SONG OF THE DAY: Lowdown (kudzu'd)

This is Boz Skaggs funkiest song, slowed down. In fact, it’s his only funky song, which is testament to the healing moments of soul that still exist inside white people. We need to be more proactive about unleashing that potential, but it’s kinda like a trick because the only way you can be “proactive” about doing something like that is to do the opposite of what productivity myths tell us. Sometimes the hardest work to be doing involves learning how to fuck off better.

SONG OF THE DAY: Something

Al Green has always been a favorite of mine, but I'd mostly only dug into his Greatest Hits album (which has been in heavy warped level rotation since I was like 19... like I really need to get a new copy lol), which I also downloaded from the blog era (and had the added track "Belle"). I missed a lot. This track showed up on a Shaolin Soul comp I still downloaded from the limping along still blog era (for us old heads who live and die by external hard drives full of mp3s), and fuck if it's not the greatest. The Memphis backing band is on a tear, and Al's voice is always like chunky pat of batter mixed into the bowl of grits... smooth but with a touch of grittiness (literally). I love this song, and immediately got it on 45 to spin slow during live sets. Al Green, no matter how highly people think of him, is still underrated.

SONG OF THE DAY: New Improved Funk

Funk is a wonderful umbrella of a music genre. In fact, umbrella’s a bad term… let’s call is shade tree instead. Funk is a wonderful shade tree of a musical genre, which covers to much ground. All the genres I don’t love, whenever they creep over to get up under the funk shade tree, I start to enjoy them immensely. There are some of my basic thoughts on funk during this three thousand degree day of wretched humidity that might kill us all in a couple decades, unless we learn to grow more shade trees of funk, metaphysically and physically.

SONG OF THE DAY: Shock, Shock the House (kudzu'd)

LISTEN TO THE MAN! SHOCK SHOCK THE HOUSE!
Seriously though, my old school hip hop 45 arsenal has grown immensely, and I could slow it down with electro-funk old school vibes all night long. Hadn’t found a crowd that wants to get down like that though. I guess people don’t do angel dust like they used to. Shrug emoji.

SONG OF THE DAY: Computer Love

This is a cool song (in fact, perhaps the coolest). But also, fuck teh computers.

SONG OF THE DAY: La Burbuja (rebajada)

I practice shaking my ass in a masculine yet loose and fluid way 15 minutes every day (minimum), jamming out cumbia rebajada. It’s like yoga, but for loungers. My blood pressure has gone down, my credit score has gone up, and more importantly, I just feel better!

SONG OF THE DAY: Numbers (kudzu'd)

I was gonna write something about numbers, and how all my little creative practices tend to have numerical qualities to them, but I got immediately lost in my own brain, so instead just throwing a sentence or two out to fill space because that's what I assume I'm supposed to do with one of these posts.

SONG OF THE DAY: Smile Now, Cry Later (kudzu'd)

Anytime I do a slowed down DJ set somewhere live, this is my closeout song, the last one I play. For one, it’s an absolute banger of a song slowed down, but it’s also the perfect “last call” song to pay up your tab, get your shit together, and get ready to go. The added cultural metaphysics of it being the old school jam that is intertwined with the comedy/tragedy mask “Smile Now, Cry Later” tattoo motif makes it even better. I wanna get one of those, but with hobo clowns instead.

SONG OF THE DAY: A Sunrise Before

Bambu is still the best rapper going. You should buy all his shit on bandcamp the next bandcamp Friday that comes around. (And a stupid thing I dream about in my head is a Bambu/XL Middleton project.)

SONG OF THE DAY: Funky Country (kudzu'd)

Saw a lot of talk about country music because one of those sterilized Wal-Mart dentist’s office playlist country dudes re-did Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” and honestly, country music discourse is crap. Even saying country music only got jingoistic and fucked up after 9/11 is short-sighted, because half the big hits of the early days of country music during the ‘40s were about bombing Japan into oblivion. Country music has always been a tool of the state. That being said, it also attracts fucked up rural creatives, so you can find gems (like this one). Being mad at popular forms of music for sucking is like being mad that the sun came up. If you expect great shit to be popular, you haven’t been paying attention to the average American mind frame.

Sunday Slowdown Chapter 009: Freak Your Credit Score in 69 Days: The Dirtgod Way

FREAK YOUR CREDIT SCORE IN 69 DAYS: THE DIRTGOD WAY

Was feeling down this weekend due to crushing financial fears (as is common in the late American empire’s grand pyramid scam of crushing us all into economic dust), so I disappeared into the 45 stacks and whipped out another Sunday Slowdown. This one is almost an audiobook, to be honest, because I recorded excerpts from my most recent Southern Gothicc Futurist zine throughout the two-hour mix. It’s on my mixcloud and bandcamp. Scope out the back catalog while you’re there.

new book - LOOKIN' FOR A HOME

I released a new book a few weeks back called Lookin' For A Home, which is a selection of haiku I wrote over the course of 4-5 years on my patreon. These are the best of that patreon process, so it's an insight into my life from right after moving out of the house I'd had as a part of marriage for two decades, up through finding the house I'm currently blessed with in Schuyler, Virginia. Upon being accepted by this house, I realized it was the first time in my life I'd ever actually felt at home, in my entire life. That was a strange realization, but a good one to be on the positive end of it. I'm very proud of this book, as it's great insight into Southern Gothicc Futurism, life in the rural south, during the digital age, and growing older while trying to fight the doom settling into your bones as the failure demons circle.

You can buy it at Amazon, or from me in person at haiku slams or other Southern Gothicc Futurist events.

SONG OF THE DAY: Cosmic Blast (kudzu'd)

I'm on a hardcore space funk kick, and I keep my definition of "space funk" wide the fuck open. This is a space funk anthem.

SONG OF THE DAY: I Heard It Through The Grapevine (kudzu'd)

Perhaps you don’t know this song upon the title, but once you listen, you will always most certainly recognize it as “the Friday song”. Roger Troutman was a national treasure, and in a non-racist world, he would be old and fat and have horrible opinions rather than Morrissey.

SONG OF THE DAY: Do It (kudzu'd)

This is a South African funk band 45 I got on a lark amidst getting a few records off Carolina Soul auctions on ebay. This definitely is the bangingest banger from the stack though, as I didn’t even know the group, but damn this song is so sweet slowed down, just so thick and nasty. The negative side of accidentally finding a banger like this is I spin it so much when I’m playing records that I feel like I need a back-up copy. It’s become a foundational 45 for a slowed set. It’s also interesting how even at the international record selling discography sites, information can be sparse about large parts of the world. The internet still has its biases, even if the whole world has it. And I actually enjoy that lack of comprehensiveness, because it means you have to accept you can’t know it all, and you always gotta be seeking the shit you hadn’t been exposed to yet. Or you can find bezels of greatness beyond the scope of the mainstream digital focus (even in a place like discogs). There are always margins nobody thought to pay attention to, hiding somewhere on this Earth. And if you find them and they are great, sometimes it’s better to not tell nobody about it, because you’ll just ruin it by snitching to the whole damn world. Clout will never be worth it.