J-Rocc: The Deffest MC With Cerebral Palsy

"Heart Of Stone," a 6-song free download ep by 19-year-old Australian rapper Justin Lampson aka J-Rocc, is one of the most amazing things I've heard lately. Anyone with the slightest interest in outsider music will want to take an immediate listen.  After all, you don't hear someone with cerebral palsy rapping too often.

J-Rocc (not to be confused with the similiarly-named Beat Junkies dj) speaks and raps slowly, and with great difficulty. I didn't even understand much of what he said at first. Not until the second song was I able to pick up on his lyrics.  But he genuinly does have more flow then some rappers I've heard.  And he has something to say, kickin' straight positivity, even as he faces some harsh realities.  No bitches 'n' bling here. The Syndey hip-hop scene really came thru - the beats are fresh, and the guest emcees who join him on a few songs don't make a big deal about his condition.  With a refeshing lack of well-meaning, but ultimately condescending cheerleading/pitying, they simply treat him like he's one of the gang. 

That's Tjupurru posing with J in the pic.  We wrote about his odd excursions into avant-funk didgeridoo music a while back.

J-Rocc "Heart Of Stone"

http://www.reverbnation.com/jrocc
https://www.facebook.com/jroccmusic


Thanks to Lee Ashcroft, the man who introduced Bernie Sizzey to the world. (Bernie's got a new album out, too, by the way.)

The Most Expensive Album in History! Dan Bull's "Face"

UK's Dan Bull released a compelling rap album in 2009 called "Safe" that dealt with the excruciating life of suffering from the autism spectrum condition of Asperger's Syndrome. At the time I said "Can someone in England please put a suicide watch on this guy?"

On March 19th, his excellent follow-up album "Face" will be released, it's sole copy for sale for a mere £1,000,000. A bargain! But even if you don't want a hard copy, you can download it here for free, or pay what you want:

Dan Bull "Face"

Fortunately, he sounds in much better shape, bustin' rhymes on subjects that wouldn't occur to most MCs, like America's health care crises, for example. Life is still difficult, but as he says in the song "Medicine Ball": "What doesn't kill will not make you stronger/but at least you're going to live a little longer." The wittily-named "Portrait of the Autist" is an inspiring anthem, admitting that Aspergers' is still a bitch ("can't talk to anyone...My mind's wired a different way"), but he exhorts his fellows to "Be autistic and proud."

The music is as solid as the lyrics, with one exception: the corny "John Lennon," whose lyrics are simply strung-together song titles. Otherwise, Bull's flow is as sharp as ever, and the thing rocks from start to finish. For someone who's "mind's wired a different way," Bull makes a helluva lot more sense then most.

The Musicalness of Dan Ellsey

Hyperscore is software originally intended by its creators at MIT's Media Lab as a toy for children - they would draw and paint on the monitor and music would result. But then Media Lab's Tod Machover introduced it to disabled folks like one Mr. Dan Ellsey of Boston.

Quoth this LA Times article: "Born with cerebral palsy and unable to speak, he (Ellsey) was forced to communicate with a clumsy headset that pointed to letters to spell out words. He had little control of his body movements. He was in his early 30s, had never been more than five miles from where he was born and seemed doomed to spend a cocooned life in the hospital.

The Media Lab scientists designed a more refined headset for Ellsey that not only inspired him to compose (he turned out to have interesting musical ideas) but even allowed him to perform by controlling tempo, loudness and articulation. He blossomed, and Ellsey, while still a severely affected cerebral palsy patient, has become an active participant in the Hyperscore program, performing, making CDs and teaching other patients."

You can listen/buy his album "Masterpiece," featuring such interesting song titles as "My Musicalness" and "Our Musically":

HERE

So what's it sound like? Like instrumentals using synthetic versions of familiar sounds (strings, piano, drums) in unfamiliar ways - it all sounds a little off-kilter, like a drunken jazz band playing songs that unexpectedly lurch from part to part, then stopping in their tracks to repeat a passage over and over - not in a Minimalism sense, more in the needle-stuck-in-groove sense. The un-relaxing song "Relaxation" has an insistent snare drum relentlessly pounding away irregular rhythms. My fave on the brief (17 minute) collection is the accurately-named "Thrilling Trills." Music of no known genre.

MUSICAL FULFILLMENT FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

My home computer has died, hence, I'm writing this from work (looks nervously around). So, for the time being, I can't post any mp3s you nice folks have been sending me, or record any vinyl. That ever-growing pile of thrift-store records will have to wait. That's okay, there's plenty of stuff a-happenin' in the vast inter-webular 'net-lands out there that I can finally get around to reviewing, e.g.:


Full-Life is a Portland, OR-based center that provides "fulfillment for people with disabilities," and one of their activities is music. Thanks to the good folks at CLLCT, they have two internet releases, the electric guitars/drums raucous rave-up "Tennessee Madonna & the Full Life All Stars," and a kind of solo album by female singer Polka Dotty, accompanied by acoustic guitar. What Dot's singing lacks in pitch is more than made up for in heartfelt lyrics and emotional performances. And I think the "oh yeah" guy's best song is the third one, with it's cool tribal drumming and powerful chord changes. Sonic Youth, step off.

