Cool “Disco” Dan Washington D.C. Legend, Interview
Cool “Disco” Dan Washington D.C. Legend, Interview that I donated to the While You Were Sleeping bedtime Stories video. I shot this interview in 1996 or 1997 down on F Street where Dan sat and sold Go Go tapes. If you don’t know what go go is, he describes it in the video as “urban tribal music”. Dan himself is a D.C. urban legend. Everyone here knows of him, the washington post wrote articles on him and the djs on the radio used to make “your mom has been around the blcok so many times” jokes that used cool “disco” dan as their punchline. I shot this in super 8 film whichmakes it even cooler.
The eighties were a peculiar time in the history of the nation’s capital. Even before Mayor Marion Barry was caught on camera smoking crack, D.C. had acquired a nasty reputation as the most dysfunctional city in America. “The United States’ political headquarters is fast becoming the murder capital of the U.S., with more than one killing per day,” London’s Daily Telegraph told readers in 1989, “It is infested with drugs the streets are patrolled by an army of beggars the city is corrupt, inefficient and extremely dangerous.”
The D.C. of newspapers, however, was not always a version that residents recognized. In their new film, urban culture expert Roger Gastman and music video director Joseph Pattisall take on the loaded questions of how bad the nation’s capital really was and why. Blending exclusive interviews and archival footage, these Washington natives aim to offer the most comprehensive portrait to date on this critical decade. The development of Go-Go, D.C.’s distinctive style of urban music, racial tensions, sensationalist media, crack and corruption, will all be important pieces of this story.
A few days ago, El Miz tipped me off on Kenzo Digital’s City of God’s Son (click to download the project for+ free).
Then my little brother, Nicholas Alfonso Mason, AKA The Jaguar, emails me telling me that his friend (and mine) worked on City of God’s Son.
I just checked out the trailer. Looks crazy. And dope. And crazy dope.
“City of God’s Son” Trailer – Kenzo Digital – www.CityofGodSon.com
Kenzo is the apprentice of world-renowned video artist Nam June Paik and has had films screened at both the TriBeCa and Mill Valley Film Festivals. He served as Director of COGS and co-wrote the project with Academy Award-nominated writer/director Victor Quinaz.
COGS (City of God’s Son) is quite unique. It can be described as an epic, a musical, a soundscape, a movie for the blind, an art installation and a coming-of-age story. Kenzo also refers to COGS as “viral musical sound art.” COGS is a blend of multiple media and art genres and it explores new grounds for unconventional storytelling and ultimately gives rise to what Kenzo terms the world’s first “Beat Cinematic”. Kenzo arrived at this term by combining various mediums including 3D audio, multiple musical genres, and sound bites. Using some of hip-hop’s and film’s greatest talents (including Jay-Z, Nas, Biggie Smalls, Samuel L. Jackson and Joe Bataan), his aim is to create his own cross-medium ensemble cast, and out of many mediums, to create something epic and new.
Hip-hop is the perfect choice for this because, just like COGS itself, hip-hop is a genre created using only the resources available, and re-contextualizing them to create something bold and innovative. In effect, Kenzo aims to redefine remix culture, through creating a Quentin Tarantino-esque piece of pop art that uses 90’s hip-hop culture as its palette. More than just a remix or mash-up, COGS comments on the icon of the gangster, the media obsession with this character, and its function within hip-hop culture. An homage to arguably hip-hop’s most culturally potent era, COGS explores the mythology behind both musical icons and gangster film icons alike, and creates a world in which the two co-exist. COGS is part Sin City, part Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio programming, and part Nas’ Illmatic. Essentially, COGS ties these works together by playing off of the listener’s familiarities with these genres and re-contextualizing them within a coming-of-age crime drama set in a mythical, jungle metropolis.
