2 months ago
My first sandstorm in Abu Dhabi. I’m not in Kansas anymore. Or is this the equivalent of the tornado that made Dorothy disappear?
2 months ago
Paul D. Miller + Jason King in conversation at NYC’s No. 8 this Friday (March 29 2013).
RSVP by email here: info@superlatude.com
2 months ago
Like all cosmopolitan places, Zanzibar is an emulsion of influences: the culture is decidedly Swahili (and Muslim), and you’d have to have blinders on to miss the unmistakeable contributions from the Portugese, Omani, Indian, Chinese, German, British, and, more recently, Italian. With its huckster merchants, tourist honeymooners, pungent fish markets, compressed alleyways, and turquoise beaches, Zanzibar straddles the ancient and modern, the exotic and familiar, the muggy and breezy, the squalid and lush.
3 months ago
A beautiful rainbow-filled morning in Zanzibar.
3 months ago
My latest essay: a 50 page deconstruction of the mechanics of energy and feeling in the work of Michael Jackson. Gets its first printing this year in Taking It to the Bridge, a new collection of essays on music and performance edited by Nicholas Cook and Richard Pettengill.
4 months ago
Me chatting about the liner notes I did for Light in the Attic.
The Time Is Out of Joint: Notes on D’Angelo’s Voodoo
by Jason King. Copyright © 2012. Do not distribute or reproduce without explicit permission.
I was commissioned to write these liner notes for vinyl re-release of D’angelo’s Voodoo, released by Light in the Attic Records, December 2012.
I’ve faithfully reproduced the notes here for you to read. Go to Light in the Attic Records to purchase the vinyl version; visit them on the web: http:lightintheattic.net
Enjoy.
____________
The Time Is Out of Joint: Notes on D’Angelo’s Voodoo
Voodoo hit store shelves on January 25th 2000, just a few weeks after New Year celebrations, so you could argue that it was the first great album of the new millennium. But Voodoo also belongs squarely in the 1990s. Its thirteen tracks were all produced in the late ’90s. And Voodoo’s muggy grooves capture the sound of premillennial anxiety as captivatingly as anything Tricky or Radiohead or Missy Elliot released during those paranoid years when we somehow convinced ourselves the Y2K bug would smite us with meltdown and global catastrophe.
Holdups and false starts kept Voodoo from a ’90s release. Perfectionist D’Angelo had become distracted by weed and weightlifting, and debilitated by sophomore pressure to follow up his groundbreaking 1995 debut Brown Sugar. In the interim he’d fathered two children, switched managers, jumped to a new record label, and made cameos on scattershot soundtracks. Two promo singles dropped: murky, sample-heavy “Devil’s Pie” in October 1998 and Redman/Method Man-assisted toe-tapper “Left and Right” a year later. But promises of a full-length studio album evaporated into the ether. Voodoo might have seen its commercial release in November 1999 but a planned duet with Lauryn Hill on a lurching cover of Roberta Flack’s 1975 “Feel Like Making Love” remained unfinished and the album was pushed back until just after the New Year. (The rendition would ultimately wind up on Voodoo as a solo D’Angelo record without Hill.)
6 months ago
Yes! Got my copy of @lightintheattic vinyl reissue of #D’Angelo’s #Voodoo. I wrote the +8000 word liner notes.
6 months ago
Snapped this ad in Miami a few weeks ago. People actually pay $$ to hear Pauly D spin records. Just sayin’.
6 months ago
Watch Spike Lee’s Bad 25 MJ doc (ABC, Thurs 9:30pm ET/PT).Not saying that just cause I’m in it, but because it’s brilliantly done.
Last weekend I met with, uh, Elvis’ daughter, the ex Mrs. MJ. Slightly surreal, I guess.
7 months ago
inactiveblogmf-deactivated20130 asked: I wish I could attend your Freddie classes. btw If you have any questions about Freddie, I'm sure I could answer. I'm just saying because I've been a fan for a long time. also I hope you watched the new documentary about him called "The Great Pretender", maybe you would find it useful :) I hope I'm not bothering you, cheers!
many thanks…We are watching The Great Pretender for the last class.
8 months ago
Random sightings, NYC.
9 months ago
Random sightings in downtown Manhattan, September 2012.
9 months ago
Food for thought on a brick wall in Soho, NYC.