After listening to stuff this pure and beautiful, I don't want to listen to "normal" music (it seems so artificial) or angry music - these are the kind of people we look upon with discomfort and pity, but the sunny outlook here makes the rest of us all seem like a buncha goddamn whiners.

The Full Life All-Stars

01 Portland is the Sweetest Things
02 I wish I was in Tennessee
03 California Girls
04 Mexico Radio
05 Grunge Rock Out
06 Start Singin'
07 Just Singing a Song
08 Workin Blues
09 Oh Yeah
10 Oh Yeah O Yeah
11 Oh Yeah Oh Yeah Oh Yeah
12 Oh Yeah Oh Yeah Oh Yeah Oh Yeah
13 Holiday Song

A CRAFTY LADIES CHRISTMAS

I'll be posting Christmas music for the next week or so, and it doesn't get much better than this 11 minute, 7 song 7" recorded by the participants in the arts program of the San Francisco Recreation Center for the Handicapped. The musical backing seems pretty professionally played, in contrast to the vocals of the handicapped folks.

It kicks off with a version of "Rudolph The
Red Nose Reindeer" scored for xylophone and
sad horn - very evocative combination. Much
of the remaining tracks feature only pianoaccompaniment, which gives it a kind of
church pageant feel; there's a real sweetness
to "O Christmas Tree,"  like if 'A Charlie
Brown Christmas' was now starring old people.
"IWant A Hippopotamus For Christmas" (hey, a Spike Jones cover!)
features a full band, with the unusual lineup of
xylophone, percussion, and...organ? guitar?  I'm not sure.

A CRAFTY LADIES CHRISTMAS

TEENAGE MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY METAL MESSIAH

"Based in Turners Falls, MA, Flaming Dragons Of Middle Earth are the brainchild of visionary wheelchair-bound ‘band shaman’ Danny Cruz, who leads an ensemble of rotating non-musicians, artists, oddballs, kids with Down Syndrome etc in weekly jams at a community resource centre..."

The vinyl-only release "Seed of Contempt," another one from Feeding Tube Records, is a true outsider-music artifact, an astonishing blizzard of unrestrained audio mayhem played by kids who aren't trying in the slightest to be cool, professional, or show-biz. 'Twas all mastered off of live cassettes. I'll let Danny himself explain:

Flaming Dragons of Middle Earth "Not Really Causing A Fire"

Like a lot of teenage boys, Danny loves heavy metal, and indeed, there is a Sabbath riff somewhere in this minute-long shard of broken sound:

Flaming Dragons of Middle Earth "Speed Kills"

but apart from all the metal references in both the music and the album's artwork, Cruz' mentions of avant-jazz legend Sun Ra implies that not all of the free-form lunacy in these grooves is simply the result of jam-session sloppiness. And certainly Cruz' description of his "apocalyptic improvisational lyrics" could apply to the music too.

This almost-lovely piano tune makes Daniel Johnston sound Top-40 normal:

Flaming Dragons of Middle Earth "Anarchists of Punk Rock"

HUMAN MUSIC ANTHOLOGY

Our pals over at Pleonasm have done future anthropologists and historians (not to mention weird-ologists of all stripes) the great service of collecting hours worth of audio oddities that mainly seem to have been recorded off of that most democratic of mediums, YouTube. There are four volumes (so far) of free downloads, organized by theme.

Vol. 1 Tongues - Largely spoken-word babbling and acapella singing, from Christians filled with the Spirit, to space-alien prophets, to drunks caught on camera, to a very funny bit of acoustic heavy metal. Tho there's plenty of unaccompanied vocals just dying to be sampled (check track #6), there's also some smooth-jazz, and blues w/ Peruvian Pan Flute. The Talking Heads named one of their albums "Speaking in Tongues," but another of their titles could apply here: "Stop Making Sense."

Vol. 2 Left Fieldists - Outsider music bonanza! Featuring such hits as: "You Tube Guy Sings About Prostitute," "Developmentally Disabled Guy Sings In Stairwell," "Song About Drinking Robitussin," "Down Syndrome Poetry," and an Asperger's Syndrome guy singing about his "Asperger's Girl." It's not all laffs, tho: "Man Sings About Infidelity" is a cringe-worthy confessional, and the "Song For My Deceased Wife" is pretty heart-wrenching.

Vol. 3 Extra Credit Songs - You can get school credit for performing music?! Damn, kids got it too easy nowadays! I would have loved that. There's a wide range of skills here, from inept singing or rapping American history or science lessons over karaoke backing tracks, to pretty professional-sounding original songs. The hip-hop/r'n'b (complete with Autotune!) "Digestion Song" is hysterical. A+.

Vol. 4 Antediluvian Moderns - Apparently an assortment of old folks. Haven't heard this one yet.