Today’s Bloggin Best…

- Stream the new Autechre album, Oversteps. Clash

- Dilla x Serato x “Safety Dance” = Want. Stones Throw

- M.I.A. too-release Sleigh Bells debut album. Stereogum

- Stream Gonjasufi + Gaslamp Killer show live tonight. LA Weekly

- Detroit techno is old enough to rent a car. Rhythmism

- Buy Daft Punk, Cat Power, Vampire Weekend and Strokes custom crafts to benefit Haiti. Bidding For Good

The Red Bull 3Style is quickly earning a reputation as the latest and greatest of DJ-showdown events. If you haven’t heard yet, The 3-Style is a showdown-style competition between 3 of the best and brightest DJs in the business, High Noon style and with precision, accuracy and style being among the most important qualities. Tonight’s 3Style took place in Phoenix, Arizona at the appropriately-named Venue, where four judges and a 1000-fan crowd scrutinized the technique and showmanship of every DJ up-close and without mercy. Hosting the event were DJ Emile, professor of DJing at ASU, and Jazzy Jeff of Fresh Prince fame. Needless to say, competition was fierce, and things heated up pretty quick.

DJs at the 3Style are judged especially on their ability to win over a crowd; Scottsdale’s own DJ-R clearly won top honors in that area this evening, beating rivals Robby Rob and Death to the Throne. Not only that but DJ-R earned himself a trip to the National Finals in Denver on October 7, where 13 other top competitors will face-off against him. From there, he might make it to in international finals in Paris. He had a pretty rough job ahead of him tonight, but the roughest yet lies ahead as he strives to best even the top.

“I’m really honored to be representing Phoenix, which I consider to have the best DJs on the planet,” DJ-R said to his cheering crowd. “I’m really thankful to have the opportunity to move on to the National Finals, and maybe I can even make it all the way to Paris.”

When environmental education group Global Inheritance began their partnership with Coachella in 2004, the idea was a simple as having a bunch of artist apply paint to garbage cans in an effort to encourage recycling while helping to keep the concert grounds debris free. Seven years on, and GI’s efforts at the annual music festival have become some of the weekend’s most talked about activities. Whether it’s exchanging 10 empty water bottles for one full one, or peddling a bicycle to recharge your cell phone, Global Inheritance doesn’t just educate and amuse a few concert goers, it finds a way of making the event better for everyone, even if they never step foot out of the VIP area.

This year, Global Inheritance has come up with their most interactive concept yet. Building on the idea of human power, the group has put together the Sweatshop DJ initiative—a human powered DJ set-up that allows ambitious jocks to take to the decks in the desert, so long as they can bring enough friends to fuel the sound system via their own pedal power. It takes a lot of human movement to keep the juice flowing—12 friends in all, turning cranks, pedaling bikes and running on a gigantic hamster wheel. But the opportunity to rock even a passing crowd at Coachella is too great of an opportunity for amateur DJs to pass up.

“We want to inspire people to rethink the way we look at energy consumption,” explains Global Inheritance founder Eric Ritz, while declining to tell us what music he personally prefers. “It doesn’t matter,” he insists. “I support all shapes and sizes.”

Learn how to be a Sweatshop DJ at globalinheritance.org

Rising DJ and freestyle dynamo Jay Electronica kicked enough ass at Club Haze in Las Vegas last February to earn him a welcome back March 8th. As per usual, he tore up the show up in his usual fashion, driving the crowd wild and making the girls go crazy. Performing excerpts from his limited release of LPs, the hip-hop equivalent of a progressive rock album in the form of Act 1: Eternal Sunshine (The Pledge), which is, in the man’s own biography, “laced with movie samples and Beatles film soundtracks.” Shorter compositions like “Hard to Get” served as a bit of a break from the longer ones, with the crowd moving to every groove they could.

It makes for more than a captivating album apparently, and an equally riveting live performance; the crowd stood in awe of his on-stage stream-of-consciousness prose and filled in on what often seemed like the more difficult to memorize verses, when Jay’s wordplay was at its wittiest: “I got the rap game singing “At Last” like Etta James/Lames they got planes shot down like John McCain/It’s a dream, it’s a dream/ The flow is elegant like Miss Coretta Scott King/A lot of kings seen death and turned queen/Crack they 24 inch rims in the ravine.”

 

- Madlib goes to Africa. Play

- Def Jam wouldn’t let Method Man record Wu-Massacre on “hip-hop time.” HipHopDX

- Amy Winehouse to design line of Fred Perry crack stained wife-beaters. Billboard

- Buy Michael Jackson’s (RIP) sunglasses given to living Corey. Julien’s Auction

- James Brown’s body has been snatched!!! New York Post

- 160 arrested at Metallica concert riot. Spin

Today’s bloggin best…

- Jessica Simpson and Billy Corgan wrote a reality show theme song. The Tripwire

- You know the Beastie Boy approve of this Battlestar Galactica bootleg. LA Weekly

- The Optimo night is ending in Glasgow. Anyone have some frequent flier miles? Optimo

- Conan O’Brien is hitting the road. Billboard

- The Strokes are gonna play Lollapalooza. Stereogum

- Michael Bolton got a platinum record for Kanye’s College Dropout? Sound of the City

- What happened to Parental Advisory stickers on CDs? Westword

Germany’s Ulrich Schnauss has a knack for weaving together various forms of electronica, as he puts it in his Red Bull Music Academy interview, “in the widest sense of the term.” Schnauss is the self-proclaimed product of both 1980s German dance music, the likes of which had been started by Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk, and other bands from across the spectrum of shoegaze such as The Cocteau Twins and Slowdive. But it’s Schnauss’ sixth sense for fusing these elements together which makes it work, the result of years of obsessive practice and label-hounding. While some of it verges on the sentimental side, there’s gems like “Stars”, where dampened percussion and a sort of ambient drone enhances the lyrics of a vagabond narrator, while “Between Us and Them” best captures Schnauss’ knack for capturing something between melancholia and restlessness, giving a sort of spectral feel to music that needs no words.

