Category Archives: music

Easy Come………..

Posted on by drumsintheglobalvillage

 

………..and so goes Syndication One.

Nice idea. But next time, if you want to make Baisden money, then hire a Baisden! LOL!

Meanwhile, Black America is still gonna need a Black news-talk radio network, particularly during the election. Any takers?

(HEARS CRICKETS CHIRP 😉 ) 

I thought not. No one has any McDonald’s money—for Black information, at least. Meanwhile, look at the total of annual Black spending.

And, as we process allathat, here’s something to check out.

OCTOBER 9th UPDATE: Sharpton may be staying. More on this as the facts come out.

OCTOBER 11 UPDATE: Richard Prince just sent me this. Okay, so Sharpton stays and the Stews go—along with any other talk.

————

For Immediate Release
Thursday, October 11, 2007

Contact Information
Maiya Hollie
Communications Manager
REACH Media Inc.
(972) 371-5851
maiya.hollie@reachmediainc.com

RICKEY SMILEY AND YOLANDA ADAMS FIRST OF NEW TALENT ADDED TO SYNDICATION ONE’S RADIO LINEUP

Radio One’s Syndication Network Announces Programming Expansion

(Black PR Wire)LANHAM, MD– October 11, 2007 – Syndication One announced today that it plans to expand its programming beginning with two feature weekday morning shows which include Rickey Smiley and Yolanda Adams.

Syndication One, a joint relationship between Radio One, Inc. and REACH Media Inc., has made programming changes in an effort to extend its lineup to include established talent that complement music based programming, as well as FM radio stations.

“The Al Sharpton Show, Keeping It Real,” which has proven to be a popular draw on weekdays addressing news and talk issues, will continue with Syndication One. Current radio shows, “The 2 Live Stews” and “The Warren Ballentine Show,” will end their run with Syndication One in December.

“We’re excited to be bringing additional creative and entertaining programming to the urban radio market place,” stated Alfred Liggins, President and CEO of Radio One. “Rickey Smiley and Yolanda Adams are proven talent that can be a morning show cornerstone for key stations.”

Popular comedian Rickey Smiley, who has already established rating success on Dallas’s KBFB 97.9 The Beat, a Radio One, Inc. station, has generated a number of inquiries that have prompted syndication opportunities. “The Rickey Smiley Morning Show” has already been added on WHHL-FM in St. Louis and WFXA-FM in Augusta.

Grammy award winning gospel artist Yolanda Adams has developed an inviting morning show with a mix of praise and inspiration launched on Houston’s KROI Praise 92.1 FM. “The Yolanda Adams Show” is syndicated to twelve markets, including Praise 97.5 WPZE-FM in Atlanta, 94.1 WXEZ-FM in Norfolk and Praise 103.9 WPPZ-FM in Philadelphia.

About Syndication One

Syndication One is a joint relationship between Radio One Inc. and REACH Media Inc. and is designed to develop African American targeted programming. Over the past year, the programming has been at the center of the nation’s hottest issues engaging all viewpoints.

Syndication One currently features “The Al Sharpton Show,” “The Rickey Smiley Morning Show,” and “The Yolanda Adams Show.” REACH Media Inc. is the authorized sales representative firm for each of the radio shows.

Radio One, Inc. (http://www.radio-one.com) is the nation’s seventh largest radio broadcasting company (based on 2006 net broadcast revenue) and the largest radio broadcasting company that primarily targets African American and urban listeners.

Pro forma for recently announced transactions, Radio One owns and/or operates 55 radio stations located in 18 urban markets in the United States. Additionally, Radio One owns Magazine One, Inc. (d/b/a Giant Magazine) (http://www.giantmag.com), interests in TV One, LLC (http://www.tvoneonline.com), a cable/satellite network programming primarily to African Americans and REACH Media, Inc. (http://www.blackamericaweb.com), owner of The Tom Joyner Morning Show and other businesses associated with Tom Joyner. Radio One also operates the only nationwide African American news/talk network on free radio and programs “XM 169 The POWER,” an African-American news/talk channel, on XM Satellite Radio.

