no trivia

email/ twitter/work for baltimore city paper/ask me things

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fav Coltrane albums?

Dakar

My Favorite Things

Ole

Live At Birdland

Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane

Transition

Concert In Japan

One Down, One Up: Live At The Half Note

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Where do I start with these Eric Roberts selections on Prime? There are a lot.

oh man, thanks for the question—assuming you read my Amazon Prime piece. Ok, so def go with late ‘90s action Roberts IMO: Bittersweet, Hitman’s Run, and The King’s Guard are all “good” whatever “good” even means.

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CITY PAPER: A Place Away From the Bullshit: The end of DIY arts space the Bell Foundry

My piece on the eviction of the Bell Foundry with a focus on its evolution into a safe space and what can be accessed now about development in the area near the Bell and as I’ve said a few times now, the problems with the city of Baltimore, which as a DOJ report in August illustrated, cares little for people of color and queer people, claiming this place was shut down for “safety concerns.” The last time I was at the Bell was for a show not long after the election, it featured a reading of some wiggly body horror poems by Maya Martinez, a noise-ambient DJ set from TRNSGNDR/VHS, a loose set from JPEGMAFIA, and some aquatic house music from Lockbox.

video by me: JPEGMAFIA performing at You Know T.F. Where on Nov. 16.

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I wrote lots of things in 2016—here are my favorites

I did even more reporting this year than last year and more long-form—or long-winded, you decide—pieces, and also took over the paper’s weed column. Here are my favorite things I wrote this year:

“20 digressions on David Bowie (who is dead now)” - Baltimore City Paper

“The High Life: Weed Maximalism” - BCP

“Baltimore street rap continues to process Freddie Gray's death, police brutality” - BCP

“The Buff Dude Wing: Marsden Hartley's 'Flaming American' at the BMA” - BCP

“Green Party mayoral candidate Joshua Harris fights for Poe Homes, campaigns in the club” - BCP

“F The City Up: Abdu Ali, Greydolf, and JPEGMAFIA retrofit protest music, reclaim DIY, and craft a new kind of noise” - BCP

Meet the Baltimore jokesters behind that 'Fuck Donald Trump' song - BCP

“Finding Modern Democracy in Modern Jazz” - The Independent Weekly

“Chicken Talk: Station North and the ever-elusive chicken box” - BCP

“Joy, riots, resilience: The life of Baltimore club legend Miss Tony and the death of Freddie Gray” - FACT Mag

“No Trivia: What five-year-old Atlanta rapper Bankroll PJ has to do with Baltimore” - BCP

“Moments In Club: 61 digressions about Baltimore Club music” - BCP

“King Me: The life, death, and lionization of Lor Scoota” - BCP

“Korryn Gaines vigil remembers her life, establishes a counter narrative” - BCP

“Troll the Police: The sound and the fury and the spectacle of RNC and DNC protests” - BCP

“The High Life: What weed does to 'The Godfather'” - BCP

“Persistent Transparency: Baltimore surveillance plane documents reveal ignored pleas to go public, who knew about the program, and differing opinions on privacy” - BCP

“Signs Of Life: Moments of tragic optimism amid a Trump victory” - BCP

“If I Ruled The World: 300 Gangstas offer turkey, community, and old-school rap to Monument Street” - BCP

“Amazon You Wild Tho, WYD?: E-commerce behemoth's streaming options are really out here ready to disrupt the canon” - BCP

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CITY PAPER: “Amazon You Wild Tho, WYD?—E-commerce behemoth's streaming options are really out here ready to disrupt the canon”

On Amazon Prime’s bonkers streaming options, the limits of the too-tasteful (imo) Filmstruck with almost 60 movie recommendations strewn throughout.

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Thoughts on new Justice?

I think it’s very good. I really liked Audio, Video, Disco, which was kind of this butt-prog thing that really went for it, aiming for say, Chicago’s “Street Player” or Steve Miller Band’s “Macho City,” which shouldn’t have been a surprise since Cross sampled Goblin and Brothers Johnson and “Night On Disco Mountain” but was a surprise because critics are dumb and lazy. And obviously, Cross is this just like insurmountable knot of coke-drip, bloghouse zeitgeist that they’ll never top so they’ve decided not to even try. 

