for inspiring foot movement! Plenty of looping and such for those of you who like that. ( I do! )
( official.fm/tracks/aoak )
( www.groovytimewithdjuseo.blogspot.com/2013/07/men-without-hats-vs-audiosweep.html )
Podgornio, The Mashup Psychic Predicts
Tipping DJs for mashups will become the newest fad mainly out of gratitude for Mashup-Germany's 'D.veloped Whatever'.
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Chris Arnade: The wealthy 'make mistakes', the poor go to jail (Guardian)
I left my Wall Street trader job and began photographing drug addicts in NYC. These two worlds have entirely different rules.
Michael Paarlberg: Breaking Bad is a middle-class horror story (Guardian)
The idea that a high school teacher might resort to cooking meth to provide for his family isn't that far-fetched in today's economy. … One internet gag outlines the premise to "Breaking Bad Canada": Walt's doctor tells him "You have cancer. Treatment starts next week." The end. It takes a moment to stop and think that maybe such a reality is wrong to begin with.
Paul Krugman: Picturing the Winners and Losers from Obamacare (New York Times)
How have the right's health pundits responded? Not with contrary evidence, but by telling us things we already knew, and pretending that they are startling and destructive revelations. Some of it simply amounts to saying that there are indeed some people in the northeast corner of my box. Not everyone wins from the policy! Well, duh.
David Schneider: Is being addicted to social media such a bad thing? (Guardian)
The virtual Twitter me is so much wittier and more interesting than the real me.
Hadley Freeman: Time to ditch the slogan T-shirts - they're not big and they're not funny (Guardian)
From inappropriate cute messages on kids' tops to 'rapey' jokes emblazoned across a numbskull's chest, there really is no place for the slogan T-shirt.
Matthew Yglesias: Why Would Anyone Buy a Cassette Tape? (Slate)
Because I'm old and lame now, I don't go to see bands play very much. But Saturday night I rousted myself from decrepitude to hear Kathleen Hanna's new band The Julie Ruin play at Washington, D.C.'s Black Cat club and found myself enjoying the opening act Swearin' quite a bit.
Robert T. Gonzalez: Ancient Roman coins depict sundry sexual acts, but what were they for? (io9)
The racy coins in question are known as "spintriae." A single spintria is typically a little smaller than a modern day quarter. Minted from bronze or brass beginning in early first century CE, each coin depicts a sexual act on one face and a Roman numeral - ranging from I to XVI - on the other.
David Bruce: Wise Up! Letters (Athens News)
John Train, a co-founder of "The Paris Review," once lent his name as a reference for a young woman. One day, he received a letter from the American Library, asking him to contact the young woman and ask her to return five overdue books. Mr. Train handwrote a letter back that said, "I am sorry to be writing you in my own hand, but the machine on which I am used to compose these letters was last seen in the hands of [the young woman]."
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
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David Bruce has approximately 50 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Lovely marine layer rolled in.
Pans Keystone Pipeline
Neil Young
Neil Young declared himself "against the Keystone pipeline in a big way" as he described a recent driving visit to Fort McMurray, home base to northern Alberta's oil sands development.
"The fact is, Fort McMurray looks like Hiroshima," Young, 67, said at an event Tuesday in Washington hosted by Democratic Senator Harry Reid and the National Farmers Union.
"Fort McMurray is a wasteland. The Indians up there and the native peoples are dying. The fuel's all over, there's fumes everywhere. You can smell it when you get to town."
"This is truly a disaster and America is supporting this," Young said of the oil sands.
Young said he drove his hybrid 1959 Lincoln Continental, which runs on ethanol and electricity, up to Fort McMurray while traversing the continent from his California home to Washington over the last two and half weeks.
Neil Young
Prankster Behind Twerking Video
Jimmy Kimmel
Jimmy Kimmel confessed to being the prankster behind a staged twerking accident video, saying his revelation might bring an end to the suggestive move.
Maybe, maybe not. It also remains to be seen whether the clip of a woman apparently set afire while twerking causes TV news programs and other shows to be more cautious about airing unverified videos.
Kimmel admitted on his ABC late-night show Monday that he had created the YouTube clip that drew more than 9 million views in less than a week. He introduced stuntwoman Daphne Avalon, who played fictional, ill-fated twerker Caitlin Heller.
"To the conspiracy theorists on the Internet who thought the video was fake, you're right: The video was fake, we made it up," Kimmel said.
