James

day

I know I'm stating the obvious, but somebody's gotta do it. This place would be a shell without my man. It's time we recognize and celebrate those that keep this place worth coming to. Soulstrut's own Dave Tomkins (without the acute self awareness). Dude is a fucking champion who needs his own column.

Speaking on behalf of Le Strut, we salute you.

haze25

Here Here! He's been dropping some gems recently, there was one where he was talking to Kon, but that shit fell on deaf ears. Whenever i see his name next to a post i'm taking the time out to read it, he is that dude.





peace,xavier

Jimster

I did bump the James Golden Highlights (not hair-R) a few weeks back but good to see him posting (slightly) more regularly.

SteadyMurphy

for real
his recent posting increase has made this a better place lately. DocMcoy too.
please to poast more

mannybolone

day said:

Soulstrut's own Dave Tomkins

Hey, Dave's my man but for real, I consider James to be in a class by himself. Analogies unnecessary.

nzshadow

J i m s t e r said:

I did bump the James Golden Highlights (not hair-R) a few weeks back but good to see him posting (slightly) more regularly.

Ahhh, the warm-fuzzies continue.


Yes, 'James Gtst hits' or somesuch, was a blast from the past, and now he is posting again i find myself here a lot more.

James' posts are for want of a better word, multi-layerd. I find myself re-reading his wisdom drops and nodding my head in agreement. The man has a way with words that cuts to the chase and lays the core of the subject out for all to see.

An incredibly efficient economy of words, each carrying weight, this is a skill that i am jealous of, im a rambler if ever there was one.


I raise my glass good sir.

pcmr

dude is like a prophet here
raising us from the ashes
i remember the first time i read his posts back in my lildudedayz
he needs to have his gems carved in marble and buried for future reference

z_illa

I owe an indescribable, unrepayable, eternal debt to this Man.

I hope things are going better than the last time we spoke.

bassie

There are one of these at least once a year. Rightly so!

Garcia_Vega

The bol has a way with words and italics that is unparalleled.

sticky_dojah

What you all said. Major Cosign.

z_illa

james said:

Put simply, I think Stevie's whole career can be seen and heard as a sustained exploration of the necessity of, the chore of, the consequences of, and--first, last, and most of all--the joy of keeping an open heart. Whether the lyrics or concepts are cheesy or indulgent to you or me ends up not mattering all that much, because his vast talent couples with his seemingly lifelong commitment to this singular conception of what it means to love, forming a perfect, self-contained circuit of humanity that implicitly includes all but ultimately relies on no one but him. The energy behind it is endlessly renewable, which lets the work flow from itself and into itself, becoming something like its own sun.

DocMcCoy

Classic material.

My personal favourite;

The ???Smooth??? radio format is some revolutionary (if throwed-back) shit, though. Outside of mixtapes, in how many other contexts do you hear music that???s programmed not by its genre and not by the demographics of its listenership but by its abstract aesthetic? My dad is deep in the Smooth lifestyle (dude was country when country wasn???t cool, so to speak: He???s been down with the Smoove unit since the mid-eighties when his avuncular cocoa co-worker Greg???he of the late-model zinfandel-colored something with the ???LOAFIN??? vanity plate???turned him out with some Najee), so whenever we go to visit him, it???s wall-to-wall ???Wave FM??? or whatever???in the crib, in the convertible, while ordering assorted chicken-based wraps named after towns in Arizona, etc.???and I can honestly say that said station will seemingly play anything, by any artist, in any genre, from any time period, as long as it feels smooth. In one weekend, on one station, I heard Bobby Caldwell, late-period Miracles, Beck, Al Green, MacNeal and Niles, Paul Hardcastle, Etta James, The Deele, Dave Brubeck, Steely Dan, Maroon 5, Lee Morgan, Johnny Hammond, Jefferson Starship, Jobim, Talking Heads, and on and on and on. Regardless of how one feels about the individual artists, where the fuck else do you hear that kind of sensibility in wide public broadcast? Those of you that can???t get past the specifics of the playlist (???Fuck a Kenny G, thun!???), think of it this way: Imagine if there was some station that would play anything, by any artist, in any genre, from any time period, as long as it felt hard (settle down, Beavis): MC5, Public Enemy, Metallica, Prince Far I, Funkadelic, Alber Ayler, M.O.P., and on and on and on. Well, that???s what???s going on with a lot of these ???Smooth??? stations. You ain???t gotta like it, but please recgonize this for the soft bomb that it is.

