Paranoia, Politics & Staying Positive
Ishues Ups The Ante On His New Album Civil Unrest
originally published October 3, 2007
Ishues
For local rapper Ishues, spending years in the game hasn't dulled his passion or enthusiasm - if anything, he believes more strongly in the power of hip-hop than ever before.
"Hip-hop is for social change. Hip-hop is the most powerful and influential force for change among many people on this planet," he says. "A lot of people get [hip-hop culture] confused with the music, which is understandable since all most people see about hip-hop is the rapping that's on the radio or on the TV… [That's] what's being sold to them. But it's a collective culture birthed out of the ghettos and inner cities of New York. It was expressed through graffiti, deejaying, breakdancing. We get too wrapped up in the rappers - that's an expression of hip-hop, but not the only thing going on."
Ishues has been performing and recording in Athens for years, and is one of the few rappers who's been able to achieve name recognition outside of the insular local hip-hop crowd. He spent considerable time earlier this decade honing his skills at battle rap tournaments (and frequently winning) as well as performing with the now-defunct Herb and Skills collective. A debut studio album called Reality Flow was released in 2004, establishing Ishues as one of the more progressive, politically-minded performers in town.
After testing the waters with a mixtape last year called Urban Warfare, Ishues has just released his second studio album, Civil Unrest. It's a more focused release than Reality Flow: more pointedly political, more paranoid about the government's black helicopters, more personal, but it also sports less oppressive production, and the album's more comfortable and confident than his first release.
"Everything on Civil Unrest is 100-percent Ishues," he says. "I believe it all. How could I do anything otherwise? It's all me."
Ishues says he believes that the hip-hop community needs to confront its qualities that he finds troubling. "People just want to shy away from the negative and give up responsibility, though, when the negative comes up," he says. "How you gonna sell cars but not sell the idea of being a gangsta?" If the hip-hop culture is used to sell clothes, shoes and drinks, then the image and content of the music must be influential; therefore, he says, if hip-hop is able to influence consumers positively, the hip-hop community must also acknowledge the responsibity it has with its ability to influence listeners negatively.
"At this point, everything is being sold by hip-hop," he says. "Just look at any commercial on TV, [people are] dressing a certain way."
And though suburban white kids are the by-the-numbers largest consumers of hip-hop music and culture, that's immaterial to the question of influence on the black community, says Ishues. "Yes, they're the major purchasers of hip-hop, but it's the black kids who are looking for the role models. The African-American has always been a more dependent community - white kids can escape into that fantasy world of gangsters, but can come back out to a stable foundation - not all, of course, but the higher majority. You got rappers in the hood telling people, hey, I was like you, look where I am now. I got where I am now by selling drugs."
According to Ishues, it's the rise of the coke-rap over the past several years that's to blame. "That's not what I want to promote," he says. "You have to be aware of what you're pushing, especially a false fantasy that'll lead you straight to prison. 'I got to where I was by pushing drugs, and you can, too.' Even if all that's true," and Ishues says he believes that most of these coke-rappers are elaborating or just flat-out fabricating their past, "then for every one rapper who made it that far, there are a ton of dudes who are in prison. But you know, I sold dope in the past. I know what that is, what it's like… they're convincing people that's the way out of the poverty."
It's easy to take a stance as the shrill moralizer, sending out corny but-what-about-the-children platitudes. It's a lot harder to do something about it. That's one of Ishues' goals, though, and his music is only one aspect of that struggle. He also, along with other local artists like the spoken-word poet Life, dedicates time to mentoring local at-risk youth through social-work-styled programs and workshops. "These things are telling to young black kids, especially males, who are listening to what's sold as an easy solution," says Ishues. "People look to the rapper because hip-hop represents bucking the system and hoping for artists to put their energy into the statements."
And to Ishues, he sees first-hand the-children-are-the-future clichés and believes deeply that when presented with positive influences, kids in bad situations can turn things around. "There's nothing nobody can tell me," he says, "because me and Life and other cats work in the projects, mentoring, so we know how these kids are… a lot of these kids who want to rap think that to be succesful they have to rap about selling drugs when they ain't never even done that. They need to know that they can rap about themselves as they really are."
Ishues credits some of his desire to have a positive impact on his four children. "As I've gotten older and as my children have gotten older," he says, "I've seen how deeply affected we all are by even the small problems we brush under the rug. Whether I get famous or not, whether I get thousands of dollars or not, I have to spit what I think and feel. I have a responsibility to give them the truth as I see it."
Citing favorites like Immortal Technique and Common, Ishues says he thinks the progressive rap movement will gain steam as listeners grow tired of the clichés and feel even more distance between themselves and the performers.
