Music Everywhere
Wednesday 16 May @ 17:57:24 |
 Introducing our new online music & entertainment columnist--
by DWIGHT HOBBES
Pulse of the Twin Cities, it turns out, is not dead after all, but merely making a transition to on-line availability. And will be running a daily arts column—well, mostly music but theater and spoken word, too—called “Music Everywhere.” Guess who’s been tapped to write it?: that would be me.
For folk who don’t recognize the byline, I’ve gigged at Pulse pretty much since its second year, coming in, on the strength of commentaries in other publications, as the guest Angry Black Writer, eventually segueing into arts coverage. Reasonably, to deem a “Music Everywhere” worth your while, here’s the source’s background.
Yours truly enjoyed an errant youth ingesting, among other substances, music from Smokey Robinson & The Miracles to Jefferson Airplane to Laura Nyro to Ravi Shankar, along with a world of sounds in between. And much reading and seeing plays that ranged from Eugene O’Neill to LeRoi Jones to Miguel Pinero to Frank Chin. As one of the weird kids. You know: the ones jocks despised because we spoke in more than one syllable at a time and didn’t find beer-guzzling and grabbing girls butts (at least not without consent) to be honorable rites of passage. Spoken word came later, when The Last Poets hit, and who still define my appreciation of spoken word and hip-hop.
Then there was ten years singing all over Long Island, N.Y. In wine-and-cheese clubs, on college campuses and hitting hoot night at Manhattan spots (getting to gig in Greenwich Village at Kenny’s Castaways), plus doing time in a Boston blues band before cutting a single about the 1983 child murders in Atlanta. After relocating here, I—ahem—wrote a hit play “Shelter” and contributed to another “Point of Revue.” Any ol’ how, for a list of credentials, go to MySpace.com. I’m right there, lookin’ sage-like, shamelessly detailing every accomplishment worth braggin’ about, including that Willie Murphy let me sit in on open mic night at the Viking Bar and welcomed me back a couple times.
If there’s anything one would call a vision for “Music Everywhere,” it’s about giving the little guy and gal a break—more or less the approach that was taken by the Hot Tickets section of Pulse of the Twin Cities. The idea is to cover acts, artists and events that generally don’t get covered in the mainstream (once in awhile it’s unavoidable to overlap). So, you’ll read articles about the underexposed, the up-and-coming and those off the beaten track. The focus, do note, is broader. Along with a diet of rock come healthier helpings of blues and R&B/soul, some jazz, folk, Third World music, reggae—just about everything under the sun except classical. There’s liable to even be some of that. For instance, if a classical performer—oh, let’s say Jessy Greene on cello—happens to perform with a spoken wordsmith—maybe Chris Shillock or David Daniels, well, it’ll get ink. As for theater—let’s consider that experiential music—companies and venues that fall below the mainstream radar are very welcome fare. So are spoken-worders who have chops, but just can’t get any attention owing to how glutted the genre is (main problem about spoken word is everybody and his or her brother or sister thinks they can do it). Advisory: you rappers who strut around with your britches half off your behind, braggin’ on how little respect you have for women and cussin’ your motherf&#@kin’ asterisk off, get no play whatsoever.
Speaking of which—like how I slipped that transition in?—each and every press kit, review CD or demo package will be opened, read and listened to. All press releases for shows and/or performances will be read. And—here’s the really good news—I don’t even have to like it for you to get coverage. That’s because the column is less about reviewing and more about informing readers. So, just send the stuff to “Music Everywhere,” c/o Pulse of the Twin Cities, 3200 Chicago Ave. S., Mpls., MN 55407 and, sooner or later, unless it’s really abysmal (no discs of your banjo-playing aardvark, please), it’ll get covered. Believe me, with a column to crank out every weekday, I’m gonna need a lot of material to work from.
So, there you have it. Enjoy. ||
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