beto

Although they owe Schoolly D and the Park Side Killas some credit for pioneering gangsta rap, N.W.A. can proudly say that they brought this style of uber-catchy, ultra-violent hip-hop to the mainstream. Released in 1988, Straight Outta Compton featured what would eventually become some of the genre’s biggest names — Ice Cube, Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, and MC Ren — spinning tales of life in one of LA’s roughest neighborhoods over minimalist beats and scratching provided by DJ Yella and Arabian Prince.

Cuts like “Fuck Tha Police” and the title track came to epitomize the West Coast sound, and paved a road that led to rap music infiltrating every household in America. Even if you were from the most tranquil corners of suburbia, you tensed up, clenched your fists, and pretended you were ready for a fight when you listened to Ice Cube open the record by declaring, “When I’m called off/ I get a sawed off/ Squeeze the trigger/ And bodies are hauled off.” N.W.A. made you feel hard, even though you still had to turn the volume down when your mom was home. — Ray Roa (2010)

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Amazing video showing how to record Radiohead's "Weird Fishes" in your bedroom.

While Repeater is considered Fugazi’s full-length debut, it had the daunting task of following the band’s legendary first two EPs (compiled together as 13 Songs). With Repeater, though, the D.C. band not only raised their own bar, but blew the entire hardcore punk genre wide open.

With a nod to the precision of post-punkers Gang of Four, Repeater is evidence of a band playing without restrictions. Fugazi never had to answer to suits when it came to the music they recorded, thanks to their entire discography being released via singer-guitarist Ian MacKaye’s own Dischord Records. Their chemistry is obvious, with MacKaye and Guy Picciotto trading vocals over dissonant chords, and bassist Joe Lally and drummer Brendan Canty providing a steady backbone. Those facts together affirm that the commercial success of Repeater is a byproduct of the artists themselves, not a label’s cash-grabby plan.

Featuring powerhouse anthems like “Turnover” and “Blueprint,” as well as standout cuts like the title track and “Sieve-Fisted Find,” Repeater is a seminal work by the ultimate DIY band. — S.K.

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Friendly reminder that today I'm bringing the instance down to do a snapshot backup before increasing memory/CPU/disk and upgrading to the next release of Lemmy.

I'm planning to do this at 8pm PT, and if everything goes well it should be done in under an hour.

Since I'm resizing the VPS this will require downtime, but I'm hoping that in future releases we can upgrade with no downtime.

Edit: I've upgraded to a new instance and we're now running 0.17.4. Thanks for your patience!

There have been no shortage of Lucinda Williams imitators over the years — artists hoping to nick even an ounce of her grit, grace, and gumption and make it their own. But there is only one Lucinda Williams, and on her 1998 Grammy-winning masterpiece Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, she demonstrates why she’s an unrivaled talent.

The Lake Charles, Louisiana native has a sprawling discography, kicking off in 1979 with Ramblin’ on My Mind and most recently with the acerbic Good Souls Better Angels, which makes selecting just one of her albums as the “best” a bit of a fool’s errand. However, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road stands out as a hallmark of hard-worn Americana, a Southern swirl of country, blues, folk, and rock ‘n’ roll.

It’s a riff-laden record with a laundry list of lyrics tailor-made for tattooing on your body, doubling as a roadmap to the soul of a complicated nation. Across 13 tracks, from the sexy “2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten” to the middle-fingers-up kiss-off of “Joy,” you learn a few things about the record’s central narrator, but there’s one lesson that stands out in particular: You don’t fuck with Lucinda Williams. If Williams is Americana’s poet laureate, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road is a high watermark of the form. — Spencer Dukoff

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We just crossed the 100 user threshold in the instance! 🎉

I'm planning some downtime in the next few days to upgrade the instance to the v0.17.4 release, as well as bump the instance size and add more storage. Since Monday is a holiday in the US I'm planning to do this Tuesday night Pacific time.

[For anyone curious, the instance is running on a $6 VPS from Digital Ocean. CPU usage has been negligible (10%), memory usage has been stable around 80%, but disk usage has been increasing 2GB/day (a lot of it from logs, which I've been pruning). I'm going to double the memory just in case, and attach a 100GB volume to the instance to give us some space to breathe.]

In 2015, saxophonist Kamasi Washington announced his arrival to mainstream audiences on Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly. Only months later, he cemented his place at the front of jazz’s vanguard with his equally expansive major label debut, The Epic, largely developed with his compatriots in Los Angeles’ West Coast Get Down jazz collective. But it was the follow-up, 2018’s Heaven & Earth, that more accurately reflects the heights he can reach from his ascended headspace.

Heaven & Earth evokes the grand scale of its title with an all-encompassing view of the past, present, and future of this world and beyond. Whether Washington is resurrecting the past with his take on Freddie Hubbard’s “Hub-Tones,” refurbishing the theme from the Bruce Lee film Fists of Fury with a modern context, or pushing jazz in a completely new direction on the dark groove jam “Street Fighter Mas,” he is constantly in conversation with a higher power; the divinity just varies from the Almighty to his all-star group of musician friends.

In regards to the growing presence of spirituality in his music, Consequence’s A-grade review asserted that “if more churches played songs like ‘Journey’ and ‘Will You Sing’ on Sundays, those sanctuaries might be standing room only.” — Bryan Kress

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https://song.link/ is a free service that helps you link to songs and albums across different streaming services.

For example, this is their page to The Beatles — Abbey Road:

Not super excited about these news:

Moog Music will remain in Asheville, NC, and our team will continue to design and build our instruments here inside the Moog factory. As part of the transition, Moog Music is no longer employee owned. All past and present employees who have participated in the Moog Music Employee Stock Ownership Program (ESOP) since it was implemented in 2015 will receive a payout.

And here's what Roger Linn has to say about the CEO of InMusic:

https://youtu.be/jdMRxUC77RQ

Hi, folks!

I'm running https://lemmy.studio, an instance focusing on communities for musicians. We have a few communities for song feedback, making ambient music, but creation is open to users. You're welcome to join, explore, and start communities.

Thanks, and please remove if this is not appropriate!

A friend shared this with me today when we were talking about alternative music notation, and I thought it was super interesting.