REACH Media Inc., founded by radio and television personality, philanthropist and entrepreneur Tom Joyner, is a multimedia company formed in January 2003. As the parent company of The Tom Joyner Morning Show, The Tom Joyner Show in television syndication, BlackAmericaWeb.com, The Tom Joyner Foundation and Tom Joyner signature events, REACH Media targets African Americans through radio, television, signature events and the internet. The Tom Joyner Morning Show is aired in more than 115 markets throughout the United States, reaching more than 8 million listeners every week.

BlackAmericaWeb.com, which has more than 1.3 million registered members, is a virtual town square for visitors to get daily news, learn about issues affecting the black community and listen to the Morning Show online.

For more information about the shows or to set up interviews with the hosts, contact Maiya Hollie, 972.371.5851, maiya.hollie@reachmediainc.com. Companies interested in obtaining any of the shows for broadcast should contact Melody Talkington, vice president, affiliate relations for REACH Media Inc., 972.371.5845,
melody.talkington@reachmediainc.com.

Book Review: "Sentences: The Life Of M.F. Grimm"

Posted on by drumsintheglobalvillage

SENTENCES: The Life of MF Grimm
By Percy Carey and Ronald Wimberly
Vertigo Books/DC Comics
$19.99, ISBN: 978-1-4012-1046-5

He was thisclose to getting out of The Life for good before the bullets came for his spine. But Percy Carey himself makes it hard to feel sorry for him before and after he was paralyzed from the waist down. Carey grew up in the ‘Hood before it became glamorized in 1990s song and film, and rolled with it simultaneously on his own and its terms. So he simultaneously produced hiphop and pain, strife and glory, street legend status and a criminal record.

So goes “Sentences,” the story of MF Grimm, a.k.a. “The Grimm Reaper,” and his battles using guns on the New York City streets and using words onstage as a rapper with serious potential undercut by tragedy. Carey’s first-person account, published in graphic novel form by DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint, is awash with paradox: shootouts in the afternoon and MC battles that same night; the boring monotony of drug dealing, and the most powerful love mixed in with the most violent hate.

This kind of nonfiction genre’s usual suspects show up—anger, the informant, jail life, redemption, realization, determination. Along the way, the reader gets a bi-coastal idea of how hiphop formed from the days of Run-DMC’s label-approved party jams through MF Doom’s independent moves. Carey was clearly a player: he met Chuck D, once shared a stage with KRS-One, assisted several Death Row Record artists (including Snoop Dogg), and even once interviewed Nas for “Right On!” magazine. As Grimm himself doesn’t fail to point out, he got shot before Corporate Music America learned to pimp that as a marketing move.

Carey relays his tale with a stark power that would make Ernest Hemingway pause and Donald Goines smile. Unfortunately, the wheelchair-bound hiphop artist has no profound thoughts to deliver, only the typical I-couldn’t-resist-the-lure-of-the-streets-so-don’t-let-this-happen-to-you lessons. His memories, regardless, are painful to re-live, even (and perhaps especially) in cartoon form, thanks to Ronald Wimberly. The artist’s superbly realistic but cartoony style, coupled with his brilliant uses of black space, almost produces sound—especially that of the revolving beauty and pain of the author’s personal journey into moral purgatory. Carey seeks to, and succeeds in, understanding his own demons, and he seems glad to be back to square one, ready to make new journeys out of his life.

My Friend Lydia And Stevie Wonder

Posted on by drumsintheglobalvillage

stevie_2.jpg

After about a week, my friend Lydia has FINALLY stopped thanking me for helping her start her freelance career by helping her see Stevie Wonder in concert.  🙂

Here’s her review.

Witnessing The Wonder of a Legend

By Lydia Nylander

An endless assortment of lawn chairs, the lilting sound of steel bands and anxious anticipation seemed a fitting prelude to the long-awaited performance of musical icon Stevie Wonder. An all-capacity crowd braved the chill of a late-summer Sunday night Sept. 16 at Baltimore’s Pier Six Pavilion for a glimpse of the peoples’ music master. The 5,000 strong crowd—a cornucopia of families, couples and friends spanning the generations—was unable to contain their excitement as a near minute-long standing ovation ushered Wonder’s arrival to the small, intimate stage.