And in a side note: All those who diss Men With Hats out of hand better hope that Clubbup doesn???t see that shit. You???ll be a bus ticket.

day

mannybolone said:

day said:

Soulstrut's own Dave Tomkins

Hey, Dave's my man but for real, I consider James to be in a class by himself. Analogies unnecessary.

Point tooken. It's also ironic I would compare him to DT in an appreciation poast, seeing as I can't stand DT's style of writing. Chalk it up to Soulstrut at 3am.

RAJ

James gave me the Don Blackman LP a few years back for my birthday when I was in Chicago. Stand up dude!

Mongo_Slade

haze25 said:

Whenever i see his name next to a post i'm taking the time out to read it, he is that dude.

and

Garcia_Vega said:

The bol has a way with words and italics that is unparalleled.

Clack-clack, salute!

Big_Stacks

Hey,

Suffice it to say that the man James is a one-of-a-kind Soulstrut personality and contributor. He's top-shelf.



Peace,

Big Stacks from Kakalak

The_Non

Great insights, see above Quiet Storm discussion.

mannybolone

day said:

mannybolone said:

day said:

Soulstrut's own Dave Tomkins

Hey, Dave's my man but for real, I consider James to be in a class by himself. Analogies unnecessary.

Point tooken. It's also ironic I would compare him to DT in an appreciation poast, seeing as I can't stand DT's style of writing. Chalk it up to Soulstrut at 3am.

Ha - I can see the comparison from a difference. Both are masters of the parenthetical but Dave's writing is like hypertext before the concept existed. A single sentence can have 3-4 different implied links to other ideas, other references. It's a hyper-dense, meta-textual approach to prose which, at its best, blow your fucking mind and, at its worst, be indecipherable.

In contrast, I find James' writing to always be super articulate; his meanings are never lost on you but his use of language is just brilliant. For real, he's one of my favorite music writers and he *writes on a message board*.

day

mannybolone said:

day said:

mannybolone said:

day said:

Soulstrut's own Dave Tomkins

Hey, Dave's my man but for real, I consider James to be in a class by himself. Analogies unnecessary.

Point tooken. It's also ironic I would compare him to DT in an appreciation poast, seeing as I can't stand DT's style of writing. Chalk it up to Soulstrut at 3am.

Ha - I can see the comparison from a difference. Both are masters of the parenthetical but Dave's writing is like hypertext before the concept existed. A single sentence can have 3-4 different implied links to other ideas, other references. It's a hyper-dense, meta-textual approach to prose which, at its best, blow your fucking mind and, at its worst, be indecipherable.

In contrast, I find James' writing to always be super articulate; his meanings are never lost on you but his use of language is just brilliant. For real, he's one of my favorite music writers and he *writes on a message board*.

It's the whole "wink wink, I just referenced a Pelon lyric...did you get that?" style that, like you said, can be brilliant, but more times than not reeks of "look what I know". It can really detract from the overall piece and ends up being more about him than the subject.

And not to be melodramatic, but it's a crime James isn't published. It would be one of the rare times I would buy a magazine just for the writing. Someone make it happen.

Reynaldo

I don't really read james--he's too nuanced and personal; I'm not trying to know another man that well.

tabira

Personally in the examples you have given so far I haven't seen his "economy of words" or "multi layered meaning". So far it seems quite verbose and explicit:

I think Stevie???s whole career can be seen and heard as a sustained exploration of the necessity of, the chore of, the consequences of, and???first, last, and most of all???the joy of keeping an open heart.

Well written but too flowery for me:

james said:

...... his vast talent couples with his seemingly lifelong commitment to this singular conception of what it means to love, forming a perfect, self-contained circuit of humanity that implicitly includes all but ultimately relies on no one but him. The energy behind it is endlessly renewable, which lets the work flow from itself and into itself, becoming something like its own sun.

...Can you post some more examples to direct me or where he's writing now so I can look?

PS he gives great and generous tip on music

james

Aw, man--with all the Untouchables/Curtis type threads, I thought for sure this was gonna be the JB one; I was gearing up to lower the dynamite.


Thanks, though, to everyone for the very kind words. Whatever you may think of what I do, please know that it would be not be close to what it is without the room and the community that soulstrut has afforded me.


And while I do appreciate that folks mean it as a compliment, I've got to say that while Dave Tompkins definitely isn't for everyone, when dude is hitting, there's absolutely no one better. I came to his work a little late, I think, to be too directly influenced by it, but it did help to open my eyes and renew my faith in the printed possible. And I can pretty much distill everything I love about his writing into one word, too:


"chickwich."