Today’s bloggin best…

- Gorillaz like Katy Perry, but hate Russell Brand. Prefix

- Plastikman, Model 500 and Inner City all to headline Movement Festival. URB

- Someone let Insane Clown Posse onto Nightline…oh, to make fun of them. Videogum

- 13th Witness directed the new Deftones video. Hypebeast

- Kavinsky has a new track to rave to. Fools Gold

- Iggy Pop, Henry Rollins and Moby all appear in Canadian vampire flick. The Playlist

You can bet Jack White doesn’t like music blogs. It wouldn’t be surprising if the proudly retro guitarist-vocalist of The White Stripes doesn’t dig on YouTube either. So it would probably please him to no end that when he and partner Meg White played a series of off-the-cuff public shows in Canada (a bowling alley is Saskatoon, a YMCA in Toronto, a city bus in Winnipeg) during the band’s 2007 tour, this sort of obvious blog fodder flew under the radar of all but the most obsessive web citizens.

It’s that sort mystery in the age of full digital disclosure that first draws one in to The White Stripes tour documentary, Under Great White Northern Lights, which made it’s Los Angeles premier at Hollywood’s 1920s film palace, The Egyptian Theater, on Tuesday night. A visual diary of the White Stripes on the road in the most far-flung reaches of the Canadian north, film-maker Emmett Malloy brilliantly captures these rural outposts and the people who call them home, all while managing to stay focused on the visiting duo who one suspects are more comfortable in these environs than the modern world down below.

Of course, the simple stereotype of Northern Canadians as backwoods troglodytes is both unfair and unwarranted. But it’s hard to watch Jack and Meg interact with a group of Inuit tribal elders without considering the thousands of years of human history that came before the web’s instant gratification became the status quo. Such contemplation turns out to be the perfect context for The White Stripes tribal blues music as well as their sharp ‘50s inspired garb. Imagine if Mad Men followed a couple of kids from Detroit playing old juke joints instead of urbane ad men and you’ll get the ambience I’m talking about.

The timing of Under Great White Northern Lights couldn’t be better, coming at a point when cancelled tours and growing side projects leaves the status of the White Stripes in questions. But consequential events aside, the film morphs from tour diary into a celebration of the Stripes 10 year anniversary show which is captured at the end of the film. And in a closing scene too emotional to discuss here, one is left to wonder if this multi-layered celluloid document is a concert flick, an on-the-road tale, or a last testament from one of the most important rock bands of the Millennium. Here’s hoping it’s only the first two.

Lately there’s been a trend growing amongst filmmakers to reboot, remake, or re-imagine certain ideas. Most noticeable of them all: you guessed it — the SPIDER-MAN franchise. Since 2002, we’ve only known Peter Parker as Tobey Maguire, Mary Jane as Kirsten Dunst, and Sam Raimi in charge of capturing the world they live in. As of mid-January, that all changed. Marc Webb, who helmed 500 DAYS OF SUMMER is now the new director of the teenaged Spidey reboot. Right now there are no other details, but it brought about a good question—why all the remakes?

A big reason for the Raimi/SPIDER-MAN bust-up was creative differences as well as time constraints. It’s been said that Raimi told the studio he couldn’t make the film by summer, nor would he be able express himself creatively. Raimi felt that if he did the film the way the studio wanted, then he wasn’t being faithful to himself or to the character. Do you know what happens when you give Sony creative control? You get SPIDER-MAN 3. It seemed like Sony was having a hard time letting Raimi create his own vision for the fourth film so ultimately the director split. So: why not let Raimi have control?

One of the biggest arguments was over the villain in the fourth installment. Raimi was really pushing to have John Malkovich as the Vulture, but Sony wanted Anne Hathway as The Black Cat. Then they realized that Hathaway would cost too much money, and if they wanted to do it in 3D then maybe a lesser known actor might cut on costs.

The high school reboot has split a lot of Spidey fans. Some are open to fresh, new ideas for the webslinger along the lines of what the studio has planned. Then there’s the other half that would rather take a dip in a vat full of acid than watch someone like Zac Efron take on the part of Peter Parker. Currently, the lead role has not been filled, but everyone from Efron to Logan Lerman (PERCY JACKSON & THE OLYMPIANS: THE LIGHTNING THIEF) to Joseph Gordon Levitt has been rumored. The reason for choosing Webb to direct might have a lot to do with how perfectly the director captures relationships. Webb helmed last year’s sleeper hit, 500 Days of Summer. So maybe he’ll be able to give a boost to the Peter Parker/Mary Jane relationship. Recently, Sony was looking into still doing 3D for the film and putting James Cameron on as a creative consultant. Ironically, Cameron wrote a treatment for SPIDER-MAN back in 1991, but it was scrapped.

The obsession with remakes stifles true creativity and robs the viewer of a real lasting experience. Most of the movies made now won’t be as memorable as those of the past, and if they are it will be for all the wrong reasons. Moviegoers are letting these things slip through the cracks. Films like AVATAR, which might be visually appealing, still tell a fairly popular tale. The bottom line is the more these types of movies get made the smaller the chance we have to let in the true visionaries with new stories to tell. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to hear a different story. Oh, and if you could please, don’t f*%k up Captain America.

Words by Niki Stephens, Photos copyright Marvel Comics, Renaissance Pictures and Sony Pictures