Author Archives: robert duffy

Continuing the weekend theme of DIY hip hop, check out the Village Voice’s article about 50 Cent:

You see, last year, while Nas and Jay-Z held radio debates, turned performances into political rallies, and spent consumer contributions on big-budget ads in the race to be King of New York, Queens’ 50 Cent (with his two-man G Unit crew) conducted a more grassroots campaign, glad-handing mix-tape DJs, bootleggers, and Internet pirates while supplying them with enough music to make Tupac Shakur’s ashes sit up and take notice. 50 became a Black Market unto himself, eventually eliminating the middleman and putting out his own compilations of freestyles, remakes, and original numbers. (full story)

The music I’ve heard from 50 Cent so far hasn’t grabbed me, but I may give the record closer attention in the weeks to come.

Here’s a story about a Seattle emcee who took the town by storm:

Last summer, Neema Khorrami, a 21-year-old emcee who calls himself Unexpected Arrival, achieved what might have seemed impossible for a local artist on a small, independent label. His single “Take Control” became the most-requested song on Seattle’s KUBE-FM during an August countdown that pitted him against such big national stars as Eminem and Nelly. (full story)

You can listen to his songs here. Pretty good.

I love the idea of a local taking over the radio charts in his town. We need more of that.

Miranda Sound, Denovo, John Chinn, Templeton, The Stepford Five, Silencio, and SO MUCH MORE!

Go forth, readers, with caution and delight.

Happy Valentine’s Day, y’all. Whether you have a sweetheart or not, there’s always room to throw one more in the mix: make donewaiting.com your special valentine this year!

Wouldn’t you like to receive special e-mails from the site on a somewhat regular basis? E-mails of love? E-mails of passion?

You can do this by directing your eyes under Skully Skull where you can sign up for the newsletter, The Growl. By doing this you’ll be getting a valentine and helping the fight against terrorism.

We’re so close to 100 subscribers, I just want to break into the triple digits. I can taste it. (chicken? no, chocolate)

And if you already are a newsletter subscriber, you can still be our valentine: say a few words in the message board!

It’s just the right thing to do.

I’ve listened to the new White Stripes album, “Elephant,” about four times now.

Allow me some NME-like hyperbole, will you?

2003 is the year of the White Stripes!

This is the album that’s going to take this renaissance of rock to the next level. It’s great. It’s slick, it’s hard, it’s sexy. You’ll love it, your girlfriend will love it, and anyone who comes from a 20,000,000 mile radius of it will instantly fall in love.

Sorry, Jack and Meg, I know you didn’t want this album to leak into the hands of a hyperfan like me, but you can’t keep a good geek down, you know?

The band has taken the best elements of their past three full lengths and created the real effin’ deal. The single, “Seven Nation Army” will be blasting out of cars and iPods all summer long. Trust me.

All of the writers here at donewaiting.com had very lovely updates today. All of them, except the slacker who writes OH Columbus. Here’s a breakdown:

I’ve got a huge honking OH Columbus update that will be written tomorrow. If I’m lyin’ then I’m dyin’.

Beck is playing tomorrow night at Maxwell’s in Hoboken NJ. Before you run to Ticketmaster.com, it’s sold out.

Maxwell’s is one of my favorite venues in the world, and it’s one of the biggest things about NJ I miss. It’s a small freaking room, so seeing Beck there will be unbelievable. Fuck everyone who got tickets.

I found out about all of this through an IM conversation between myself and my old friend Jim Teacher. Here is my f-bomb filled reaction:

duffy:: beck at maxwell’s?
teacher:: yeah
duffy:: fuck you
teacher:: well, what can you do.
duffy:: how?
teacher:: he’s gonna be on SNL.
teacher:: so i figgered he’d try some slinky shit
duffy:: son of a fuck
duffy:: why can’t maxwell’s be in columbus ohio, if just for a night?
teacher:: fuck them all! fuck them all!

Sorry about the profanity, hope your eyes didn’t bleed.

I’m not exactly sure how I stumbled across this site, but it’s pretty good. Largeheartedboy has a lot of music links that I almost always end up clicking. It’s because of them that I found this list of 50 anti-war songs.

They throw some non-music related things in there too, to help spice up the sauce. Check them out. I cannot, however, tell you whether or not his heart is large or small.

I became friends with Stephen Mejias a long time after he became friends with my close friends.

A few years back he joined my old school chums Pete, Dan and 2-Dick in their new (and current) band, The Multi-Purpose Solution. For whatever reason, it took me to move from NJ to California then to Ohio for me and Stephen to become good friends. Maybe we were scared of each other. Maybe we were freaked out by the fact that in a bizzarro world we could be brothers, I don’t know. But now we’re tight as two peaz in a pod.

At any rate, I’m happy to announce Stephen as the newest contributor to donewaiting.com with his column, Bridges + Tunnels. As Stephen puts t: “Fueled by oatmeal, hope, expectations, and disillusionment, these are Stephen’s musings while he commutes from Newark, NJ, to New York City and back, an honest attempt to bring together the worlds of living and loving music to the worlds of culture and ideas.”

Cool, right?

You can get the brand new Bridges + Tunnels here.

Check it out, and then head on over to the donewaiting.com message board (there’s a new B+T folder) and say hello to Stephen. He goes by the name
Brother Stephen, but trust me — it’s the same guy.

Stephen’s a great writer (a lot better than me, trust me), a great musician, and a great guy. I’m excited to read about music from a musician’s point of view, and not just a hyperfan like me. On top of that, while we love a lot of the same bands (Yo La Tengo! Wilco), we also have very sharp disagreements about others (The Strokes), so it’ll be good to have someone on the site who disagrees passionately with me.

Back to plotting my war against Denovo.

Every year the Village Voice does their music critic round-up of best albums and the result is the Pazz and Jop Poll. Wilco took #1 this year, Beck #2. Here’s the full list.

Robert Christgau, the guy who puts it together (I think), was pretty upset that Wilco came in on top:

Which brings us?God have I been dreading this?to our underwhelming winner-by-a-mile and surprise runner-up. Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and Beck’s Sea Change didn’t amass near the support of Dylan and the Strokes in 2001 or OutKast-Harvey-Radiohead-Eminem in 2000; with voting up 12 percent to 695, they pulled markedly fewer points. But they’re Pazz & Jop albums of the year regardless, and I wish they were easier to tell apart.

Boo hoo hoo!

At any rate, Wilco also came in @ #1 on The dw20: donewaiting.com’s favorite albums of 2002 list.

We’re a lot happier to see it at number one than the Village Voice.