Black History Month coming soon at Rutgers-Camden

It seems very wrong-headed to celebrate black culture & politics of the past without supporting that culture and those politics in the present. So, here you are — a link to the events planned for Black History Month at Rutgers-Camden.

Get Up. Get Into It. Get Involved.

How to MLK Day Right, white people edition

Real MLK, left

Honor the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. but don't get it twisted. King was not alone, thousands marched & preached & went to jail with him. Many of those heroes are still here today, fighting the same fight, & resisting the same injustice. New generations of folks equally committed to the cause are still fighting, & they need your help & support.

It's important to remember several things:

1) The Civil Rights movement did not end institutional racism. It's here & now, & percolates in lots of ways, subtle & otherwise. You are not off the hook as long as you benefit in some way from the system. That's my burden, and it's yours too. You can choose to grow up & face it, or stay a child & never be truly free.

2) Nonviolent resistance is easily quashed without the specter of revolt in the background. That is the lesson of the Occupy movement. No threat = unbridled oppression by the state. [If you don't think it was so bad, please look up the "black ops" center run by the Chicago PD, built to torture Occupy and BLM activists...]

3) King knew this, and played on those fears. This is called strategy. And it worked not because nonviolence is the only answer, but because even a corrupt, unjust system preferred to play by the movement's rules.

4) DO NOT use King's example as a way to bash contemporary social justice movements. The world is not the same as King's, and the forces of evil we resist today are different in some ways. Mock relentlessly any corrupt politician or Fox News correspondent who profanes King's name by suggesting this or that has betrayed him in some way.** Refuse to give them a platform.

5) King respected Marxist philosophy. He saw that economic injustice props up racial inequality -- he was engaged in the "Justice for Janitors" campaign when he was killed. He protested the Vietnam War. He was in discussion with Malcom X and the Black Panthers. He recognized the force that oppresses the powerless — it's called Capitalism.

6) Listen & respect those who articulate their experience of institutional racism (or sexism or homophobia or whatever). It's not about you -- don't make it about you. If you listen to a painful story and hear only accusation, that's because you feel guilty about something. Work on that on your own. Don't derail the conversation to stage a self-intervention. Black people are not here to save you.

6a) "But not all white peop--" Shut up, right now.

6b) "Let me play devil's advoc--" The devil has enough advocates as it is. What's so important about the other side to oppression that we must consider? What's the bright side?

6c) "I'm just color-bl---" I'm warning you. Just stop it.

6d) "All liv--" That's it, Jethro Tool -- you're blocked.

7) If you hear some expression of Black (or gay or Latinx or trans or whatever) pride and hear a challenge to or a demeaning of yourself, you need to ask yourself why. Quick.

[Funk-related note: this song was James Brown's last charting pop hit until that Rocky IV horseshit. TV talking heads at the time bloviated about how it showed that Brown hated white people. Not true then, not true now. Move on, folks.]

8) Racism is by definition a tool of the powerful. It means using state and cultural power to act on ethnocentric discrimination. Someone calling you a honky is not racism. Distrusting you because you are white and you benefit everyday from a white supremacist system is not racism. If you don't like the effects, don't contribute to the causes. [And no, Tucker Carlson, Obama was not the real racist. Real racists are the real racists, even though some of them try to be polite. Like you, you used to try to be polite about it...]

9) White privilege doesn't mean things were easy for you. Life isn't easy for anyone. It means that you did not face certain challenges based on your identity. Develop empathy for those who have faced those challenges, and find common cause with the struggles to survive in a capitalist system. It's not perfect, but as long as you stay isolated & frightened you will be manipulated by white supremacist society.

10) Don't tell us what you would have done then. That's nostalgia. Do it now. Contribute. March. Advocate. Vote. It matters now. Now is action.

We've done heard it a million times before, but some of us are not receiving the message. So we keep broadcasting.

Stay tuned next Saturday for a new installment of "Music on the One" -- there's a reason they call it a revolutionary party.

** Lest you wonder, this is what William F Buckley, conservative darling of the time was doing when MLK was assassinated:

Does sound like victim blaming to me...***

And today, Fox News ran an editorial asking us not to politicize MLK Day. I see... "Sure we perpetuate the injustice that Dr. King fought, and then fought tooth & nail against the celebration of this day, and every day we bolster the causes of white supremacists of every stripe — but hey let's just celebrate the togetherness we have waged such relentless war against..."

*** (For the record, the one death that Buckley was so eager to pin on Dr. King was a 16-year old black teenager, Larry Payne, who was killed by the cops with a shotgun. The injuries were also probably mostly demonstrators, though I don't have statistics on this. Pretty much fuck Buckley all over, in whatever circle of hell he abides in these days...)

No Show January 13th

So sorry about the no-show today: did not know that the building that the radio station is located in would be closed today during the Winter Break at school! Was so looking forward to getting my stank on too.

Music on the One will be back next Saturday, 1/20 for sure. Eager to share my latest LP with you all -- just heard it tonight & was blown away.

Here's something down & dirty to tide you over until then.

