Tag: music

#REVIEW: Tupac Shakur, the Authorized Biography, by Staci Robinson

On By Luther M. SilerIn Music, Reading, ReviewsLeave a comment

I’m not generally the type to gatekeep, but it’s not hard to find out whether someone is a Tupac fan or not. Ask them his birthday.

June 16th, 1971/ Mama gave birth to a hell-raising heavenly son/ See the doctor tried to smack me but I smacked him back/ my first words was thug for life, and Papa pass the Mac

That’s the first lines of Cradle to the Grave, the penultimate track from his album Thug Life, and … okay, you can be a Pac fan and not know that line right off, but I think more of us do than don’t. And I’ve taken a moment to myself on more June 16ths than not, since he passed away. Not a big thing, mind. Just a moment. But he made sure we all knew his birthday so I figure it’s worth remembering.

There have been a lot of words written about this man since his death. Take a look at Amazon; a search for “Tupac books” will provide you with half a dozen self-published books about him, mostly full of conspiracy theories, and any number of other works written by more, uh, authoritative entities. It was the words Authorized Biography on the cover that got me to pick this one up; turns out Tupac’s mother Afeni Shakur hand-picked Staci Robinson to write this book, which immediately gives it a hell of a lot more authenticity than the usual.

Part of me didn’t want to read it, to be honest. Pac is one of a very small number of people whose deaths made me cry. I don’t remember exactly where I was when I found out Kurt Cobain had killed himself. I don’t remember where I was when I found out Christopher Reeve or Stan Lee had passed. I remember where I was when I found out about Chadwick Boseman, but there were no tears. I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I found out Tupac was gone. I wasn’t completely certain I wanted to revisit everything, to be honest.

And the thing is, it’s not going to be that difficult to write a biography of Tupac Shakur that doesn’t properly respect him, “authorized” or not. Afeni Shakur died in 2016 so it’s not as if she was around to review the manuscript. A whole lot of people he was close to are gone, as a matter of fact. And … well, let’s be real. Pac was messy. At best. He wasn’t the violent, unrepentant criminal that the news media portrayed him as, but he had a hell of a self-destructive streak that was showing itself very early in his life and that he never really got control of as an adult, particularly in his last few years. If he hadn’t been shot in Vegas in 1996, the cops would have gotten him by now. There was never a universe where Tupac Shakur lived to die of old age, and he knew it.

It was a moment, the day when I realized I’d outlived him.

This is a worthy memorial to him, I think. Robinson had access to what must have been an enormous volume of Pac’s own writings dating back to his childhood– one thing I’ve heard about him from every single person who ever knew him is that the man was never without a notebook close to hand, and could shut out the rest of the world when he got something in his head that needed to be written down. I’m not going to dig up the video right now, but Shock-G tells a great story about Pac disappearing for a while, walking around looking for him, and finding him in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet, buck naked, and writing lyrics in a notebook.

The book is stuffed full of poems and fragments of lyrics and drawings and other writings, so many that I’m pretty confident that I’d recognize Tupac’s handwriting if you put it in front of me. It’s difficult to write biographies of writers and musicians, honestly, especially when they died young– it’s easy to fall into a rhythm of and then he wrote THIS, and then he wrote THAT, and sales charts and blah blah blah, and the book ends up in a lot of ways being a history of his intellectual development as much as anything else. He could have been one of history’s greatest intellects, born at a different time and in different circumstances. Robinson talks about his voraciousness for reading and his compulsive need to write in a way that, fifteen years ago, would have put me in mind of Thomas Jefferson and nowadays can’t help but remind one of Alexander Hamilton.

I never knew that he’d gotten married while he was in jail. Never knew that he’d dated Madonna, either, which I find hilarious. And I fell down a hell of a rabbit hole this afternoon when I realized that the book never mentioned Juilliard– I knew that he’d attended, but not graduated from, the Baltimore School for the Arts, which was where he met Jada Pinkett, who became a lifelong friend, but I thought that he’d attended Juilliard at least briefly. This story turns out to be false, and I’d love to know where the hell it came from– if you search for “Tupac Shakur Juilliard” you’ll find dozens of people confidently revealing that he’d gone there, often under a full scholarship, but Juilliard doesn’t seem to know about it, and it’s not mentioned on Wikipedia, and it wasn’t mentioned in the book. Pac never graduated high school, as it turns out, although he did eventually get his GED. I know I’ve told people that he went to Juilliard. I really do wish I had a way to track down the source of that story.

If I have a criticism of the biography, it’s that the book ends as abruptly as Tupac’s life did; he dies on the literal last page, and while I don’t think Robinson had any responsibility to get into any of the rumors and wild conspiracy theories about his death, especially once The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory(*) came out posthumously, I feel like something about the police (lack of) investigation and his legacy would have been warranted. His ashes are buried in Soweto, in South Africa. I didn’t know that, and I found out from Wikipedia today, not from this book. The man has released more albums since he died than he did when he was alive; I feel like one chapter in his book after his death isn’t asking too much.

