"Unknown Legend"

There's something very calming and somewhat striking looking at pictures of musicians in their day to day life. No matter how larger than life they may seem, there is still a sense of place for them. 

Located in Woodside, CA south of San Francisco and at the end of Bear Gulch Road is Neil Young's Broken Arrow Ranch. He bought it in 1970 for $340,000 cash when he was 24. It consisted of 140 acres, which he grew into 1,500 acres after buying property around the ranch. How amazing is that? And how much does that make you feel like you haven't accomplished anything? Yeah, me too.

The few photographs of him there depict a lifestyle only people today can hope to have. Money, success...seclusion? As Neil Young himself said about buying the ranch:

“For whatever you’re doing, for your creative juices, your geography’s got a hell of a lot to do with it,” he said. “You really have to be in a good place, and then you have to be either on your way there or on your way from there.”

5 Great Music Writers to Read (Who Happen to Be Female)

"Women were as rare as UFO sightings," said the singer Emmylou Harris to writer Lucy O'Brien in reference to the 1970's music scene. That sentiment is still true today. There is a lack of revered female music writers in this world. Also, I loathe the distinction that people feel needs to be made between "music writers", and "female music writers". "Guitarists" and "female guitarists", "rock band" and "female rock band", etc. Maybe this list will be the catalyst of change. Of course, this list could be extended and multiplied by 10, but in the interest of keeping it concise and a beginning point of sorts, I bring you 5 Music Writers to Read NOW.

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- If you have to start somewhere, I suggest you do so with Ellen Willis. She was the founding mother of women writing about music. Ellen was hired by the New Yorker in 1968 as their very first music critic after they read her acclaimed essay on Bob Dylan from short-lived independent magazine, Cheetah. One of the editors even had the audacity to suggest she write under E. Willis as to not alienate readers. She of course, did not comply. She wrote several books and was a highly involved activist in feminist groups before feminism was really a thing. Although having passed away, her influence can still be seen in the progression in amount of female music writers and the sheer admiration of her 50 years after her start. Maybe even in the acceptance of women in pants at the New Yorker.

- Kandia Crazy Horse is the writer of Rip It Up: The Black Experience in Rock & Roll, with stories and interviews from the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Prince, Slash, Little Richard and Bad Brains. She is a strong supporter of Southern Rock/Americana, as seen here in her stirringly titled, "Song O' The South: How The Allman Brothers Made A Redneck Negress Out Of Me". Kandia is clearly very passionate about music and it shows through in her unabashed writing that has little trouble of captivating audiences.

- Evelyn McDonnell was co-editor of the women music writer opus, Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Pop, and Rap. She was also the first female music editor at The Village Voice. Her work can be seen in countless publications, too many to name, just imagine, like, ALL of them. Evelyn's accolades are just as numerous, including a first place award for enterprise reporting by the South Florida Black Journalists Association for her 2004 Miami Herald expose, "Miami Police Secretly Watching Hip-Hop Artists", a personal favorite of mine. Evelyn is now assistant professor of journalism and new media at Loyola Marymount University.

- Additional co-editor to Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Pop, and Rap, Ann Powers is a powerhouse of unbiased opinion. She has a propensity for observing and assessing various genres without showing an actual distaste for any particular set of music. She was also a co-writer to Tori Amos in the book Piece by Piece, an account of the role of women in the music industry and the realities of the music business. Winner of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Awards, she now is the main writer for NPR's music blog, The Record (an interesting piece by her about musicians confronting their solitude). 

- dream hampton is an extremely inspiring writer in general, taking the lowercase spelling of her name from feminist writer, bell hooks. Her work ranges from music to politics to culture. She, like Ellen Willis, is a highly involved activist. She served as ghostwriter to Jay-Z's book Decoded about annotating his lyrics and relating them to his generation. dream was the first female editor of The Source and has been writing for Vibe for 15 years, and wrote a great piece on one of my favorite artists, D'Angelo, titled "Soul Man". Along with bylines at several other publications, she was a friend of Christopher Wallace, a.k.a. Notorious B.I.G., and helped produce the Emmy-award winning "Behind the Music: Notorious B.I.G." and also co-produced the documentary, "Bigger Than Life". 

The Disambiguation of Kendrick Lamar

I'd like to start this blog out with a piece I wrote about Kendrick Lamar's new album, To Pimp A Butterfly. This isn't a review of the album, but my own brief personal commentary.

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The main character in To Pimp A Butterfly is a caricature of Kendrick Lamar. Or so it may seem. Emotions are amplified and ideas are expanded to the point of irrationality, until you understand it’s all from experience. He taps into his admonished self and falls into the cognizant abyss along the way, only to pull himself at least almost out of it.

This is a journey we listeners are in on, as well. But we can’t own it. I can’t own it. In no part of my life could I have written a song about being severely oppressed to the point of depression. This depression being depicted in the song “u”, an extreme account of serious self-hatred and doubt. Desolation stemming from success and its unforeseen woes. The adage misery loves company is true as he glares at himself in the mirror and berates himself as if he’s another person. But from this, there is “i”, a gleaming sliver of hope and lending credence to the act of loving one’s self and ultimate redemption.

When I first sang along to the chanting chorus of “King Kunta”, there was no part of me that thought this was an allusion to Kunta Kinte’s struggle in Roots. I just thought it was a reference purely to Kendrick’s new royalty-like status in the hip-hop world. This predilection to chant to the thumping beat can be tied to that feeling you get when you listen to a song like Big Sean’s “I Don’t Fuck With You”. Who doesn’t want to sing along and feel a part of something? Even if it is to just tell someone fuck you, because sometimes you just need to say that.

Carvell Wallace alludes to this ignorance in his Pitchfork think piece about the album:

“If I was a white guy, I would probably like [the community] aspect of hip-hop the most. The idea that I can become an honorary member of blackness just by listening. Hip-hop makes that easy. The songs are readily available. The hood is explained to the uninitiated. No longer would I have to feel that the Blackness of Black People represents mystery or the unexplained.”

This thought didn’t really shock or insult me, because I know it’s true. There isn’t much that I could complain about. At least nothing that compares to some of the distressing events I hear in these songs or see on the streets of Ferguson on my TV from the comfort of my white suburban home. I can actively participate as much as I want, but will never know the fight myself.

To Pimp A Butterfly is a response to the mushroom cloud of racism that has been rising and blanketing our media and overall life. It's ingrained in our American History and our time is being called the second coming of Jim Crow. This idea was addressed in D’Angelo’s much-awaited album of late last year, Black Messiah. While not as detailed and extensive as Kendrick’s, it was deliberately put out around the time Darren Wilson’s charged were dropped for the shooting of Michael Brown and the case was closed. If that isn’t a strong enough reason to urgently drop an album, I don’t know what is.

The feeling of solidarity that I get from listening to this album is fleeting. I can turn it off and go back to my normal life of grabbing an overly expensive coffee at the plethora of independent coffee shop near my house, because I like to keep things “local”. I like to sit and write my pieces there and have done so with this one. And what’s wrong with that? I can’t pretend to be someone I’m not, and neither is Kendrick Lamar.