Hundreds of news outlets were punked into showing it, he said. Kimmel marveled that some even pinned the blame for the mishap on Miley Cyrus, who brought twerking to the fore with her performance on last month's MTV Video Music Awards.
Jimmy Kimmel
Interviews Indonesia's President
Harrison Ford
Hollywood actor Harrison Ford interviewed Indonesia's president on Tuesday about environmental degradation for a TV documentary on climate change.
Ford, known for his starring roles in the "Indiana Jones" and "Star Wars" films, is also an environmental activist and a director of Conservation International.
Ford is in Indonesia for the production of a documentary series on climate change titled "Years of Living Dangerously."
He has visited several national forests and parks and interviewed activists, businesspeople and government officials, including Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan.
Hasan was reportedly angered over Ford's criticism of environmental damage to the country's forests. Fires widely used to clear forested land are blamed for regional haze and worsening climate change.
Harrison Ford
Hometown Raising Money For Statue
Roger Ebert
Organizers in Roger Ebert's hometown announced plans Tuesday to try to raise $125,000 to build a life-size bronze statue of the late famed film critic.
The statue would go in front of Champaign's Virginia Theatre, which has hosted the Ebertfest film festival for 15 years. Ebert, a Pulitzer Prize-winning movie reviewer and television personality, grew up in neighboring Urbana and attended the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.
The sculpture will show Ebert sitting in the middle of three movie theater chairs giving his signature "thumbs up." Artist Rick Harney of Bloomington will create the sculpture. Ebert's widow, Chaz Ebert, selected the composition and organizers said she will work with Harney on the design.
Organizers hope to have the sculpture ready to unveil and dedicate at next year's Ebertfest in April.
Roger Ebert
String Quartet Plays Metallica For Protesters
Romania
In a world filled with violent protests, a group of musicians who were part of a demonstration in the Romanian capital of Bucharest offered up a peaceful musical moment.
This footage shows the string quartet taking an informal stage in the middle of the street and playing its version of Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters."
The demonstrators have been protesting a government proposal to allow Gabriel Resources, a Canadian mining company, to make it easier for it to seize people's property and obtain permits for a gold mining project in the Transylvanian village of Rosia Montana.
The project, if it succeeded, would establish Europe's largest open-cast gold mine, AFP reports. The company expects to extract more than 300 tons of gold and more than 1,600 tons of silver.
Romania
Loses Appeal
Google
A federal appeals court said Google wrongly collected people's personal correspondence and online activities through their Wi-Fi systems as it drove down their streets with car cameras shooting photos for its Street View mapping project.
The ruling that the practice violates wiretap laws sends a warning to other companies seeking to suck up vast amounts of data from unencrypted Wi-Fi signals.
"The payload data transmitted over unencrypted Wi-Fi networks that was captured by Google included emails, usernames, passwords, images, and documents," wrote the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco in a report released Tuesday
Google had argued that their activities were exempt from the wiretap law because data transmitted over a Wi-Fi network is a "radio communication" and is "readily accessible to the public."
Privacy experts and industry watchers said this was the first time an appeals court has ruled that it's illegal for a company to sniff out and collect private information from the Wi-Fi networks that provide Internet service to people at home. Google is also the first publicly known company to try.
Google
US Will Destroy Stockpile
Ivory
The United States will destroy its six-ton stockpile of elephant ivory as a way to combat wildlife trafficking, an international fight that often has law enforcement outgunned by well-financed crime syndicates, White House panelists said on Monday.
The ivory - raw and carved whole tusks and smaller items seized by or abandoned to U.S. agents over the last 25 years - will be crushed as part of a push to publicize the illegal trade that threatens wild elephants, rhinoceros, tigers, great apes and other iconic species, said Interior Secretary Sally Jewell.
"This was shocking to me: wildlife trafficking has doubled since 2007, and it's now estimated to be the fourth largest transnational crime in the world," Jewell told a White House forum.
Fueled by increased global demand, especially in Asia, prices for items made from some endangered species have soared. Rhinoceros horn is now worth twice its weight in gold, said Jewell, adding that the United States is also one of the world's biggest customers for illegally traded wildlife goods.
Ivory
Plastic Pounds?
Bank of England
The Bank of England is moving closer to ditching paper pounds and following Australia and Canada into switching to plastic banknotes instead.