"This awakening's going to come. Everything has cycles," he says. "For the sake of argument, take a look at this Kanye West/ 50 Cent thing. Of the two, Kanye's a conscious artist more so than 50 Cent. It was definitely a marketing ploy and there was little legitimacy, but you can still see which way people swung. The people are the ones that bought the records, and they prefer the conscious artist to the gangsta artist… Everybody is really getting tired of the same old thing. The guys talking about their chains, their partying, etc. The industry is lining up. It's a real good time."
At this week's performance at Farm 255, Ishues will have copies of the new album available, and he debuts his new live backing band called The Movement (not to be confused with the beatboxing South Carolina band of the same name). "It's gonna be tight," says Ishues, "the band's really rockin'." Brennen Bennett (bass), Ryan Vogel (keyboard), Tony Delgado (drums), Lane Miller (guitar) and Harmon Hanson (guitar) provide the sounds with DJ Bulldog Purp handling the turntables.
WHO: Ishues N The Movement, Molasses Skye
WHERE: Farm 255
WHEN: Thursday, October 4
HOW MUCH: $5
Flickering on a Screen
Kenosha Kid's Union of Jazz Sounds and Classic Films Opens Doors of Potential
originally published October 3, 2007
Mike White
Kenosh Kid
Since 2001, Dan Nettles, the leader and only stable member of Athens' Kenosha Kid, has engaged in a series of fruitful collaborations with dead people. Nettles is not a channeler of spirits, and he doesn't sample old recordings; he and his rotating cast of bandmates perform compositions and improvise to silent films. Kenosha Kid creates movie scores in real-time.
Last February, Nettles and friends debuted his most engaging and nuanced "score" to date, a musical accompaniment to Buster Keaton's 1928 film Steamboat Bill, Jr. Like the music on 2005's Projector, Kenosha Kid's only album, Nettles' newest score both is jazz and isn't jazz. Fusion, psychedelic rock, be-bop, blues, march and heavy doses of funk all find their way into the work. And the results are far from the trite one-world jam-rock or postmodern schtick that such a mishmash of genres suggests. Piercing melodies - the show-stoppingly pretty, music-major intricate kind that Wayne Shorter and Kenny Wheeler wrote in the '70s - guide this project, and the execution is as devastatingly funky as that of The Meters or Miles Davis' electric bands. Kenosha Kid plays jazz as if Kenny G and Wynton Marsalis never came along to ruin the genre's mainstream and leave its great minds to squawk away in an underground vacuum.
This month, Nettles and seven other musicians from across North America will convene in Athens to record a studio version of his challenging-yet-accessible Steamboat score, and this weekend, they'll perform the music live as the film screens at Ciné. This meeting is important not only because Athenians will get to hear some great music, but because it could mark the end of an era for Kenosha Kid. "The CD is meant to be a follow-up to Projector in terms of sound and general aesthetic," Nettles says, "and at the same time, I hope it will be a definitive marker of our whole 'silent movie score' aspect, because I feel it is coming to an end for me."
Projects as ambitious as Kenosha Kid - a vision that spans artistic media, geographical regions, musical genres and time periods, and high and low cultural registers - aren't the type that any ol' dude with a guitar dreams up while he's on his pizza delivery route. Nettles talks about his musical upbringing, and his evolution into Kenosha Kid: "I began playing guitar in kindergarten with my father," he says. "[We played] lots of country music. I played a baritone ukulele, because I couldn't get my arm around a full-sized guitar! In seventh grade, I began lessons with Chris Hampton, who I am still friends with. At the same time, I began to get into the music program in school. I pretty much took my musical education to the limit for Watkinsville, then decided to go to music school after 12th grade. Four years later, I left Berklee College of Music with a big stack of notes, a huge list of scales and crap that I didn't know, and very little playing experience. Later, back in Athens, I began to cut my teeth for a few years. And then I went to the Banff International Jazz Workshop [located in Alberta, Canada], and everything changed. Hey, there were people out there just like me, who'd-a-thought! I gave up the pursuit of reproducing jazz, and went down a path of my own. The people and teachers I met at the workshop inspired me to quit editing myself and begin to play more of myself, and let other people worry about the labels."
Nettles mentions two musicians whose work inspired him to think differently about jazz: Bill Frisell, a genre-roving guitarist known for blending jazz with American folk and country music, and Dave Douglas, a trumpeter and composer who has received praise from both mainstream and avant-garde circles. "Yeah he's a big hero," Nettles explains when asked about Frisell, "and I was lucky to meet him and become friends. I told him, 'You were the guy that made it okay for me to play the way I do.' And it's true - when I heard him embracing the guitar, and the sounds available on the guitar, and mixing in rock stuff, and country stuff, and stuff that just sounds good on the guitar, it really clicked. I thought, 'Why am I playing 'Naima' in A-flat? I'm a guitar player… I've got this great A string, let's take it up a half step and use it!' Things like that… [another] main concept I gleaned from him was to be okay with simplicity."
