iJamming.net

Much good music was played last night at 12" Bar in the East Village, where iJamming! Pub regulars Paddy Casino and Madina hosted the first of what will hopefully be a regular Rebellious Jukebox party. I heard the likes of Lionrock, Death In Vegas, The Clash, some proper dub reggae, Gomez, various Kasabian mash-ups (it all sound very British so far, does it not?) and an inordinate amount more good music. I just can’t remember it all right now. If Paddy or Madina wants to post a set-list in The Pub, I’m sure other New York-based readers will be sure to come to the next one.

Paddy Casino at the aptly-named 12" Bar

While hanging at 12", I also enjoyed the company of two Millwall fans. Yes, I know, and pigs were flying down the East River on my cab ride home. But obviously, they can’t help where they were born anymore than the rest of us – and at least they don’t have their team’s logo tattooed on their shoulders like some of us… Ben and Charlie, if you’re reading this, it was a pleasure.

Earlier in the evening, I attended a brief memorial for Liz Padilla, the cyclist who was killed by a truck at the top of our street just two weeks ago. Simultaneous memorials were taking place at three other places in the city where cyclists have been killed by vehicles over the past month; tragically, yet another young cyclist lost their life on Houston Street just last week. In fact, two of the cyclist deaths have been on Houston Street, which might explain why, when I went into town for Rebellious Jukebox, I saw a group of about 50 cyclists or more gathered near Elizabeth Street, where the most recent death occurred. (That would, by coincidence or otherwise, appear to be also almost exactly where the ‘environmental education and direct action’ group Time’s Up has its headquarters.)

Flowers in the spokes for a fallen cyclist.

The gathering was finally breaking up, and cyclists began setting off in various directions – a group of them setting off along Houston Street itself, weaving in and out of the traffic, without helmets, as if the accidents that befell their two fellow riders on that street in the past month could never happen to them. At the risk of making a pun in poor taste, cycling in the city is a two-way street. If it’s true that cars and trucks need to pay much more attention to people around them, and become much more aware of the brute force of their vehicles, then cyclists need to respect the rights of drivers too, need to protect themselves from possible injury and need to ensure they don’t put themselves in dangerous situations. Please. Too many people are getting hurt and killed. Let’s all of us use our brains.

Liz Padilla died almost right outside Surreal Café, the upscale diner run by one of my neighbors which unfortunately went out of business a few weeks ago. The space has been taken over by the people from the Hill Diner on Court Street in Carroll Gardens; under the new name Miriam (what?), it looks like it’s going to open in time for the holiday weekend.

The same seems to be set for Night and Day, which took over another failed restaurant on 5th Avenue. (What’s interesting here is that even when a restaurant fails on this Park Slope strip, another one steps in immediately.) And Bogota Bistro, which has won itself considerable publicity and much good will by ‘blogging’ all its preparations, is planning its grand opening Tuesday. At some point, you would think, the restaurant rush will slow down. But not yet: I saw at least another three storefronts being worked on in just eight blocks yesterday.

>This week’s Village Voice runs a cover story on how "Black-conscious hip-hop deals with an overwhelmingly white live audience," an important subject worthy of serious discussion. Unfortunately, Bakari Kitwana’s piece doesn’t pose the big questions to the mainstream hip-hop community, and it’s left to the ‘alternative’ hip-hop artists themselves to acknowledge the awkard truth.

"My audience has gone from being over 95 percent Black 10 years ago to over 95 percent white today," says Boots Riley of The Coup.

"I do so many shows in front of mostly white audiences that it’s the norm," says Zion of Zion-I. "When I get in front of a Black audience it’s like, ‘Finally you’re here, feel me.’ We’ve done shows in Chicago and São Paulo, Brazil, and it feels good to be in front of our people when they are feeling it. But there are some thugged-out crowds where our message doesn’t resonate, and Black folks will say that they aren’t trying to hear hip-hop artists remind them of their problems."

I had a laugh at Billy Corgan’s expense a few days ago about his full-page Chicago Tribune ad begging to get his Smashing Pumpkins back together. But in this week’s Onion, Corgan reveals himself to be a smart and decent man highly attuned to the machinations of pop and politics. And of course, the politics of pop.

"I really think it’s a white, bourgeois idea to pretend that you don’t have influences. It seems to be the obsession strictly of white people in college. Like, "You know, I just rolled out of bed and I had this idea." It’s wonderful to read interviews by old blues guys—they talk about all their influences, they talk about who taught them how to play, and who they saw, and how they were determined to play that way. Why is it this weird white problem that we must pretend we are the genius? I really feel like I’m standing on the shoulders of some pretty big giants, and I’m really happy that I’m at that point in my life where I’m totally willing to cop to whatever."

There’s a lot more good quotes where that one came from. I’m beginning to like the man.