Somewhere in the course of his magisterial, still-astounding piece on Paul C that was in one of those Engerlish magazines several years back (Big Daddy? Grand Slam?), in the section where he's breaking down the mechanics of beat-chopping, he says something about Paul "chickwiching" a beat. Here's why that's so fucking great: It works for everyone on the first, purely visceral level, because using "chickwich" as a verb is pretty ballsy, I don't care who you are. And it also works for eveyone on the second, expository level, because even people who don't know the first thing about hip-hop production--or music at all, really--will still understand that Tompkins is talking about Paul's combining things very much in the manner of, you know, making a chicken sandwich. For a smaller group of people, it works on the third, abstract level, because word geeks will see the parallel between the mincing/reassembly that results in a chicken patty and the sampling/recombination that is beat-chopping. And for an even smaller group of people, it works on the fourth(!), total sample-nerd level, because wonks will know that the beat that's being chopped in the song that's being discussed in this passage is--wait for it--James Brown's "The Chicken." Reading and recognizing work like that, you realize you're in the hands of a master. That shit had me stomping my feet when I caught it.


And above and beyond the technical and structural, he brings a lot of heart that often gets overlooked amidst the verbal razzle-dazzle; the sections on Fantasy Three and on Cybotron in his new(ish) book are really poetic and evocative and emotional. Folks shouldn't sleep. I was fortunate enough to rub elbows with him for a minute when he came through Chicago on his reading tour, but I was initially a little preoccupied and eventually a lot faded, and I never got around to telling him how much I like his stuff. If anyone talks to him, please let him know I'm a fan.




On an unrelated note, you'll appreciate this, day (you too, zilla): I was going through some boxes the other day and found the following written on the white sleeve of a 45 that you may recognize:



Authentic Chiburbian handstyles from your man and mine.



Anyway, again, my sincere thanks to everyone.

Mongo_Slade

james said:

Somewhere in the course of his magisterial, still-astounding piece on Paul C that was in one of those Engerlish magazines several years back (Big Daddy? Grand Slam?), in the section where he's breaking down the mechanics of beat-chopping, he says something about Paul "chickwiching" a beat. Here's why that's so fucking great: It works for everyone on the first, purely visceral level, because using "chickwich" as a verb is pretty ballsy, I don't care who you are. And it also works for eveyone on the second, expository level, because even people who don't know the first thing about hip-hop production--or music at all, really--will still understand that Tompkins is talking about Paul's combining things very much in the manner of, you know, making a chicken sandwich. For a smaller group of people, it works on the third, abstract level, because word geeks will see the parallel between the mincing/reassembly that results in a chicken patty and the sampling/recombination that is beat-chopping. And for an even smaller group of people, it works on the fourth(!), total sample-nerd level, because wonks will know that the beat that's being chopped in the song that's being discussed in this passage is--wait for it--James Brown's "The Chicken." Reading and recognizing work like that, you realize you're in the hands of a master. That shit had me stomping my feet when I caught it.

Keep studying that sentence and one day you might be able to grasp "chickwiching" on the fifth, sixth, seventh, eight and ninth levels of the game. I can't promise you results but it eventually happened for me.

hogginthefogg

Lest you dudes think that all of James's gemses are record-related, allow me to publicize a privatized message sent to me just before the birth of my daughter:

Two quick pieces of advance warning, then I'll stop, 'cause I used to hate boring-dad dudes who talk the way I'm talking now:

1. A solid ninety to ninety-five percent of the advice that you guys receive concerning childbirth and parenting will be administered less out of direct concern for your welfare and more with the intent of validating the experience/decisions of the advice-giver. Take everything with several grains of salt.

2. This is perhaps more a warning for Felicia than for you: In the eyes of the public at large, the parental-effort rate of return skews about 10 to 1 in favor of the dad. By which I mean: Felicia can be busting her ass trying to navigate the baby through a grocery store--she can be carrying twelve bags of produce, trying to stop the baby from crying, fishing some toy out of her purse while putting one of the baby's socks back on (socks which, by the way, perfectly match the baby's immaculate, freshly-laundered outfit)--and women of a certain age will do nothing but cluck at her and sniff "Hmpf--that baby should be wearing a hat." You, on the other hand, can just be sitting with the baby on a park bench or whatever, and as long as the baby isn't, like, on fire or something, those same women will fall all over themselves delightedly on some "Oh, look at that--what a good dad--what a beautiful baby...You love your daddy, don't you?...Do you wuvv your daddy? Yes you do...yes you do!..." The double standard can really be appalling.

mannybolone

hogginthefogg said:

1. A solid ninety to ninety-five percent of the advice that you guys receive concerning childbirth and parenting will be administered less out of direct concern for your welfare and more with the intent of validating the experience/decisions of the advice-giver. Take everything with several grains of salt.

realness.

mannybolone

day said:

It's the whole "wink wink, I just referenced a Pelon lyric...did you get that?" style that, like you said, can be brilliant, but more times than not reeks of "look what I know".