Nettles on Douglas: "Dave opened other doors for me, mostly along the lines of how to generate even more material out of a small theme." At Banff, Nettles collaborated with Douglas on a silent film score. (Frisell, too, has launched cinematic projects, such as Go West: Music for the Films of Buster Keaton.)
Literature, too, has played a pivotal role in shaping Nettles' aesthetic. "I read lots of fiction," he acknowledges. "About the same time I began playing music seriously, I was also writing a great deal. Eventually, the music won out, and I went into a career of music instead of writing, but great authors have always had a hold over me. When I write music and perform, it's like entering a whole private realm, and in that way it is a similar experience to reading some of my favorite books. Gravity's Rainbow was a big one for me for a few years, along with Grass' Tin Drum, García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, and Faulkner's Snopes Trilogy.
"I picked the band name from Gravity's Rainbow," says Nettles. "I wanted a name that was very playful and at the same time hit upon lots of dark and light levels of experience, which is what the book does for me. For quite a while, it was fun for me to make use of all the symbols in the book, of which there are many." These images - a horse, a knight chess piece, a projector, a light bulb - have appeared in Kenosha Kid's album artwork and concert fliers.
Although Nettles has absorbed and meditated upon plenty of inspiring musical compositions, films and novels, he spends even more time actively creating music and connecting with other musicians. He supports himself by teaching music lessons, working shifts at Nuçi's Space, and playing shows. He's also received backing from the University of Georgia's Music Department, where he has served as a visiting artist. When he's not eking out a living, he travels throughout North America and Europe. He estimates that he spends about a fifth of his time on the road. "All in all, it's not easy," he admits. "I'm grateful my girlfriend and my dog put up with it all!"
As much a strain as traveling can be for Nettles, his journeys have been fruitful, allowing him to meet kindred spirits. But these long-distance friendships can create even more stress for him - especially when he needs to pull together musicians from multiple states or countries for a tour or performance. However, Kenosha Kid has a system in place to make its constituents' lives easier: "Before a tour, we try to have a few days of rehearsal. I also have all my music written out and scanned in a .pdf file, so for the new stuff, [my bandmates] can take a look ahead of time. Plus, my bandmates are really, really, really shamelessly good at what they do… Logistically, it's always a huge burden, but we often divide up the phone calls and emails. One day, a booking agent will realize how well we do what we do, and that they can make money off of it, and then we can all relax and focus all the time on writing music!"
Nettles has considered leaving the Deep South for a city with a larger pool of like-minded artists (not to mention a bigger audience for jazz-based creative music). But, he says, "I lived a few years in Boston and New York City. At the time, the bigger cities were great fun, but I wasn't ready to do what my friends were doing in order to stay. Work in a temp job 40 hours a week, trying to scrape a few hours together to practice, and perform a tip jar gig when you managed to get one? No thanks. Of course, now they have moved on to the next career step and are really making the scene happen in NYC, but I get to benefit from that also - when I travel, my friends help me find better work… I guess I am addicted to the freedom I get from a smaller town. I can live cheaply, I have more time to write and perform, and as long as I tour a few parts of the year, or my bandmates 'tour Georgia,' I'm quite happy. We have quite a gig exchange going between Athens, NYC, Montreal and the guys in Europe."
So, it looks like Nettles is sticking around the Classic City. "Somebody has to! I really hope that jazz can one day return to the South, but the music has to change, and the listeners have to change what they expect. In less-progressive cities, musical traditions can become more of a burden than source of inspiration. How many people really get excited about jazz standards? I mean really excited, like, 'I'm getting a babysitter Friday night, and we are going out to really party and listen to those guys play tunes from The Real Book!' Jazz becomes background music, or music that should be behind glass at a museum, with a little sign next to it saying, 'This was how Miles did it.'"
WHAT: Kenosha Kid's live score for Steamboat Bill, Jr.
WHERE: Ciné
WHEN: Thursday, October 4; 8 p.m. & 10 p.m.
HOW MUCH: $10
Take Me Higher
The Reggae-Pop Combustion Conglomerate Still Flyin' Gets Those Vibes Vibin'
originally published October 3, 2007
Jill Karjian
Still Flyin'
Still Flyin' is reggae in the way Big & Rich is country, and while the bandmembers may all hate that comparison, the point is that the categorization is just a way to get some very basic ideas across to potential listeners before launching creativity missiles straight through all the rules. It's a lot harder, or at least takes more words, to say, "Hey, check out this amazing, 20-ish-piece, folky, yelling pop explosion with a winding beat and a proclivity for jamming in a way that somehow isn't annoying" than just to call it "reggae" and be done with it. But the point is that Still Flyin' plays reggae and rocksteady for people who do and for people who don't like the genre. The best thing that's been said about the band so far was said by Garrett Kamps, music editor of SF Weekly, who wrote, "Fun is the new not-fun, and Still Flyin' exemplifies that ethos."