So yeah, Woman. It’s kind of a stoner disco album and that’s incredible, hints of 10cc at their funkiest or something. Lots of reviews are trying to compare it to Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories, which is a bit lazy imo and also conveniently ignores Audio, Video, Disco. Also, I think Woman is better than R.A.M. though its highs are nowhere near as high, it gels more and doesn’t try as hard. Woman feels like some dollar bin full-length piece of white fusion-disco-funk from 1979 or something—a record no one wants that turns out to do some cool things and offers cohesive listen. For example, I’ve been listening to um, Don Felder’s Airborne lately after watching Heavy Metal for the first time in years and hearing Felder’s “All Of You” anew and sometimes it even feels like that kind of post-’70s rock thing where white men didn’t know where to take the shtick. 

I said this in the 2007 Pazz + Jop about Justice: “Justice’s music has roots in French house, but the influences extend to jagged Michael Jackson rhythms, all-treble-no-bass black-metal fuzz, a seemingly genuine hint of Christianity, and, well, everything else ever: Cross begins as a Daft Punk derivation (“New Jack”), becomes hipster effrontery with the one-two punch of “The Party” and “DVNO,” and then morphs into an all-out George Romero dance party for the undeniable trilogy—all this God stuff can’t be a coincidence—of “Stress,” “Waters of Nazareth,” and “One Minute to Midnight.” Justice are the side of the French that loves Jerry Lewis and Edgar Allen Poe, the side that’s daringly anti-elitist. To get real fancy about it—something the group would never do—Justice are more Barthes than Baudrillard?”

I bring that up because I think they’re music is well, very French in the way that the French can be awesome cultural critics: there’s a kind of a knowing distance as they adore trash but they’re willing to let the veneer of kitsch or whatever crack; it’s as if they hung out with fumbling rawk disco so much that they caught Stockholm Syndrome and now just love it. I think if Woman was released a year or two after Cross, we’d all be wrestling with it more and it’d get very good reviews. “Alakazam!” feels like the extension of the fidget-ing treble-packed party music of Cross to me.

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CITY PAPER: On a recent police shooting, protest, and differing ideas on deescalation

Extended and updated version of my previously fairly basic reporting on a man with two knives shot by police in Baltimore last month. Body camera footage shows barely any time between tasing and shooting which seems to confound deescalation story, which mostly people seem totally fine with or willing to ignore but seems like a pretty big deal if you ask me. In loosely related news: another officer was charged with misconduct tied to body camera footage of him making a violent arrest in September. This officer, now charged, was called “courageous” at the beginning of 2015 when he shot and killed a man with a knife.

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Best Of 2016

ALBUMS

Rihanna, ANTI

Maren Morris, Hero

Kanye West, The Life of Pablo

ANOHNI, HOPELESSNESS

Mitski, Puberty 2

Sturgill Simpson, A Sailor's Guide to Earth

Steve Gunn, Eyes On The Lines

Kamaiyah, A Good Night In the Ghetto

Bon Iver, 22, A Million

Vince Gill, Down To My Last Bad Habit

A Tribe Called Quest, We Got It From Here ... Thank You 4 Your Service

Elysia Crampton, Elysia Crampton Presents: Demon City

Young Thug, JEFFERY

Bwana, Capsule's Pride

JPEGMAFIA, Black Ben Carson

Matmos, Ultimate Care

Lady Gaga, Joanne

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, EARS

Warpaint, Heads Up

Luke Bell, Luke Bell

SINGLES

Alicia Keys, "In Common”

Bankroll PJ, "Jump In"

G.L.O.S.S, "We Live"

Oddisee, "Lifting Shadows"

WillThaRapper, "Pull Up Hop Out"

Dierks Bentley, "Somewhere On a Beach"

Fifth Harmony, "Work From Home"

Vic Mensa, "16 Shots"

Dooley, Lor Roger, Tlow, "CIT4DT"

Luke Bryan, "Love Me In A Field"

White Lung, "Hungry"

Gucci Mane, "First Day out tha Feds"

Lor X, "Where Ya At"

Greydolf, “God Or Cunt”

Lower Dens, "Real Thing"

Young M.A, "OOOUUU"

Beyoncé, "Formation"

Chance the Rapper feat. Lil Wayne and 2 Chainz, "No Problem"

Xenia Rubinos, "See Them"

Chromatics, "Magazine"

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What do I watch on Filmstruck?