Good funky shit for you

Check out this video of Sly & The Family Stone playing an amazing version of "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) on Soul Train. The intro section, where the players come in one at a time is awesome. There are not too many of the original Family Stone players on this: Rose Stone on clavinet, Freddie Stone on guitar, Cynthia Robinson on trumpet, and Jerry Martini on saxophone (wait, that's 4 of 6 -- scratch that. Larry Graham on bass and Greg Errico on drums had moved on around 1970*). The youngest Stone sister is playing electric piano. Sly is as dazed-looking as ever, but verray cool anyways.

Still image from the video clip

This must have been one of the very rare actual live performances on Soul Train, which normally used canned tracks.

* Much like Prince would later, Sly often recorded himself playing many of the instruments in the studio, especially on There's a Riot Goin' On, overdubbing the tracks & bringing in the others for vocals.

Back very soon!

Soul Train dance line, your once-weekly installment
of cool moves for both boys and girls

Here's another good image from Soul Train*

Only a bit more than a week and I'll be back in NJ, ready for new installments of "Music on the One." Yes that's right, kids — Deep Bottom will be returning to its much-appreciated** Saturday afternoon slot on WCCR streaming radio, perfect for contemplating a night out, or just plain getting yo' soul right.

Good music greases the wheels of life, and "Music on the One" is greasier than most.

Back cover to 1970's "East Bay Grease" by Oakland's own Tower of Power

I'm fixin' to tickle your Funk bone in 2018, so don't miss out! Check yo'self and get fly with DJ EZ Reader. All the way live. Guaranteed.

(To listen, follow the link located to the right under "Funky Explorations" You won't be sorry for long...)

* I have to confess I am totally enthralled by images of good dancers moving their bodies, all too aware of my own limits. Check this shit out (esp. 1:13-1:19 or so. Legs don't do that...)
** That is, appreciated by me -- who else was I going to please?

Diggin' Ain't EZ, chapter 3

Chapter Three: Idris Muhammad, Turn This Mutha Out (Kudu, 1977) —

LP Cover, someone signed & dated mine

I've been looking for stuff by this guy for awhile, ever since reading a feature about him in Wax Poetics many years ago. IM was a much-desired session drummer appearing on hundreds of jazz-funk recordings in the seventies, working with cats like Galt McDermot and even appearing on Bob James' much-sampled "Nautilus." He also recorded ten or so solo albums as well. Here's a partial discography

This is not 1974's Power of Soul with its sample champion "Loran's Dance", but a very refreshing record nonetheless — a bit heavy on the disco side of things, i.e. swirling strings & keyboards, typical backing vocals styles. Obviously they were trying for the dance-floor market (especially on sprawling "Could Heaven Ever Be Like This," a real disco burner). But you cannot over-produce the raw quality of the playing. It's complex, dense, evolving rather than repeating. And the drumming, Lawd have mercy — the drumming. Lots of the tracks feature IM pounding on a tom-tom over the sound of his own drum kit — which after hearing Ernie Isley doing this on the second side of 3 + 3 (1973) I think is one of my favorite sounds.

The album is produced by David Matthews, who had been the arranger for James Brown's band in the early 1970s, and it seems he had a hand in composing every track on this album. Don't know if that is a difference for Idris (since I don't have any of his other LPs), but it seems that Matthews had his finger pretty confidently on the pulsebeat of disco here.

Track Listing

A) Could Heaven Ever Be Like This
Camby Bolongo **
Turn This Mutha Out

B) Tasty Cakes
Crab Apple **
Moon Hymn **
Say What

** Not to be missed

That's all for now. I picked up three other records on my latest jaunt, but none as interesting as this one, at least so far. (That's all for new stuff this month -- it goes quick. There's one more intriguing recently released LP waiting for me at home. When I return from vacation, we'll focus on some of the cool stuff I already have in the stacks...)

What makes you a Nazi

Was amused to come across this Dinesh D'Souza malarky about how there was once a gay Nazi so all gay people are Nazis (or was it that tolerating gay people makes you a Nazi?) I won't link to it -- here's alicublog though on the subject. Apparently bohemianism and sexual permissiveness are hallmarks of Nazism in Dinesh's felonious purview (Hitler was once a painter, AND had a mistresss! Oh my!), so all us liberals are the real fascist scum.

Well shut my mouth... Here I had been thinking that believing Nazi things made you a Nazi! Here it was tolerance all along...

And apparently the Proud Boys can't jack off — how precious! We all that know that sexual repression has never resulted in anything angry or dangerous before. If you can't be the patriarch of your own mattress how can you rule the earth? Gotta practice that shit, Fred.

Funk glories in sexuality, always the bugbear of uptight white culture. Just to acknowledge there are complications, like transgender folks exist and women menstruate can be rebellious observations that extend the range of funky existence. Life is stank and difference and pleasure and nonconformity. Guess I just didn't realize that I hated humanity because of that pragmatism.

Image from Key and Peele

God made the stank and God Made Me Funky. So I always funk in a dirty way.


Update: State's rights—only valid for racism & discrimination & voter suppression. Lesson learned.