The 1880

Done. Celebrate. Do something fun.

Sometimes I wish tassels were more fashionable.

We’ve finished. Rather than just getting smashed, take the $20 you were throwing down on your fourth straight night of black-out partying and do something substantial, k?

• Lewis Black will be at the Boston Opera House tonight, May 8th.
• KRS-One at Harper’s Ferry if you would prefer some hip hop.
• The Boston Pops are doing a Bernstein Tribute this weekend.
• You dorks probably want to go to Mac Camp Boston.
• Ozomatli at The Paradise! Badass world fusion stuff.
• Kaiju Big Battel comes to the Roxy.
• Some Blackberry challenge happens at Faneuil Hall Saturday, too.
• Cut Copy, Black Kids and Mobius Band play The Paradise Monday.
• Superman screens as a part of the Coolidge’s Science on Screen series.
• Afrissipi out at Johnny D’s Uptown Tuesday.

Hype-rdrive

Fact: "I've heard of them" adds nothing to conversation.

I love Pandora. Really. Last.fm is great too. The only beef I have with those types of services is that sometimes I just don’t know what I want to listen to. I’d rather just have someone serve me stuff they really like. I’m a sucker for the curative aspects of music sharing. Mixtapes are laborious, and iTunes playlists aren’t as accessible as I would like them to be. There has to be a better answer somewhere on this big Internet. People all over the wold run music blogs, where they offer up what they like in hopes that you will like it too. The Hype Machine is exactly the type of thing I have been looking for. It aggregates music blogs from all over and presents them in a nifty player using what I can only imagine to be some RSS voodoo.

The search functions are great too. Only want to listen to one band? Search and all of their results pop up. Like a particular blog? Every player links to the relative post on the site that accompanies each piece. The “Most Searched” sections put your finger right on the way- cool pulse of the rest of the music world, positioning your tastes precisely three years ahead of the sad blokes that wait until Pitchfork craps onsomeone’s album before claiming “I heard it wasn’t that great.” Alternately, sometimes people just post old stuff they have just found or feel in the mood to listen to, which oddly enough can be the most refreshing aspect of the whole thing

Hype Machine is a great little Internet tool that just contributes even more to the whole Internet roolz radio droolz ethos. Cept for , WERS and WFMU, ‘acourse.

PS: MGMT is pretty good. Thanks, HypeM

Yo! Listen to This: Organized Konfusion

Organized Konfusion are ready to hit the slopes!

When people like to talk about early 90’s hip-hop, it’s common (no pun intended) for the speaker to usually get stuck on A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, or any other member of the admittedly expansive Native Tongues Posse. However, Organized Konfusion constantly existed outside of the Native Tongues orbit, offering a somewhat darker alternative to the predominantly positive raps kicked around by other artists, and each of their albums saw them delving into darker, yet no less intelligent territory.

Prince Poetry and Pharoahe Monch released their first, self-titled album as O.K. in 1991, an album that notable music journal AllMusic awarded a flawless 5 star rating. This album would exemplify the O.K. style, with beats and lyricism that provided a bridge between the manic pulse of Eric B. and Rakim and groups like A Tribe Called Quest. Tribe leader Q-Tip would later show up on Organized Konfusion’s second album, the extremely underrated Stress: The Extinction Agenda, providing one of the few guests spots on any of O.K.’s albums. Actually, on that note, their 1997 swan song, the somewhat-concept album The Equinox is pretty underrated as well.

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