Intersections

Excavations: The Original Notations

From a YouTube playlist called OK CHOLO. It's "I'm Still Here" by The Notations, one of the many bands grouped up with the Eastside oldies sound popular among our parents in the 50s and 60s. (And still popular I bet among nostalgic pachucos everywhere.)

The Notations are actually from Chicago, and are still playing.

Salsa and young love, by Danny Daniel

A very smart person at Sony Music somehow found out about a teen prodigy salsa singer in Cartagena, Colombia, and decided, Wanna be BIG? You gotta conquer Mexico City! Danny Daniel, baby-faced and talented, has been doing mid-sized appearances in the D.F. since February, to so far very receptive audiences.

But the whole operation is so under the radar; Danny Daniel has no Wiki, for starters, and his Sony deal has barely been reported. That's besides the point for the hysterical fans. Already you can hear his songs blaring among young people in barrios populares across town. Here's the official version of "Perdoname."

* Previously, "Always 'Por Ti'."

The intersection of MJ and the Iran elections

The world watched with awe and horror at massive demonstrations in opposition to the results of Iran's presidential elections this month, and paramilitaries' deadly crackdowns. But the modern world's attention span is severely screwed. Two weeks later, a mood of melancholy is enveloping normally frenetic Tehran, reported the NYT over the weekend. Although a smaller demonstration occurred Sunday, the opposition's options are dwindling fast.

And suddenly now, the planet is on MJ overload.

Here's how we can honor both tragedies: The above video mashing up Michael Jackson's protest anthem "They Don't Care About Us" with images from the Iran unrest. (Pop-meta-meltdown once more, albeit with that awful "Jew me, Sue me" lyric still floating in there.)

"Freedom is near," the video says, "Don't give up." Could it be? From one of the many forwarded dispatches sent to me from inside Iran:

There is the possibility that those imprisoned remain there, that Moussavi is done away with by some means (exile, house arrest, etc), and that Ahmadinejad remains the illegitimate president of an unlawful dictatorship. If this happens, the next four years would mean major organizing in the underground and a new stage in Iranian political activism. One thing is sure: people are no longer going to accept the self-censorship or fear that has been imposed upon them.

For a long archive of beautiful ephemera in Iran, visit the photoblog Life Goes On In Tehran.

And for smart looks at Michael Jackson's death and legacy, from African and African American male perspectives, see here and here. Ernest Hardy discusses Jackson's most overlooked inspiration -- Diana Ross -- and Paul Tiyambe Zeleza cites Frantz Fanon to lament Jackson's long-ago death "as a black man."

Excavations: San Diego gangsta rap, really

Depicting a true gangster's dilemma -- getting locked up and then cut off by your moms -- here is Southeast San Diego and former Def Jam rapper Jayo Felony doing his "The Loc is On His Own." Listen close to the well-woven rhymes; the video starts 20 seconds into it.

Check this fan site and this interview for more. "Jayo Felony is somethin' I created when I was in Juvenile Hall as a 14 to 15 year old seein' the word felony carved in a desk," the rapper says. "It just stuck with me. Jayo stands for Justice Against Y'all Oppressors. Just a little bit of science behind it."

And what's Southeast (where we also lived back when) really like? Urban Dictionary breaks it down.

Towers of downtown L.A.

Above, view from the floor of California Plaza up to the towers of Grand Avenue, shimmering as always. I've had a great but busy time in Los Angeles so far, seeing friends, reconnecting with people, enjoying the hospitality.

Things are constantly shifting in the core of L.A., so we've been faithfully investigating the blips: In downtown I've seen Casa, Cole's, and Bar 107. I've had a bento to-go in Koreatown and I've burned fresh sage in a backyard in South Pasadena. As might be expected, phantom developments sit empty or unfinished all over the city. The saturated, negative-feeling hipsterfication of Echo Park is seriously painful to watch.

I checked out Moustache Mondays at La Cita downtown after having been at the original few iterations of the night back in '07. And then Mas Exitos Tuesday night for "dirty Latin sounds from outer space" at the comfortable Verdugo Bar in Glassell Park, the nicest new node I've seen so far.

But we still gotta go here and here, our OG spots ...

Reminder to Intersections readers: I'm speaking Thursday night at MOCA as part of the Zocalo Public Lecture Series. If you plan on attending, it's a good idea to go to the site and make free reservations. Friends and I are thinking of putting together a late after-party somewhere; stay tuned at my Twitter feed for the info.