Oh man, so much on that classy website. My recommendations:

Come and See (my like third favorite movie!)

A Woman Under The Influence (my favorite movie!)

Heavy Metal

Touki Bouki

Tomorrow

Early Takeshi Kitano (Violent Cop, Boiling Point, Sonatine)

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CITY PAPER: On Kacey Musgraves’  “A Very Kacey Christmas”

Wrote about Kacey Musgraves’ Christmas record, which is very good and very sad, which is in part, what makes it very good.

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A tense and tragic holiday weekend in Baltimore. On Friday morning, a man was shot by the Baltimore police, they said he was armed with two knives. And not long after, activists entered the Wells Fargo bank in downtown Baltimore for a sit-in in solidarity with Standing Rock. Then, today there was a gathering at 33rd Street and Greenmount Avenue for the man who was shot—last police said, he was still in critical condition where activists spoke. Towards the end of rally, the one-month old of one of the people there stopped breathing; a police officer performed CPR and EMTs arrived but the baby died at the hospital. Her name was Assata. 

City Paper stories: 

“Police shoot a man in Waverly, residents react with frustration, speculation”

 “In solidarity with Standing Rock, a sit-in at the Wells Fargo building downtown”

 “Rally for man shot by police stopped for emergency, baby dies” 

And earlier in the week, brief dispatches from the Transgender March of Resilience and the 300 Gangstas Thanksgiving Turkey Giveaway.

video by me: Ralikh Hayes leads group in the Assata Shakur Freedom Chant in front of the Wells Fargo bank.

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If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich? (click to stream right click to download)

A short messy mix about the state of the country right now—no smooth transitions or anything like that for obvious reasons. It’s named after a Julius Eastman composition that I considered including but didn’t because it's 24 minutes long, so go find that and listen and consider it like, a bonus track of this mix or whatever, whatever. 

Nicolay, “Sun Rings/Uprising” 

Oddisee, “Lifting Shadows” 

A Tribe Called Quest, “We The People” 

Bink feat. BlueBenjamin Sleepy & GoodyMob, “Plugs and Connections” 

Anohni, “Drone Bomb Me” 

Solange, “Cranes In The Sky”

Ekkehard Ehlers, “John Cassavetes 2”

Kanye West, “Feedback”

Neil Young, “Love In Mind”

Audio from El Hajj Amir Khalid A. Samad’s Peace Camp

photo by me: from the 2016 Republican National Convention following a flag burning by RevCom

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CITY PAPER: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

My latest No Trivia column about Neil Young, Donald Trump, a Tribe Called Quest, and my friends who I am very worried about.

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CITY PAPER: “Joshua Harris fights for Poe Homes, campaigns in the club”

My profile of Green Party mayoral candidate Joshua Harris from City Paper’s mayoral issue from earlier this month.

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CITY PAPER: “Everyone wants a piece of DeRay Mckesson”

From City Paper’s recent mayoral roundup issue, Brandon Weigel and I’s piece on DeRay and his haters.

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10 best films go!

I’ve definitely answered this before, but also my list always changes and so on. So here’s a list of my 14  (couldn’t cut it to 10) favorite (not best) movies (not films):

In a Year With 13 Moons (Fassbinder)

A Woman Under the Influence (Cassavetes)

Holy Mountain (Jodorowsky)

Come and See (Klimov)

Morvern Callar (Ramsay)

River’s Edge (Hunter)

Medium Cool (Wexler)

The Beyond (Fulci)

First Blood (Kotcheff)

Miami Vice (Mann)

Black Caesar (Cohen)

Spring Breakers (Korine)

Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia (Peckinpah)

The Passion of Joan Of Arc (Dreyer)

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A reported, though still very opinionated column about a protest on Tuesday from Baltimore residents and activists opposing tax breaks to wealthy developers. Poe Homes, a continually divested housing project, is just a block from the UMD BioPark which just got 17.5 million dollars in tax breaks.