FRIENDS AND FRENZIED: Congratulations on being awake in the spring. As you commence completing yet another term, I leave you with the hope that something next comes, inevitably. Take your state of mind, take your wiki and continue translating. If you are passing on from school to un-school, think of Angel Archer thinking of Dante:

 

“I beheld the leaves within the unfathomed blaze

Into one volume bound by love, the same”

 

She considers that “all the realms are real, none less than the others, none more than the others” (146 Transmigration).

 

Below is one small slice of my continuance into the world of the world. I am pasting this tunnel of correspondence in hopes that you may use it as a template, friend Barry, or an idea for what you may accomplish with wiki.

---

January 26, 2006: I net-surfed in Foyle’s Jazz Café as I often did upon first arriving in sunny London. Just there, on the self-same counter as my un-paid-for MAC (because you HAVE to have a MAC (yeah, fuck all of you boys who told me that; it’s crashed twice, bitches)), lay 15 or so copies of a worthy newspaper, THE STOOL PIGEON. The writing was very fine, but luckily (for I would have bailed out from intimidation) I didn’t read much of it before flipping through to the editor’s contact info.

 

I sent this:

 

Dear Mr. Hebblethwaite,

 

Hi. I'm an unemployed ex-patriot looking for work. I'm a wannabe

writer with fantastic taste in music and fashion and literature and

everything else relevant to culture. I do prose. I do poetry.

Please check out my totally unedited wiki blog to see if my writing

might be something you might be able to include in your paper.

 

http://pbl.ist.psu.edu/cgi-bin/analog.pl?TomatoHarvester

 

I'm also attaching my CV for kicks.

 

 

Best,

 

I received this:

 

Hi TH,

 

Thanks for getting in touch. I'm in the midst of distributing the new issue

around the country at the moment. We do it all ourselves. Back in three

weeks. Do you want to get back in touch then? I won't be checking emails

before.

 

Chin chin, Phil

 

I sent this:

 

 

Phil,

 

Greetings. Hopefully you are back in town and in the groove of e-mail

checking once again. Just wanted to reiterate my enthusiasm for your

publication and follow up on the potentiality for genuine

communication. I'm looking for a writing job and am willing to do

basically anything to start. I'm happy to send you portfolios and the

like if you'd be interested.

 

All the best,

 

I received this:

 

Hello again TH. Thanks for getting back in touch. I've returned and we're

deep into the next issue already.

 

Where do you live? It may be easiest to meet. I'm in Shoreditch, but coming

to the West End a couple of times this week.

 

Cheers, Phil

 

 

I sent this:

 

Hi Phil,

 

Thanks for the swift response. I live in Lewisham, but work in

Farringdon so Shoreditch is convenient for me. At the moment,

evenings are best as I find myself a transom of The Corporation. So,

if you're available any time after 5:30, that would be great. Let me

know what you think as to time/place.

 

Thanks,

 

I received this;

 

TH,

 

How about Thursday after 5.30? Know Hoxton Square? We could meet at a coffee

place there.

 

In fact there's a place on the corner called the Hoxton Bar and Grill (I

think). How about 6pm there on Thursday?

 

Phil

 

I sent this:

 

Phil,

 

Hi. I don't know Hoxton Square, but I will know it as of Thursday at

6pm where I will meet you at the supposed Hoxton Bar and Grill which

is on a corner. I am most easily distinguished by my large hair.

 

until thurs,

 

I received this:

 

 

Hi TH,

 

Good to meet you yesterday. Thanks for coming east. Hope you got to the West End okay.

 

Okay, writing. Have a think about what you'd like to contribute to the

paper. Remember that we have many different sections. We're getting tight

for space in the new issue, but there's room for you to do something.

 

A few possible ideas: we're short of a book review, a film story, an

obituary etc. All must be music related, somehow.

 

Best to thing to do is to have a root around on the net and find out what's

coming out in April/May time. I can get you review copies of stuff.

 

Doing a review of sorts may be a good place to start. I'll admit to being a

bit concerned that you haven't interviewed a band before (!). There's a bit

of a skill to it, and you'll need a dictaphone and all that...

 

Cheers, Phil

---

So see the substance of wiki gather its particles and grant me a small, but valuable start. The paper prints 60,000 copies and comes out five times per year. It’s a free paper and its editor, Phil, has “never been poorer in his life.”

 

These are the published versions, the stuff after Phil sifted through and Britified things. Indeed, it’s a loose translation.

 

There have been no clues in the last few takes, in the steps retraced, the education must have cost her

It must have caused her to go back to the civilization caught between here and the real one, just to say what you'd begun to say once

The education must have cost her

The loose translation must have lost her

It must have lost her, yeah

 

The New Pornographers

 

 

And this is what was published: sorry, I don’t “scan”

 

SPEED GARAGE:

 

There’s a reason Pimp My Ride is MTV’s most addictive show: it’s not about rich teenagers trying to get laid. Nope, it’s about poor teenagers trying to get laid by having a car which makes them look rich and fuckworthy. I ride therefore I ride. Or something. Anyway, what could be better than taking that sacred mantra to the international stage? You’re damn right they are. This autumn Pimp My Ride International will be bitch slapping Smart cars into shock as South Bronx rapper Fat Joe and Atlanta’s ‘King of Crunk’ Lil Jon host the globe-totting version of this delicacy.