That’s what I’ve got, though. No other real criticisms, and while I wasn’t initially sure I wanted to read this, in the end I’m glad I did. I haven’t taken the time to listen through his discography in a while, and I’ve been bobbing my head to Me Against the World while I’ve been writing this. All Eyez On Me is next, and that one needs to be LOUD, so I may need an excuse to take a drive for a couple of hours. We’ll see. In the meantime, this is well worth your time and money.

(*) If you really want to gatekeep Tupac fandom, ask somebody what the actual name of this album is, as I think most people just call it “The Makaveli album,” and I admit I just typed out The 7 Day Theory and had to stare at it for a minute to figure out what I’d left out.

Tonight’s rabbit hole…

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocyLeave a comment

… is speakers.

The new computer has shipped, and will be here by next Friday if not sooner; the estimates keep moving up, which is perfectly fine by me. I realized today, though, that while I don’t have a monitor problem (I can struggle by with two monitors after the old computer goes away; I’ll be fine) I do have a sound problem. The audio on my iMac is actually quite nice, when the fucking app isn’t crashing at least, so I don’t have any external speakers set up because I’ve never really needed them. The audio on my two (currently) supplementary monitors, though, is garbage, and given that there is music playing approximately 90% of the time I’m using the computer, that’s not gonna work. So that’s another X bucks, where “X” represents … well, I’m still trying to figure that out, because trying to figure out speakers when you can’t listen to them is bloody annoying. People are picky about sound, and their ideas don’t always align with one another, y’know?

(Part of the problem: achieving “better than the monitors” is cheap if that’s all I’m shooting for, and that’s what I should shoot for if I want to eventually put a new third monitor back into the setup. But if I’m sticking with the two I have, I should buy good speakers, which will be more expensive, but how much? and arrrrrgh.)

First world problems, I know, but I’d rather obsess about this than the carnage that was my math finals today.

#REVIEW: Orgy of the Damned, by Slash

On By Luther M. SilerIn Music, ReviewsLeave a comment

I commented to my wife last night, on the eve of the release of Slash’s Orgy of the Damned, that I was super psyched about the album coming out, and I felt kind of odd about it. She asked why, as she does, and I pointed out that he’s had quite a few solo albums since his Guns ‘n’ Roses and Velvet Revolver years (this is number six, as it turns out) and as I own exactly none of them I couldn’t explain why I was so excited about this one in particular. Nonetheless, I’d found out it was coming out a couple of months ago and had been checking on a regular basis since then to see if it had magically come out early.

I genuinely didn’t remember what had gotten me so hyped about it. Then it came out this morning, and I bought and downloaded it immediately. As it turns out, Billie Eilish also has a new album out today, also downloaded immediately, and I chose (poorly, as it turns out, because Billie’s music doesn’t really lend itself to highway driving in my car) to listen to the Eilish album on the way to work. I queued up the Slash album on the way home, and the first song hit.

Oh.

Oh.

Slash– yes, Guns ‘n’ Roses Slash, Velvet Revolver Slash, sexy faceless top-hat big-hair yes-that-Slash, fucking Slash Slash, released a blues album.

Motherfucker.

Yeah, that’s why the fuck I was excited, because some of you with similar tastes as mine are already flailing around and happydancing and spending money, and how I managed to discover that Slash had a blues album coming out and then forgot it was a blues album while still somehow intensely anticipating its release anyway is an open question,(*) but now that it’s here I might actually listen to it more than Dark Matter this week. I mean, maybe not, but it’ll at least come close.

As far as I know the album is entirely covers, mostly of blues standards, although Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes does an absolutely stunning fucking version of Steppenwolf’s The Pusher, which is definitely bluesy as hell but maybe isn’t quite a standard. But he does Hoochie Coochie Man with Billy F. Gibbons, and Born Under a Bad Sign with Paul Rodgers, and Papa Was a Rolling Stone and Stormy Monday, and did you know Iggy Pop was, if not actually still alive, at least still recording music from beyond the grave? Because he does a version of Awful Dream that probably doesn’t live up to Lightnin’ Hopkins but is definitely sung by a corpse while Slash is playing guitar.

Okay, every track’s not amazing. But then there’s Key to the Highway, sung by someone just named Dorothy, who I need to know more about, and Demi Lovato is on here for some reason? And if you haven’t gone out and bought this yet, I’m probably not going to talk you into it, but I really need to go back and check out the rest of Slash’s solo releases, because he truly is one of the most amazing guitarists alive and this album is an absolute delight and there’s no reason to think the rest of his solo work isn’t similarly amazing. Go get it.