Resplendent in a baby-blue suit and trademark hair adornments, and his breathtaking daughter and background vocalist Aisha Morris at his side, Wonder explained why he is touring for the first time in more than a decade. His mother died last year, and he shared his longing for her peach cobbler. It was her voice, he said, that aroused the 57-year-old from his self-appointed exile, her voice that made him want to share his own with the world again.

So he did, with typically spectacular results. Opening with the apt “Love’s In Need Of Love Today,” Wonder commanded a two-and-a-half-hour show with the poise and panache of the seasoned music veteran he is. The lack of pyrotechnics or trap-door antics left a rare chance to experience the unadulterated bliss of feel-good music delivered with a passion and tenacity rarely seen among contemporary performers. With a nod to his early body of work, the consummate showman teased the electric crowd with his signature harmonica solo during “Too High” and—with a nod to the now-infamous Amy Winehouse “Rehab” hit—used the politically conscious “Visions” as a timely anti-war rallying cry. An extended version of the 1980s classic “Ribbon In The Sky” was made all the richer with some lighthearted sexually nuanced crowd participation. A flawless acappella of “If It’s Magic” simply was just that, making time and space yield. Then a Country-Western call and response during a remix of “Signed, Sealed and Delivered,” left the crowd in disbelief that they were in this moment, singing with Mr. Wonder.

His unequalled ability to connect with his audience was on full display. He blended emotive ballad duets with Aisha (“Isn’t She Lovely” and “How Will I Know?”) with a Go-Go-like percussion battle executed by his flawless live band for crowd favorite “Superstition.” A six-song medley crammed many of the classics of Wonder’s prolific body of musical magic. Ever the dynamic showman, Wonder mounted his piano, assisted by his vocalists, during a thrilling rendition of the 1980s classic “Do I Do” before closing with “As.”

Wonder’s performance—the nakedness of his feelings, both spoken and sung, about life, love, respect and harmony—reflected his expert power to entrance, leaving those present spellbound and thankful that his voice had returned to the Universe without needing his myth to strengthen it. The crowd were glad that their—and his—wait had ended, a sought-after musical and spiritual nourishment reaching all.

Pere Pascal And My Tribute To All My Meres And Peres

Posted on by drumsintheglobalvillage

pascal-and-wife.jpg

On a good day online, you make a good friend. Pascal, from France, is one.

“Meeting” at the Black Panther Message Board at least three years ago, we have swapped comic trade paperbacks across the Atlantic. I have a complete set of Christopher J. Priest’s take on the Marvel Comics superhero the Black Panther (sans the Kasper Cole storyline ) in French trade paperbacks, thanks to him. They are my prize possessions.

Anyway, he emailed me earlier today (sending me a .jpeg of his wedding picture from last year; I like that they both have glasses 🙂 ) to tell me that he and his wife are expecting a new comic geek to come forth. The end of January, he says.

My Photo

At least a couple of the couples I know are well on the way of poppin’ ’em out.  🙂   Adina’s little girl, her first, is due this December—I believe around the time my friend Jared’s wife Yari is expecting, their second.

Now, my friend Val….well, I lost count of the amount. 🙂 I think three.

So here’s my tribute to all the young meres (and peres) I know, courtesy of one of my all-time favorite artists, Basia:

*****

she’s gonna be a perfect mother,
perfect mother
in her mind there’s no doubt
though no one could show her how to be
a perfect mother, perfect mother
people say–she’s too young
should a child have a child?

hers is gonna be a perfect baby
raised according to the old prescription:
cuddle it daily and smother with kisses
’cause there’s nothing more important
just make sure that she never misses

a perfect mother, perfect mother
people say–she’s too young
no one could ever show her how

babies grow, then they tend to leave us
that’s how it’s always been and always will be
deep down inside you never stop wishing
for the hope to be certain that your
boy or girl
will be forever needing you

hers is gonna be a perfect baby
raised according to the old prescription:
cuddle it daily and smother with kisses
’cause there’s nothing more important…
who knows better–
all her life she missed her