 

PICK FLICK

 

School of Rock monitor Jack Black collaborates with his “brother Kyle here” as Tenacious D to produce “the best and greatest” same thing they always do. Yep, they’ve got a new movie schedule for an autumn UK release which promises to unlocked the secret of how the best band of all time materialised. With a pick. They’re going to pick the lock. Get it? Actually, that’s bullshit. However, there is a guitar pick involved. Tenacious D in The pick of Destiny smells of Kevin Smith meets Harold and Kumar. If that’s not convincing, allow me to seal the deal: Meat Loaf is in it.

 

WICKED WILL

 

Jeff Feuerzeig’s The Devil And Daniel Johnston, the 2005 Sundance Film Festival winner for Best Documentary, opens May 5 in the UK. Johnston is an artist in the raw sense- a true American indie hero whose lo-fi recording and comic-book-style graphics won him the support of artists like Kurt Cobain in the nineties. Thankfully, Daniel’s still around to tell his tale. Just. The film promises to be not particularly uplifting as it tackles his troubles with manic depression. Yeah. Hottt.

 

WRAP PARTY

 

Dave Chappelle’s Block Party was released in the US in early March, and despite rave reviews, there are no current plans for it to come out in the UK. However, with performances from the one-time reunited Fugees, Common, The Roots, Dead Prez and others, and direction from Michael Gondry, it’s unlikely the film will be contained for long. The actions cuts between Chappelle spreading the word of a concert to end all concerts in his hometown of Dayton, Ohio, and the actual show itself which took place in Brooklyn in September 2004. It’s said to be “ socially conscious”. That’s all fine and good, so long as they don’t forget Rick James. Bitch.

 

JOHNNY JACKSON

 

Mystery, or the lore of the grotesque, continues to abound in the famous and, more recently, infamous Jackson family. Fort them, the days when everything was clear as ‘ABC’ are long gone. Yet the murder of Johnny Jackson with a steak knife, by a woman, briefly jerks our heads away from Janet’s current trouser size. Nah, just kidding. What was it again?

 

The slaying took place where it all began for the Jackson family, in Gary, Indiana. Johnny replaced Jackson 5’s original drummer Milford Hite in 1967. Despite being a local drumming prodigy, his contributions can’t be heard on the albums, as the Motown label hired someone else for the recording sessions. Still, Johnny was there for the heydays, travelling with the band for live shows until Jackson 5 changed labels an became The Jacksons. Friends and former bandmates described his drum style as impressive and showy, and his personality as equally upbeat.

 

Questions surround his life and death. His familial ties to the Jacksons are highly questionable. Many believe that both he and Ronnie Rancifer, Jackson 5’s keyboardist, were only said to be cousins of the family for the higher calling of the bank. Johnny’s relationship to the woman charged, 44-year-old Yolanda Davis, is also unclear. The neighbour who found Johnny confirmed that Davis was an acquaintance, but nothing more specific.

 

Davis avoided authorities for three days after the incident, which took place on March 1. She expressed fear for her life in the ill-fated dispute between herself and Johnny. In the end, not much is known of Johnny’s life. He was 54 or 55, depending on the source. What was known: he was playing for his friend Anthony Acoff’s band, White Dove—a sad irony considering.

 

RAY BARRETTO

 

Despite having a career that spanned more than five decades, 689 albums and the ability, if he wanted to, to say that he jammed with Dizzy Gillespie and the Rolling Stones, Ray Barretto claimed he owed his success as a conguero and music director mostly to the fortune of time and place. While it’s true that in the late forties New York was mixing his love, jazz, with his Latin roots, on this point, the King of the Hard Hands struck loose skin.

 

Realistically, Barrettto was the territory. He can claim to be all of the following: a creator of salsa, the first US-born musician to implement the African conga drum into jazz, and a pioneer in breaking R&B jazz into mainstream Latin cultures.

 

Born April 29, 1929, and growing up between Brooklyn, the Bronx and Harlem, Barretto’s childhood was sadly reminiscent of most second-generation Puerto Rican families. After joining the military- to elude the dismal future that faced most Nu Yoricans – Barretto returned to the US in 1949 with a conga drum in tow. His far-reaching fans each claim his as their own. Depending on who’s speaking, he was Puerto Rican, American or African – African because of his activism against apartheid. And his music has been tagged Latin, jazz, Latin jazz, Cubo African, be bop and Cu bop. None of them are wrong: Barretto was a true fuser.

 

He died on 17 February 2006 shortly after receiving a National Endowment for the Arts to add to his laundry list of other accolades. His son, 19, who is about the same ages as Barretto was when he took up the congas, is currently keeping his musical flame burning.