Set in a world of magical realism, the story explores the relationship between father and son and the struggle to define themselves in a world where their futures appear pre-ordained. COGS riffs on the icon and myth of the gangster used generously throughout the history of hip-hop and American pop culture. The story embraces both the dichotomy of such societal reverence and media obsession with the moral quandary such a lifestyle calls into question. By using the genre’s most influential artists and manipulating them into characters that humanize and, at times, contradict their media persona, COGS aims to dissect concepts of machismo and push the envelope for using music as a more directly narrative medium. It also interweaves many classic crime films into the sound design and score of the piece, melding together the world of film with music into a new format of super visceral soundscape and musical narrative. In all of this there is the unique invention of self-proclamation; artists labeling themselves, touting beefs with other artists, and challenging the status quo to a sort of existential shout-out session. By exploring these themes within a familiar story structure COGS hopes to dissect the phenomena and redefine remix culture.
Never Die Alone by Donald Goines is one of my favorite books. Goines is a master of the visual, gritty drug infested street life. A world that I have more than a passing knowledge of. And with Goines it is always based on a true story.
Keep in mind, Donald Goines wrote 16 novels in 5 years. Goines himself kept it moving in this world of the urban street as he was a hustler, Pimp and heroin addict. A perspective that gives him uncanny authority and authenticity to write about it.
Never Die Alone’s “hero” is King David, the coldest cat in all of literature. And when I say “coldest cat” I mean cold, like dry ice on the South Pole. Close to pure Evil.
King David, sharp dressed and Caddy driving, is also one of the original East Coast-West Coast G’s. Villainous. And Poisonous.
A must read for all up and coming G’s. They should also make this a must read for schools to keep kids out of the Drug Game.
The urban art gallery, artrepublic, has launched its 2008 top ten of who’s made the biggest impact in the UK urban art scene in 2008 and who’s set for even bigger stardom in 2009. The list is compiled from sales and customer feedback reports, together with an ‘insider’ view of the cutting edge art market.
Sitting at the top of the list is urban legend, Banksy, who has a global cult following and whose works generate cash, controversy and admiration in equal measure. Banksy is followed by MissBugs – a duo of Muse and Artist – who came from out of nowhere this year with sell-out shows and had collectors queuing for their superhero-inspired work.
Third on the list is Nick Walker, a Bristol-based contemporary of Banksy whose pictures are now soaring in value. Coming up fourth is the Frenchman known as C215 – who according to Art Republic, ‘literally lives for stencils’ – followed by Charming Baker, who puts an unusual twist on the still life genre.
In sixth place is another Frenchman, Blek Le Rat, who had considerable influence on the now more famous Banksy and who has been in hiding for years as the French police pursue him with a massive graffiti fine. Next up on the list is a supposed descendant of Thomas Moore who goes by the name Pure Evil and already has work on display in the Tate Modern.
Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA El Campeón De La Gente
The Guide to Getting More Out of Life
The Guide to Getting More Out of Travel
http://www.thegmanifesto.com
Everyone who is anyone in the art world was in London last week for a series of sales and fairs.
The trouble is, too many collectors left their checkbook behind in the clearest sign yet that the global financial crisis has finally caught up with the art world. Experts warn that things are likely to get tougher.
A far bigger test for a market which had largely defied the gravity of economic gloom comes next month, when Sotheby’s and Christie’s, the two dominant auction houses, hold major sales in New York. The Art Basel Miami Beach show follows in December.
“Now is not a brilliant time to be selling — people are facing such a complicated financial situation they are not prepared to do anything,” said Philip Hoffman, chief executive of the Fine Art Fund Group.
“The market place is much tougher, and in light of what’s happened in the financial markets, the art market cannot be immune to it. Liquidity is tighter everywhere.”
I think Sotheby’s and Christie’s will undoubtbly be effected by the Down Economy.
But like anything, if the price is right, now is the time to be buying.
The Rest is Up to You…
Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA Your favorite International Playboy’s, favorite International Playboy
The Guide to Getting More out of Life
http://www.thegmanifesto.com