The central bank said on Tuesday it would ask the public its opinion before taking a decision in December on whether to adopt polymer pounds that also would be smaller than current notes.
Governor Mark Carney introduced polymer banknotes while head of the Bank of Canada in 2011 and credited the material for a sharp drop in the rate of counterfeiting.
The BoE has issued paper banknotes ever since the central bank was created in 1694 as a way of raising money for King William III's war against France. The first fully printed notes appeared in 1853. Before that, notes were handwritten and signed by one of the bank's cashiers.
Polymer banknotes, as well as being hard to fake, are durable and stay cleaner for longer because the material is more resistant to dirt and moisture, the BoE said, adding feedback so far on the new-look notes had been positive.
Bank of England
Art Thieves Plead Guilty
Romanians
Six Romanians charged with stealing paintings by Monet, Matisse and Picasso from a Dutch museum will plead guilty in hope of getting a reduced sentence, their lawyers said Tuesday.
Lawyer Maria Vasii said they would enter the guilty pleas at the next hearing on Oct. 22, hoping the sentences would be reduced by one-third. They could face a maximum 20 years for the theft.
The paintings have not been recovered. Forensic experts have examined ash from the stove of Olga Dogaru, the mother of the chief suspect, Radu Dogaru. According to authorities, she initially said she burned the paintings to protect her son, but later denied having done so.
Insurers Lloyds of London was listed outside the court Tuesday as a civil party in the trial. Vasii said the Triton Foundation, which owned the seven paintings, has been paid some 18 million euros ($23.8 million).
The stolen works were "Tete d'Arlequin" by Pablo Picasso, "La Liseuse en Blanc et Jaune" by Henri Matisse, "Waterloo Bridge" and "Charing Cross Bridge" by Claude Monet, "Femme devant une fenetre ouverte, dite la fiancee" by Paul Gauguin, "Autoportrait" by Meyer de Haan, and "Woman with Eyes Closed" by Lucian Freud.
Romanians
'Forest Boy' Found
Siberia
Russian authorities have found a young man living alone in a Siberian forest after having apparently spent most of his life living there in a hut with his parents, local officials said Tuesday.
Locals near the town of Belokurikha found the man, who told the local prosecutor that he was born in 1993 and had lived in the forest since 1997, when his family decided to leave society.
But his parents left him alone in the hut in May before he finally went to a nearby village to ask for help when the summer ended, the authorities said.
The Russian media are variously calling him "forest boy" or the "Siberian Mowgli," after the main character in Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book."
Siberia
Blows Up Over Alabama
Meteor
A baseball-sized meteor blasted over the southeastern United States on Monday night, creating a bright streak of light, a sonic boom and a ruckus on Twitter, officials said on Tuesday.
The meteor appeared at 9:18 p.m. EDT over Alabama, traveling at about 76,000 mph. It exploded 25 miles above Woodstock, Alabama, located about 30 miles from Birmingham.
"Objects of this size hit the Earth's atmosphere on a daily basis, but this one happened near Birmingham, which is a fairly decently sized city and lot of people saw it," Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, told Reuters.
Scientists calculated the meteor's orbit and determined that it came from an unknown comet. It exploded so low in Earth's atmosphere that it triggered a sonic boom.
The meteor was too bright to be picked up by NASA's All-sky Fireball Network, which tracks meteors brighter than Venus with 12 cameras in the eastern United States and New Mexico but whose parameters are set to screen out things like lightning.
Meteor
Study Suggests...
Better Dads
In a study to figure out why some men are more involved fathers than others, a team of researchers have found that this trait seems to have a connection to testicle size, suggesting that evolution has keyed men to have a trade-off between mating and parenting ability.
Studying 70 men, who lived with their 1 to 2 year old biological child and the child's biological mother, the parents were interviewed (separately) about how much time and effort the men put into directly caring for the child - changing their child's diapers, feeding and bathing them, staying home to take care of them when they're sick or taking their child to the doctor. The men were then examined with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques to determine their brain activity while looking at pictures of their children, and to measure the size of their testicles. Their testosterone levels were also measured.
The relation wasn't perfect, but those men that were found to take a more direct role in their child's care were more likely to have lower testosterone levels and smaller testicles. Those who did not take such a direct role were more likely to have higher testosterone levels and larger testicles. Although higher testosterone levels are often equated with greater virility, according to the study lead Jennifer Mascaro: "Testes volume is more highly correlated with sperm count and quality than with testosterone levels."