(*) It is possible that the fact that the thing is called Orgy of the Damned might have something to do with it, as there are approximately 92087346181 titles available in the English language that are going to immediately scan as more blues-adjacent than “Orgy of the Damned.”

Guess what I’m doing tonight

On By Luther M. SilerIn MusicLeave a comment

Some bits and bobs

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics, TeachingLeave a comment

My head’s all over the place right now, so let’s do a bullet list.

  • Indiana voted on Tuesday. The Previous Occupant managed 79% of the Republican primary vote against an opponent who dropped out two months ago. I remind you that I Know Nothing About Politics before saying this, but it’s amazing how the polls say one thing and literally every other thing about this election says another.
  • Meanwhile, I was assuming my choice for Senate would lose because Indiana would choose the white guy, and they didn’t! Not only did Valerie McCray win, she won solidly, getting about 2/3 of the vote.
  • The sex pest won his primary too, unfortunately. I am probably just going to leave State Senate blank in November. Surprisingly, there is no Republican candidate, but there is a Libertarian running, and not only is he a Libertarian, he’s an engineer, which means he’s a jackass. It is possible to be either and not be a jackass but it is not possible to be both.
  • Today was a better day at school, not least because all of my knuckleheads from yesterday were excluded from class today. Today was the Math NWEA test, too, and for all indications it looks like it … went well? Possibly quite well? I won’t know for sure until tomorrow morning because it takes 24 hours for results to be fully available to teachers but damn near every kid I talked to showed growth.
  • Meanwhile, I’m definitely taking the high school Mathematics Praxis test this summer. My boss hinted that we might have enough 8th graders taking Geometry next year to be able to make a class section out of it, and I will fight anyone who tries to take that class away from me. That means I need to get licensed to teach it, though, so there’s a test to pass and some paperwork to get done. I can take the damn thing from my house, though, which is spectacularly good news.
  • I have chosen violence, and will be wearing a shirt that just says KENDRICK to work tomorrow. I’m expecting fireworks. It’ll be fun.
  • The final meeting of my little club of gay weirdos at school was today. We had a pizza party. I thought I had ordered far too much food. They each turned out to be a million locusts wearing skin suits, and everything I ordered was gone in seconds. I’m really going to miss these kids.
  • We had a fight in the hallway toward the end of the day, and I raised my voice to such a level clearing the hallway that I was hoarse for all of fifth and sixth hour. I’m hoping I can talk tomorrow.

Okay. That sounds good. I’m gonna go read now.

On nepotism and Willow Smith’s EMPATHOGEN

On By Luther M. SilerIn movies, Music, ParentingLeave a comment

Fun fact: under certain circumstances, I’m not at all convinced that nepotism is a bad thing. Take sports, for example. My understanding is that there’s been some debate about whether Lebron James’ son Bronny ought to be entering the NBA draft or not. But here’s the thing: maybe (I have no idea, and don’t intend to check) Bronny can use his dad’s no doubt impressive influence to get drafted higher than he might be otherwise. But if he can’t perform at the NBA level, he’s not going to perform at an NBA level. There’s nothing Lebron can do if his kid goes out there and averages two points and six turnovers a game. He’s not gonna get playing time, and if he does, there are a billion people out there who are going to be losing money when he’s on the court and eventually it’s going to catch up with him. I remember when Bob Knight insisted on recruiting his son Patrick. Patrick dragged down the team. It was a terrible fucking idea and IU’s basketball program paid for it.

It seems like the place where nepotism is the biggest problem is in politics and business, along with those parts of the entertainment business where, y’know, knowing things can be useful. There are too many examples here for it to be really necessary to list any, but nonetheless, the previous occupant’s wastrel children and Meghan McCain come to mind immediately. You don’t even know about Meghan McCain because her dad was good at something. You know about Meghan McCain because her grandfather was good at something. Similarly, Eric Trump would be living in a trailer park if his grandfather hadn’t been rich. Go find a picture of Rudy Giuliani’s kid sometime. He barely even looks human.

Which brings me to Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith’s children. They have tried, tried oh so hard, to make Jaden Smith a thing. Jaden Smith’s not a thing. He’s not gonna be a thing. Because in order to actually be a thing in the entertainment industry he’d have to be talented, and if he is talented I have yet to see any evidence of it. Which is why he doesn’t show up in things that don’t have his parents’ money and influence behind them.

Now let’s talk about Willow.

Okay, you would never have heard Whip my Hair if it wasn’t for Willow’s parents. Fine. But do you happen to remember how that story ended? The kid shaved her head in the middle of the tour so that she didn’t have to perform the song any longer. She’s got all kinds of interviews talking about it, but I’ve always enjoyed hearing Will discussing it here.

