Gotham City Soul

When I was kid, I was always encouraged to give something up for Lent. My mom would suggest we choose something that would be not so easy, like candy or our favorite television program (not that we were allowed to watch more than a couple of hours on the boob tube when we were young). Of course, we'd try to slide by with something that was easy to give up because we never really cared about it in the first place. The trick was to make everyone think it was a pretty important sacrifice. If you picked broccoli, or any vegetable or good-for-you food, you were sure to be shot down. Same went for an activity that you could live without--badminton or ping pong, for instance. You had to prove that you would feel it if it went missing. I can't remember what my choices were as a child, or even as an adult. Which started me thinking some time ago about the entire concept of giving something up. I know it's supposed to make you a better person somehow, and I'm not knocking it--I j...

Some years back I was recording some music for Christmas, which would be held at my brother’s house in Virginia and got knocked in the heart without warning when I clicked on Susser die Glocken nie Klingen . From the first notes I began to tear up. I think that my mother must have been playing these songs when I was in the womb (I was born in Germany). I never really learned the words, but could easily translate them if I wanted to. Here I am a black American woman crying at my computer over German Christmas songs. I have not been back to Germany since I was born, but the culture is so hardwired into my system that things German really get to me. Christmas began with the first Sunday of Advent. Mom would pull out a little brass-plated Advent candle chime that I always thought was German, but turned out to be of Swedish origin. It has four candles and above them a merri-go-round type of contraption with angels and chimes hanging from it dangling from it. Inside the angel...

Warning: This is not for people under the age of 18. Period.   So for the past couple of years I've tried to provide you with a holiday palate cleanser. Something to offset all the traditional Christmas/Hannukah/Winter Solstice/Kwaanza delirium that sets in right about now (although, is it just my imagination, or are people acting with a bit more restraint and common sense this year?) Top of my list of things to see and do this year is a film I haven't seen yet myself, but I've been told by a friend is good. Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale looks like just the sort of flick to put the edge on. Looks like the real Santa is a truly bad one and is being kept frozen in the arctic by scientists. It's playing in NYC until December 14, so catch it if you can. From scary to funny. From Mad TV: If you want to get back to scary Santa, here's an oldie but goody from 1972. What could be better than Joan Collins in a stand off with crazy Santa. I don't know what...

The Huffington Post carried this article the other day about the difference between good people and nice people. It spoke to an idea that has been rolling around in my head for years. In it, the author Judith Acosta, outlined what makes a good person, and what makes a "Super Nice" person, not a nice person in the classic sense of the word, meaning pleasant, but something a bit more sinister.. I posted the checklists below, but the full article is worth a read. Calling someone nice always smacked of lameness to me. The etymology of the word "nice" says it all: [Middle English, foolish, from Old French, from Latin nescius, ignorant, from nescire to be ignorant.] I am sorry to admit that I could check off one or two items on the "Super Nice" list but can say that I do try to plug away at the Good People agenda. The lesson learned (but somehow always known) is that good people are not always nice, and nice people are sometimes just no good. Both qualities ...

I don't even know how I found this man Arthur Lee and his group LOVE, but wow, what an amazing talent, yet he died relatively unknown compared with the fame of his contemporaries from the 1960s. He was at least as talented if not more so than some and an inspiration for those in his milieu. Did he just not have the right PR or manager? Did he choose creativity over hustling? Was there just not enough room on the psychedelic 60s stage for two African-American rock musicians (Jimi Hendrix being the other)? I think no one would dispute that Hendrix is so beyond beyond when it comes to genius and talent that it wouldn't have been about dueling blacks on the axe. Maybe concert and record producers couldn't sell both? It is about another kind of genius, which was borrowed by at least one legendary act. Compare "She Comes In Colors" which was released as a single in December 1966 by Arthur Lee and LOVE, to "She's Like a Rainbow" by the Rolling St...

On Tuesday September 14 at 6:30 pm Naomi Shelton and the Gospel Queens will be performing in Fort Green Park, Brooklyn. Now I love Ms. Shelton, and I've blogged about her for American Legacy, but the reason I'm back to talk about her is that I love my friend John Stuart even more. Known to many as DJ Johnny Stuart , he will be knocking out some very deep, very rare gospel grooves in between the sets of Ms. Shelton and the brilliant, strange, and hilarious Reggie Watts. John won't be playing any ordinary stuff, either—we are talking pre-1970s Moving Star Hall Singers kind of spirituals and the like. Shelton has been singing gospel and soul in the deepest sense of the word since she was a young girl attending her parent’s church in Midway, Alabama, (which is pretty close to where my father grew up, we both realized) and at a radio studio (one of several) that her father built in Tuskegee. Inspired by Sam Cooke, the Five Blind Boys of Alabama (“the spiritual tone the...

Okay so here's a little something for fans of that special neighborhood in the Crescent City.