JRoot
JRoot
- Visits
- 8
- Last Active
- Roles
- Member, Real Head
- Points
- 8
- Badges
- 0
- Posts
- 861
Joined
-
Soul Strut 25. This is the End.
Raj, Everyone,
Thank you. This forum has made a deep and lasting impact on my life. And it goes way beyond the countless laughs and tales in the threads. Like-minded smart people with a shared passion for music and records found a home here.For several years, the Chicago strut fam would have irregular lunch meetups at Gaylord’s, a now defunct Indian buffet restaurant in the Loop. Over heaping plates of tandoori chicken and endless amounts of naan, we would share records and bits of our lives. Dante, Chris, dCastillo, James, pickwick33, dreas, Charissa, terry_clubbup, and meatyogre were basically the core Gaylord’s crew. Motown67 would occasionally come to Chicago from Oakland to visit his mom, and would join our merry gang. all strutters were welcome - probably even vitamin, though if he and motown67 showed up at the same lunch it would have been explosive. By the end, James would pronounce “I’m full as a tick,” and we would all go back to our lives.Nigel/Trew had a night at the Uptown Lounge in those days where we staged a soulstrut takeover in one of our first IRL meetups. I was glad that my handle was not too different from my real name, because some of the introductions got a little awkward. I still laugh when I think about Ben introducing himself sheepishly as “SexyBNyce.” And I still get a little choked up when I think about breakself - who was there that night and is one of the OG stutters who is no longer with us. He was one of the kindest, most knowledgeable record dudes ever, and I have a lasting memory of him breakdancing to the intro to Nina Simone’s version of Funkier than a Mosquitos Tweeter that night in the Uptown Lounge.So many real world offshoots from the community in this forum - lunch with ako in Ames, dinner/rap show with ASMA in Montreal, coffee with Oliver in Seattle at the pop conference, bambouche’s wedding (with Cosmo and Ayers’ monthly The Rub as the after party!)… the list goes on. The lasting connections beyond the forum are the greatest tribute to the strength of this community.Thank you Raj for making and maintaining this unforgettable space.Soulstrut por vida!
JRoot
-
20 Years To The Day!
For about five years, which spanned my marriage and the birth of my first child, Soulstrut was my online home. The site I checked when I opened my computer, the site I refreshed to see how the latest geopolitical battle between Vitamin, Rockadelic, and MannyBolone was evolving, and the place I developed the only true online friendships I've ever had. Sounds corny, but it's true. This was in the days before the whole internet was in everybody's hands. (Who remembers when Cosmo started a thread titled "I'M POSTING THIS FROM MY PHONE" on some back to the future vibe?) Some of my soulstrut amigos have transcended to other platforms (mainly Facebook and Instagram), and others have transitioned to real life friends who I can text and call and ask for information and favors in cities across America and all over the world. You know who you are.
It's really impossible to pick a fondest soulstrut memory - it was a daily barrage of hilarious, insightful banter. Revisiting epic threads still makes me laugh to this day (e.g. in a thread about Israel, "Rock[adelic], I get the feeling that if it were up to you, you would have simply nuked the whole Middle East just to be thorough about it."). Anyone who checks the Temple of the Dog thread and doesn't LOL is not a friend to me.
The two best collective moments on the site were (1) SecretChimp finding Mingering Mike (both at the flea market and later IRL); and (2) the Hurricane Katrina auctions. The latter raised over $30,000 to support New Orleans and the former is now in the Smithsonian. https://americanart.si.edu/artist/mingering-mike-30363
My memories of Soulstrut are not complete without the legacy of our best beloved strutters lost along the way, including these three passionate and authentic visionaries:
DJ Stef - RIP 2017 https://soundcloud.com/mike-manewitz/dj-stef-hip-hop-94-side-a
Breakself - RIP 2011 https://www.soulstrut.com/Mixes/aaron-anderon-on-jazzman-radio
Matthew Africa - RIP 2012 https://www.soulstrut.com/Mixes/matthew-africa-dj-b.-cause-soul-boulders
If you didn't have the chance to know them, I'm sorry for you, and sorry for us all that they are gone. Listen to the mixes linked above and join me in wishing they were still with us.
Huge thank you to Raj for the vision to put this site together and the fortitude to KEEP it together. The world has changed quickly over the past two decades. Genuine community endures. Soulstrut por vida.
