Pure Fire

You probably thought Stevie could only play piano, harmonica, sing, and waggle his head.

Oh, Herro

Well folks, here we are at the business end of another week. In order to get it going on the right foot, or perhaps to get it back on track if you didn't have the best of mondays, just let lil Simeon warm your heart with the pose to end all poses. Also, go ahead and treat your ears to some tunes as well. If you haven't done so yet, please (if you please) go download my mixtape-of-sorts Mushy Bananas, which is all music made by me. It's almost up to 20 downloads, which means I appreciate at least 19 of you, but the rest of you are not pulling your weight as friends of mine. So do me a favor, and help me feel a little bit of love over here in China.

Not much to tell from the last week. I dropped another minute off of my time up that mountain on my bike, which is putting me close to the winning time in a race that took place on the very same road last year. Also, I realize it doesn't take much for something to become my new favorite thing, but I have another, and this will remain right up there until it causes me serious bodily harm. And even if it does, it will probably maintain it's spot. This thing is: bombing down a mountain on a 15 pound bicycle. There is absolutely nothing like it. After watching professional riders do it for a few years now, I now know what it feels like to hit highway speeds on a bike. I think I beat the rest of the group down the mountain this week by at least a minute. I can't wait to do it again next week.

I got knocked on my ass by a little bout of food poisoning this weekend which held over to yesterday. Not the best start to the week, but it seems to be subsiding.

The Men's D3 Nationals Swim Meet is this weekend at the U of M pool. Having competed in this meet 3 times, it's been oh so sad for me to miss it for the last 2 years, especially this one since it's being held once again 15 minutes from my house. My former teammates have been swimming out of their minds this year and I can't wait to see what they can do this weekend. Word on the street is they might break some national records. I sure hope they do. It still makes me proud to know that I once swam with these guys and was able to hold my own before they mutated into the monsters that they are today. Go Oles.

I promise I'll try to start talking about more things than bikes here, since many of you probably couldn't care less about them, but I don't know how anyone could NOT find this hilarious:



I think 90% of us were all there at one point. For me it was probably much later in life than Jake there. Once again, credit for that video goes to Stevil over at HTATBL. I'll try and get on this thing later in the week and put up some more stuff that I would like for you to read about on the internets. It feels like I've been living in a hole all week, and I'm not exactly sure what's happening in the rest of the world. Alls I know is Beijing pretty much skipped spring altogether. Last week it was below freezing a couple times, today the high is 79, and tomrorow it's supposed to hit 80's. So in that vein, life is pretty grood. I mean good. And great. Great and good.

I'm out like the vapors.

HOLYMOTHEROFGOD

My man, Gabe "Has-worn-adult-diapers-(that's right, plural diapers)/The-man-I-used-to-share-a-wall-with" The flying Norwegian sent me an email today that blew my socks right offa ma feet. Shoes too. This is perhaps the number one reason why youtube is great, and perhaps the best use anyone has ever put to it. Kutiman is a musician from Tel Aviv making big things happen in the realm sound. I gotta say, I've had his album queued up on eMusic for a while, and after I saw this video today I immediately got it. On the album, Kutiman writes, records, and plays all of his own music. This video is part of a different project he did called ThruYou where he raided the youtube library and made music using only the videos he found. Check it out, it's pretty f***ing rad. For now, here's the first track, the one that Gabe "it's 12 o'clock somewhere" H sent me today.



Thanks Gabe. You're the man.

In other news, it's almost the weekend. Allow this video carry you the rest of the way and let it prepare you to rock the funk out on the days that begin with an S.

-Ulysses "More Radtarted Than The Rest" Destructo

Lions are sweet

It's hump day! Hoo. Rar. I realized a while ago that the links for the old podcasts expire after a certain time and no longer work. So, if anyone wanted to listen to one that they didn't have, or is a new comer to the blog, or had their computer crash, or wanted to make an entire playlist of the same podcast over and over and over and over again, they would be unable to receieve these from the internets. But here comes Mr. DEstructo to the rescue with links to all of the past podcasts just incase you felt you needed them oh so bad. Check it:

First Podcast (made in India)
Made In China Vol. 1
Made In China Vol. 2
Made In China Vol. 3
Made In China Vol. 4
Made In China Vol. 5
Made In China Vol. 6
Made In China Vol. 7

Mushy Bananas - The Mixtape (my shit)

I sincerely suggest you spend a good amount of time here and also Radiohead remains awesome. Speaking of awesome, according to this kid, the new Watchmen movie is just that. Lastly, if you haven't figured it out by now, youtube is a great thing for reasons like this:



I must once again advise you to check out the fantastic blog that is How To Avoid The Bummer Life since I pretty much just regurgitate here the things that tickle my fancy the most there.  It pretty much is the largest crutch that gets me through my week and, of course, keeps the bummer life at bay. So check it out.  That's all for now folks. Have a great rest of your week.

Destructo: OUT

Double the pleasure!