One of the more interesting ideas that this study supports is that men are either more 'geared' towards mating or they're more 'geared' towards parenting. Being better at one comes at the expense of the other.
Better Dads
Prime-Time Nielsens
Ratings
Prime-time viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen for Sept. 2-8. Listings include the week's ranking and viewership.
1. NFL football: New York Giants at Dallas, NBC, 25.4 million.
2. NFL football: Baltimore at Denver, NBC, 25.13 million.
3. "Sunday Night NFL Pre-Kick," NBC, 19.32 million.
4. "NFL Pre-Kick" (Thursday), NBC, 18.03 million.
5. "The OT," Fox, 17.64 million.
6. "Football Night in America," NBC, 14.09 million.
7. "Under the Dome," CBS, 11.15 million.
8. "Duck Dynasty," A&E, 10.46 million.
9. "NFL Opening Kick-Off Show" (Thursday), NBC, 10.13 million.
10. "America's Got Talent" (Wednesday), NBC, 10.03 million.
11. "60 Minutes," CBS, 9.34 million.
12. "America's Got Talent" (Tuesday), NBC, 9.16 million.
13. "NCIS," CBS, 9.11 million.
14. College football: Notre Dame vs. Michigan, ESPN, 8.65 million.
15. "Big Brother 15" (Sunday), CBS, 7.27 million.
16. "Big Brother 15" (Thursday), CBS, 7.24 million.
17. "The Big Bang Theory," CBS, 7.17 million.
18. College Football: South Carolina vs. Georgia, ESPN, 7.05 million.
19. "Big Brother 15" (Wednesday), CBS, 6.75 million.
20. "NCIS: Los Angeles," CBS, 6.63 million.
Ratings
In Memory
Saul Landau
Saul Landau, a prolific, award-winning documentary filmmaker who travelled the world to profile political leaders like Cuba's Fidel Castro and Chile's Salvador Allende, and who used his camera to bring audiences an up-close look at such subjects as war, poverty and racism, has died. He was 77.
Landau, who had been battling bladder cancer for two years, died Monday night at home in Alameda, Calif., with his children and grandchildren, said colleague John Cavanagh, director of the Institute for Policy Studies.
The director, producer and writer of more than 40 documentaries had continued to work almost until his death. He regularly submitted essays to the Huffington Post and elsewhere, sometimes writing from his hospital bed, according to his son, Greg. He was also working on a documentary on homophobia in Cuba.
Landau was also the author of 14 books. While most covered issues like radical politics, consumer culture and globalization, one of them, "My Dad Was Not Hamlet," was a collection of poetry.
His documentaries tackled a variety of issues, but each contained one underlying theme: reporting on a subject that was otherwise going largely unnoticed at the time, whether it was American ghetto life, the destruction of an indigenous Mexican culture or the inner workings of the CIA.
His most acclaimed documentary was likely 1979's "Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang," which examined the effects of radiation exposure to people living downwind from Nevada's above-ground nuclear bomb tests in the 1950s. The film received a George Polk Award for investigative reporting and other honours.
One of the documentaries Landau told the AP that he was most proud of was "The Sixth Sun: Mayan Uprising in Chiapas," which looked at the 1994 rebellion by the impoverished indigenous people of southern Mexico. Landau travelled to Chiapas to interview, among others, the masked revolutionary leader known as Subcommandante Marcos.
His 1968 documentary "Fidel" gave U.S. audiences one of their earliest close-ups of the revolutionary leader who installed Communism in Cuba.
In 1971, Landau and fellow filmmaker Haskell Wexler travelled to Chile for a rare U.S. interview with Allende, who had just been elected his country's president and who would die two years later in a military coup.
Although he made more than three dozen films, Landau, who graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, said he never set out to be a filmmaker.
"I didn't set out to be anything," he said in July. "I just fell into it."
After moving to San Francisco, he was at various times a film distributor, author, playwright and member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe.
Two of his earliest books, "The New Radicals" and "To Serve The Devil" (both co-written with Jacobs), led to his being approached by a San Francisco public television station that wanted a report on ghetto conditions in Oakland. The result was his first documentary, 1966's "Losing Just The Same."
A frequent commentator on radio and television in later years, Landau was also a professor emeritus at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, where he taught history and digital media.
Saul Landau
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