The group (or should I say collective?) is the enormous infant of ex-Athenian Sean Rawls, formerly of the late Masters of the Hemisphere and currently of local band Je Suis France (despite being literally across the country from most of the band). The France has proved that you don't all need to live in the same city, let alone the same time zone, to continue to produce records and tour, and Still Flyin' has taken that program even further, with members as far afield as Australia (Izzo Knowles) and Sweden (Ake Stromer and Anna Storakers), although most of them, like Rawls, call San Francisco home. How did he end up there? It resulted from an itch to get out of Athens, due to a military brat childhood spent moving, and, post-Masters, San Francisco just seemed like a good place to go. And the, um, giant reggae band - how did that come about?
Rawls explains: "The last year or so that I lived in Athens, I started playing in Je Suis France. We have a trilogy of songs about some dude flying or something, and I made up the last installment, called 'Never Gonna Touch the Ground.' It was an enjoyable little ditty to perform and we started playing it once or twice per show. People asked us if it was a cover - the jam factor was that high in this one. So for the first Twilight Delirium after I moved, I was feeling a little Francesick and recorded NGTTG for them to play over the P.A. as they took the stage. The friends I recorded it with were so into the song that we decided to form a band around it. I asked everyone I knew in town to join my 'reggae' band, and, to my surprise, everyone accepted, hence the gargantuan lineup."
So the song Pitchfork recently humorlessly called "a leaden, even insulting ersatz reggae track complete with embarrassing fake Jamaican accents" birthed a band of many colors, a band with no reggae experience except drummer Yoshi Nakamoto's brief fling with ska in high school. In fact, Rawls says, "a lot of people in the band claimed to hate reggae before joining." So why did they respond positively to his invitation, let alone actually show up to practice? "In the beginning, most of the people I asked to join thought I was joking and said yes. Then when we finally got around to having a practice, they showed up out of curiosity, I suppose. Now I guess people want to join because we jam it so hard onstage, and if there's already that many people in the band, people figure it must be pretty easy to join. We had to implement a membership cap because it's too hard to fit onstage, plus, for transportation purposes, it's ridiculous."
After being asked, skeptically, if the number of bandmembers (18 on this tour) meant mostly rhythm eggs being played, Rawls provided a list of who was playing what, although confirming that some rhythm eggs were, indeed, involved: "Me, singing, guitar; Mindy Schweitzer, singing, percussion; Yoshi Nakamoto, drums; Tater Moran, guitar; Bren Mead, singing, mega-percussion; Phil "The Thrill" Horan, dancing, bongos; Alicia Vanden Heuvel, singing, organ; Drew Cramer, bass; Izzo Knowles, singing, trumpet; Ake Stromer, singing, saxophone; Anna Storakers, singing, melodica, percussion; Nick Underwood, singing, trumpet; Ice Bergeron, reverb tank; Maria Niubo, singing, percussion; Gabe Saucedo, singing, vibraphone, trombone; Gary Olson, singing, trumpet; Frank Jordan, singing, saxophone; and Becky Barron, singing, trumpet."
It all sounds rather overwhelming, down to the question of what exactly a reverb tank is - "a metal box with springs in the back of an amp that creates reverb. We unscrew it from the back of the amp, attach super-long RCA cables and physically bang it on various body parts (head/ chest/ thigh/ high-fiving someone else), and it makes a big crashing sound. The only problem is that all the violence breaks the tank pretty quickly. Sometimes a new one doesn't even last through one show. We need to hire someone to engineer an indestructible reverb tank." And besides, despite all the songwriting experience involved (you probably recognize a lot of those names above from bands like Maserati, Red Pony Clock, Ladybug Transistor, Aislers Set and more), the vision and the songs come from Rawls, which provides some grounding to the chaos of fun.
Whether it's as big a hit anywhere as it is in Sweden is a question that remains open. Still Flyin' has toured Scandinavia twice to great response and has received positive reviews in San Francisco, but this is the band's first venture to the East Coast, and the members hope to expand some minds.
Athens, in particular, is a special show, a show the tour schedule was rearranged around in order to accommodate a Friday-night gig, and, while expectations might be high, the group has previously managed to satisfy big promises, as with the Mind Zap Festival that took place in San Francisco in 2005. When Rawls says the sequel to Mind Zap is Yacht Zap, to be followed by Atlantis Zap, and that "the final zapination will be on the moon," he inspires a strange kind of confidence born from witnessing his previous miracles (e.g., touring with 17 other people). If you say it enough times, it will not only have the aura of truth, it will be true. Never gonna touch the ground.
WHO: Still Flyin', Je Suis France, Night Moves, Fairmount Fair, Lil Flip Scoldjah & Excalibrah
WHERE: 40 Watt Club
WHEN: Friday, October 5
HOW MUCH: $6
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