And here, you can find audio from my talk on Tuesday with Gustavo Arellano on 90.7 KPFK-FM. I return to the mellow state-of-mind in San Diego-Tijuana on Friday.

Tektonic arrives in Mexico City

Could something be changing? Could the standard two-year (or three- or four- or five-year...) gap that separates U.S. or European cultural trends and their arrival to Mexico be radically shrinking?

The evidence is with the arrival in Mexico City of the tektonic subculture, from the immigrant suburbs of France, and so soon after its birth. As we've blogged before here and here, tektonic is a dance-based movement that updates the formerly dormant rave and techno scene with this jerky, pop-locking style.

There are now several distinct tektonic tribes claiming public space in D.F., such as this banda that gets together to practice their moves at the Hemiciclo de Juarez on the Alameda Central. They told me they all met on Hi5 and MySpace, investigated tektonic on the Internet, and appeared to have an impressively sophisticated grasp of the roots and nature of their chosen tribe. None of them were over 18.

* More from these dudes later.

Excavations: Jimi Hendrix at Newport '69

Here's a gem of a clip of Jimi Hendrix at the Newport '69 festival in Northridge. For the festival's 40th anniversary, Kevin Roderick posted a fascinating account of that forgotten weekend at Devonshire Downs, by historian Jim A. Beardsley.

Excavations: El Haragán

With elements of arena rock, hair metal, punk, and classic rock, "rock urbano" in Mexico describes a genre of music and a subculture that flourished in the outer slums of Mexico City for many years before being eclipsed by new rock currents and by reggaeton.

Largely forgotten, rock urbano has not entirely disappeared. You can still find toquines on the D.F.'s fringes that celebrate this scene -- although the rockers present can often be a bit on the gray side. Above, a king of the genre, El Haragán, or Luis Antonio Alvarez, blasting through his anthem "Muñequita Sintetica." It's sung in that unmistakably barrio, rough-around-the-edges manner. Enjoy.

* Previously, "Excavations: The rock underground in 1980s Mexico."

Getting into Lady Gaga

At first, who doesn't want to hate on Lady Gaga? Everything about her is extreme hyper-pop, she vaguely resembles old Christina Aguilera (or is it the other way around?), and it feels like her persona is about overproducing recycled New York/L.A. party monster looks from the past few years.

Whatever. Point is, Gaga is very, very hungry -- and entirely herself. That's something I can respect. From Rolling Stone:

Lady Gaga's devotion to being a star drove her to order bags of cocaine and spend hours perfecting her hair and makeup in a tiny Lower East Side apartment after she dropped out of NYU several years ago — well before she was actually famous. "It was quite sick," she admits. "I suppose that's where the vanity of the album came from." Her debut, The Fame, was almost entirely inspired by her relationship with a heavy-metal drummer named Luke, and their breakup profoundly changed Gaga. She tells Hiatt she's bisexual, but her attraction to women is purely physical. It's an aspect of her sexuality that makes boyfriends "uncomfortable," she says.

In December, Gaga told The Times of London, where she already has a large fan base:

"Some artists are working to buy the mansion or whatever the element of fame must bear, but I spend all my money on my show," she says of her impressive stage set. "I don't give a f*** about money. What am I going to do with a condo and a car? I can't drive."

When she started popping up on the radar stateside earlier this year, I asked my friend Nina Tahash about Gaga, commenting to her that this pop star looked very East L.A. to me, her attitude, her look. Nina replied: 'No she's real jersey tranny NYC clubkid fag hag.'

Fine by me. Pop is pop.

* L.A. designer Brian Lichtenberg is reportedly doing some of Lady Gaga's costumes. Above, Gaga doing a live acoustic version of "Fooled Me Again, Honest Eyes" on KIIS-FM in Los Angeles. More points: She writes her own music.

'El Triste,' again, and again

Here is 23-year-old Ximena Sariñana, a singer, songwriter, and actress, doing her bluesy-pop take on the ultimate tear-your-heart-out tune, José José's "El Triste." And here goes a version by Kalimba. It is just me, or does this song get better and better with age and interpretation?

* Previously, "Excavations: José José, enjoying his sadness." The embedded clip there is now dead, so go here for that knock-out 1970 performance.