Month: May 2015

To celebrate the upcoming release of our 106th 33 1/3 on  Super Mario Bros., we’re pleased to bring you the second installment of Koji Kondo week by author Andrew Schartmann!  Although Koji Kondo has given many interviews about his approach to video game music, he’s been relatively vague about his influences. We often read about his fondness for Deep Purple and ragtime, both of which are audible in his music, but it’s difficult to pinpoint exact moments where these influences shine through like nowhere else—that is until today. In a…

To celebrate the upcoming release of our 106th 33 1/3 on  Super Mario Bros., we’re pleased to bring you the first installment of Koji Kondo week by author Andrew Schartmann!  Mario fans the world over know that Super Mario Bros. games have a particular sound—a musical style that screams “Mario!” This owes, in part, to the many tunes that reappear in different guises throughout the series. The most ubiquitous of these is the “Star Theme,” which, no matter how much it’s transformed, is immediately recognizable. Other recycled tunes, however, are…

To celebrate the upcoming release of our 105th 33 1/3 on  Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, author and historian Michael Stewart Foley will discuss the archival research involved in writing about the San Francisco punk scene. Each day, he’ll be highlighting one amazing hidden source, and so, today, we bring you the fifth and final installment of Dead Kennedys week! For the last installment of Dead Kennedys week, check out this video of the DKs playing the Mabuhay Gardens in 1979, as they were refining the songs that eventually appeared…

To celebrate the upcoming release of our 105th 33 1/3 on  Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, author and historian Michael Stewart Foley will discuss the archival research involved in writing about the San Francisco punk scene. Each day, he’ll be highlighting one amazing hidden source, and so, Today, we bring you the fourth installment of Dead Kennedys week! By the time Dead Kennedys’ Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables came out in 1980, some of San Francisco’s original punks were mourning the passing of the scene – a scene that had…

To celebrate the upcoming release of our 105th 33 1/3 on  Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, author and historian Michael Stewart Foley will discuss the archival research involved in writing about the San Francisco punk scene. Each day, he’ll be highlighting one amazing hidden source, and so, today,  we bring you the third installment of Dead Kennedys week! If you know your American punk zines, you know that Search & Destroy, started in San Francisco in 1977 by V. Vale (with financial help from Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti), is…

To celebrate the upcoming release of our 105th 33 1/3 on  Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, author and historian Michael Stewart Foley will discuss the archival research involved in writing about the San Francisco punk scene. Each day, he’ll be highlighting one amazing hidden source, and so, today, we bring you the second installment of Dead Kennedys week! 1978 is appropriately regarded as one of the darkest periods in San Francisco’s history. As I describe in my 33 1/3 volume on Dead Kennedys’ first LP, one of the band’s early…

To celebrate the upcoming release of our 105th 33 1/3 on  Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, author and historian Michael Stewart Foley will discuss the archival research involved in writing about the San Francisco punk scene. Each day, he’ll be highlighting one amazing hidden source, and so, today, we bring you the very first installment of Dead Kennedys week! I’m a historian, so I like digging through old stuff. Doesn’t matter what it is, really – old newspapers, postcards, photos, LPs, clothes, furniture, spice tins… hell, I’ll spend a couple…

Last weekend I found myself sitting in a room with a hundred music critics listening to an academic presentation about Missy Elliot. In fact, it was a panel of six academic presentations. There were arguments for the Afro-futurism of Missy Elliot as well as the importance of her influence on hip-hop since Under Construction. However, the final paper delivered on the panel was the most compelling. It linked Missy Elliot to the Korean Rapper, G Dragon, formerly of the K-Pop super group Big Bang. The parallels between this video and…