Interesting; I never thought of it from that perspective but for real, that's not Dave, remotely. His writing style isn't an attempt to floss. It's really about playing with language to stack layers of meaning atop one another. Like any writer, it's an attempt to show, "this is who I am and how I think" rather than "look at what I know." If you spent 15 minutes with him, you'd realize this (and of course, you only have his writing to go by and I can see how one might draw the conclusion you came to as a result).

mannybolone

Mongo_Slade said:

james said:

Somewhere in the course of his magisterial, still-astounding piece on Paul C that was in one of those Engerlish magazines several years back (Big Daddy? Grand Slam?), in the section where he's breaking down the mechanics of beat-chopping, he says something about Paul "chickwiching" a beat. Here's why that's so fucking great: It works for everyone on the first, purely visceral level, because using "chickwich" as a verb is pretty ballsy, I don't care who you are. And it also works for eveyone on the second, expository level, because even people who don't know the first thing about hip-hop production--or music at all, really--will still understand that Tompkins is talking about Paul's combining things very much in the manner of, you know, making a chicken sandwich. For a smaller group of people, it works on the third, abstract level, because word geeks will see the parallel between the mincing/reassembly that results in a chicken patty and the sampling/recombination that is beat-chopping. And for an even smaller group of people, it works on the fourth(!), total sample-nerd level, because wonks will know that the beat that's being chopped in the song that's being discussed in this passage is--wait for it--James Brown's "The Chicken." Reading and recognizing work like that, you realize you're in the hands of a master. That shit had me stomping my feet when I caught it.

Keep studying that sentence and one day you might be able to grasp "chickwiching" on the fifth, sixth, seventh, eight and ninth levels of the game. I can't promise you results but it eventually happened for me.

All I know is that I'm suddenly grasped by the desire to make a Chik-Fil-A run.

james

Mongo_Slade said:

james said:

Somewhere in the course of his magisterial, still-astounding piece on Paul C that was in one of those Engerlish magazines several years back (Big Daddy? Grand Slam?), in the section where he's breaking down the mechanics of beat-chopping, he says something about Paul "chickwiching" a beat. Here's why that's so fucking great: It works for everyone on the first, purely visceral level, because using "chickwich" as a verb is pretty ballsy, I don't care who you are. And it also works for eveyone on the second, expository level, because even people who don't know the first thing about hip-hop production--or music at all, really--will still understand that Tompkins is talking about Paul's combining things very much in the manner of, you know, making a chicken sandwich. For a smaller group of people, it works on the third, abstract level, because word geeks will see the parallel between the mincing/reassembly that results in a chicken patty and the sampling/recombination that is beat-chopping. And for an even smaller group of people, it works on the fourth(!), total sample-nerd level, because wonks will know that the beat that's being chopped in the song that's being discussed in this passage is--wait for it--James Brown's "The Chicken." Reading and recognizing work like that, you realize you're in the hands of a master. That shit had me stomping my feet when I caught it.

Keep studying that sentence and one day you might be able to grasp "chickwiching" on the fifth, sixth, seventh, eight and ninth levels of the game. I can't promise you results but it eventually happened for me.

"When you can take the chickwich from my hand, it will be time for you to leave."

day

mannybolone said:

day said:

It's the whole "wink wink, I just referenced a Pelon lyric...did you get that?" style that, like you said, can be brilliant, but more times than not reeks of "look what I know".

Interesting; I never thought of it from that perspective but for real, that's not Dave, remotely. His writing style isn't an attempt to floss. It's really about playing with language to stack layers of meaning atop one another. Like any writer, it's an attempt to show, "this is who I am and how I think" rather than "look at what I know." If you spent 15 minutes with him, you'd realize this (and of course, you only have his writing to go by and I can see how one might draw the conclusion you came to as a result).

It's been a long time since I've read anything from him (in fact, I think the last thing was that same Paul C story James mentioned), but it was years of reading his articles that gave me that opinion. I'm glad I brought it up, because now I can see it in a different context. I'm a pretty simple dude, so sifting through meta-data within a sentence while I'm trying to read about Ultramagnetic or whatever was more distracting than anything. It was just too much Dave injection (whoa!) for me. I can honestly say I probably wasn't ready for that style at the time, but I'll give it another go.

And James, I'm glad to say our man is doing well, despite his complete and utter abandonment of his duties here. Bigger and better thangs.