Willow just released empathogen, a … jazz album? I have her two previous albums; I haven’t listened to anything earlier, although I think I’m going to have to bite the bullet and dive into her work before I discovered her on lately I feel EVERYTHING. Her last two albums have been punk rock, and they have kicked ass. This is completely different, and from what I’ve seen her first three albums don’t sound like any of these last three either. I’m not convinced empathogen is a jazz album, although it’s definitely jazz inflected, but most of the instrumentation is guitar, bass and drums; if there are any horns or other strings on there I didn’t notice them on my first listen, which I will admit was in the car and not exactly careful. The vocals are definitely jazzy. I’m not even sure I liked the damn album, but I’m absolutely fascinated by it. (Thinking about it, empathogen is as much of a jazz album as Cowboy Carter is a country album. The influence is clearly there, but you can’t pin either album down to a single genre.)

There’s been some talk in the last few days about whether Willow is a “nepo baby,” in other words, whether she owes her career to her parents’ influence or not. I would like to suggest that given how wildly, insanely eclectic Willow’s musical output over the last nine years had been, I’m really fucking glad that her parents are Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith and not Steve and Carol Smith … because the kid wouldn’t have a career if she didn’t have a leg up. The music industry doesn’t work with people who refuse to fit into boxes like this. Can you imagine what would have happened if some random fuckin’ kid told Jay-Z that she was done with her fun little hair song and wasn’t touring any longer? We’d never have heard from her again. And, I mean, we can argue about whether Will Smith as a parent should have said “Okay, baby, I got you” or, uh, something else(*), but the fact is if her parents weren’t famous I wouldn’t have these albums, and if nepotism gets me lately I feel EVERYTHING and empathogen once in a while, I’ll maybe put up with some fourth-generation news nitwit if I have to.

Suri Cruise and Shiloh Jolie-Pitt are both either already or about to turn eighteen, by the way, so I look forward to the two of them owning the world in, oh, five years or so.

(*) “Baby, Mr. Jay-Z is going to cut Daddy’s balls off and bury both of us underneath Madison Square Garden. You’re gonna grow that hair back today if I have to sell your soul to Satan to make it happen.”

#REVIEW: Dark Matter, by Pearl Jam

On By Luther M. SilerIn Music, ReviewsLeave a comment

A secret about me: my opinions cannot always be trusted.

I was wandering through old posts the other day, as I am occasionally known to do, and I came across a post where I described Pearl Jam’s last album, Gigaton, as “forgettable” and had very high praise for Binaural, an album that I just said was possibly my least favorite of their albums. So … sometimes my opinions change! This is a thing that happens. In Gigaton’s case I am much more fond of it than I was when it first came out (this has been known to be a thing with their work, I’ll admit it) and while I don’t have anything bad to say about Binaural I was apparently really in the mood for it when I wrote that other paragraph.

So if you want to take me saying that Dark Matter is Pearl Jam’s best album since Vitalogy with a bit of salt, I will not look askance upon you. I will say this: the last time I remember being this floored by an album, the last time it ran through my head constantly for two weeks, the last time I listened to nearly nothing else (other than a few Taylor Swift spins, mostly under duress) for this length of time since it came out, was the Dave Matthews Band’s Crash in 1996.

I will have this entire album memorized soon. I don’t think there’s a single weak track. There’s one song, Something Special, where you could make an argument that it belongs more on an Eddie Vedder solo album than a Pearl Jam album, and one song has a bridge that I feel like sounds like a transition into another one of their songs, but that’s all the criticism I can muster.

It’s amazing. It’s their best work in, literally, two decades. I cannot wait to hear it live, and if you have ever been a Pearl Jam fan you owe it to yourself to pick this up. I’d go through song by song, but somehow I have another hockey game to go to in a few minutes, so this is the best I can do for now. If I’ve still got it on 24/7 rotation in another week or so I’ll go ahead and do that. For now, Scared of Fear, Wreckage, Won’t Tell and Waiting for Stevie are my favorite tracks, but again: there are no skips here. I love it I love it I love it.

Consider this a preview, I guess

On By Luther M. SilerIn MusicLeave a comment

Yes, I know I haven’t reviewed the Pearl Jam album yet.

I fucking love it. I’ve been sitting on writing about it to see if the shine wears off and it hasn’t. This is their best album in a long, long time– definitely since Avocado and probably before that.

But I’ve been shaky and nauseous since I got home this afternoon after a day of feeling fine, and we’re still doing state testing tomorrow so I absolutely cannot miss work under any circumstances, so I’m probably going to go to bed obscenely early tonight. I’ll try and get a fuller review tomorrow, but if you’ve ever enjoyed a Pearl Jam album, you need to download this one right the hell now.