Unfortunately another week is upon us, but in order to get it started right I have for you some music.  Today though, because I'm such a nice guy, I will give you good friend price.  Today you get twice the normal amount of music.  That's right, TWO podcasts.  "Why?"  you may ask.  Because it's March 8th, that's why.  You know what happened on March 8th?  Me neither.  Wow!!!!!!!  Amazing!!!!! how can he possibly afford to give up this much free music?  Because I am, as they say, rad to the power of sick.  The first podcast is just the run of the mill Made In China installment of whatever I've been listening to lately.  You can get that one here.  The second, BONUS podcast is kinda special.  As some of you may know, not only do I teach music, but occasionally I play some myself.  That's right folks, I am what some would call a musician (kind of, but not really).  The second special podcast is an EP/mixtape of sorts of some of my music.  It's pretty random, but it includes:

•  a mash-up I did when on the computer when I was about 15, before anyone even knew there was a hyphenated term for it
  
• The remixes I've done
• Some of the (phat) hip hop beats I've done
• Some attempted electronic music
• Three songs with real instruments (played by myself)
• The beat for the soon-to-be-club-hit of-the summer "Flop Yo Junk"

All the music on this one was made by me at some point over the last few years (except for the first track).  All of the instruments, where there are any, are played by me.  All of the songs were arranged and composed by me.  Any live instruments were recorded using no more than two microphones, an Mbox and my laptop.  They're not pristine, and are by no means finished products (any of them), but they're ideas that I've had, worked on and are at a point where I don't mind sharing them.   It's gotten to the point where I have a small handful of songs that I've been sharing with a small handful of people, and now I'm at the point where I'd like for more people to hear my music and perhaps even give me some feedback.  What (if anything) do you particularly like?  Like I said before, it's a pretty random assortment of tunes, so which are your favorite.  If I hear back from enough people I might even post links to download individual tracks, but for now, please, PLEASE download THIS, give it a listen and let me know what you think.  It would mean a lot to me.  Thanks in advance.  

Not a whole lot else here on the away front.  Things are already kind of turning into a 'same shit, different day' routine, but it's all good for the time being.  The weather is getting nicer here every day.  It was in the 60's this weekend, and 50's during the days most of last week.  I was able to get out on my bike for at a least a little every day after school last week.  On wednesday I rode into the middle of town and played some pick up 5 on 5 full court basketball for a couple hours, then got a burger and a beer and rode home.  

I saw this band last night called Super Smash Up from San Francisco, who played a bunch of rock music while the singers sang other songs over the music.  It was kind of alright.  I doubt I would've gone to see them in the states, but it was nice to see a decent american rock band.  And they were definitely going for the rock star look.  I think a friend of mine took pictures of them, or one of them will give me the flyer, but let's just say I had a hard time figuring out if'n one of the singers was a man or a woman for a long time (it was a man, yikes).  

I managed to lose my cell phone last weekend, and in doing so lost all of your numbers.  If you ever think about it, it'd be pretty cool if you sent me an email (warehamenator@gmail.com) with your number so I could put it in my new phone in case I want to call yas on the skype sometime.  Also, I was kind of bummed because I lost a couple of numbers that I had recently gotten and never had a chance to hang out with the people whom the numbers belonged to, but then in the last week I randomly ran into every person I thought I wouldn't see again.  Weird shit.  

I did that 90k ride with the huge climb again yesterday and topped my time from last week of 34:30 by doing the climb in 32 minutes flat.  That hurt.  A lot.  I also decided to take a little faster on the way down since I know the road a little better now and made it down the mountain in about 9 or 10 minutes.  So that's 10k up in 32 minutes (around 19kph average), 10k down in 9 (over 60kph average).  This is my new favorite thing.  

The band is getting better every day.  It's pretty cool.  And on that, I'm gonna peace the funk out and go plan my lessons for the week.  

-B

My Girls

Merriweather Post Pavillion

The new Animal Collective album is pretty fantastic. If you've ever listened to them before and gone thought 'what the hell? this shit is way too weird for me' I suggest you give this album a listen. It's still strange, but in a lots-of-reverb-lots-of-vocals-beach-boys-make-a-cracked-out-electronic-album-in-2009 way. But all in all, I'd say it's by far their most listenable album all the way through. On my first time through it, there wasn't really a single track that stood out in any special way, but after listening to it the last couple of mornings I've really been diggin the single 'My Girls'. I've listened to it about 20 times in the last day or so. If'n you're still skeptical, check the video for My Girls below.




I doubt anybody will read this today, but it's friday here in Beijing, the weather is getting better everyday, I've been able to ride my bike every evening this week after school, and I'm looking forward to a pretty rad weekend. Now that I'm a working stiff, these two glorious days at the end of the week are my shining beacon (bacon?) of light at the end of the tunnel, and by the time I hit thursday I'm already jones'n for that saturday morning ride. Anywho, life is good here in the Orient and I hope you can say the same wherever you may be.

Chow

-B

Dook Dooka Dooka Dook

On monday I was rehearsing my week and a half old band and they were, as expected, sounding pretty bad. This was normal however since they have only been playing together for a week and a half and many of them have only really played their instruments for about a month total. For the last week whenever we would try and play the same note, it would end up sounding like some terrible fog horn of sorts. So we spent about 20 minutes tuning, one by one, to try and get everyone's instrument in tune with everyone else's. After tuning, I decided to have them play a B flat major chord. I gave each section specific notes to play, made sure they all knew their fingerings, and then cued them to play, and nearly shat my pants. It sounded.........amazing. They sounded, for about 5-8 seconds, like a decent highschool band. I thought my ears were broken. It knocked me back a step. When they cut I was speechless for a couple seconds. Then we tried it again to make sure it wasn't a fluke, and the second one wasn't quite as good, but it was still way better than I expected. Anyways, after being here in China for about 6 months now, I had a 'this is why i'm doing what i'm doing' feeling and it felt pretty good.

Moving on....

For some reason I thought of this the other day. This song was the source of many hours of entertainment in Larson 704 my sophomore year of college. This one goes out to one Mr. Joe M Anderson. Enjoy.