Dirty Loops

I was recently introduced to this group by a colleague of mine, and all I can say is this is one damn good cover band from Sweden. From what I've been able to tell from some of my Swedish colleagues, Sweden loves soul music. It's blatantly obvious the singer is heavily influenced by Stevie Wonder.

They are going to be touring in Asia, which means for an undisclosed amount of time. They will be able to tour in Asia for the next 50 years and seriously the bassist deserves to have his own Anime series where his bass playing skills kill off demons and shit, but I digress. Moving from Rihanna, Justin Beiber, Adele, Brittany Spears and Lady Gaga. They have a remarkable gift of reinterpreting pop music with some blue eyed soul.

Icy Approved

Bill Maher & Bill O'Reilly are Two Flatulent Bills

Once Upon a time Bill Maher was entertaining and a breath of fresh air, with his speech of, conservatives are fuck sticks, people who smoke weed and care more about animals than humans are the wave of the future, mixed in with a dash of people who are practicing monotheistic rituals are nothing short of mentally retarded are uneducated drones, yeah that kind of fresh air.

That kind of fresh air is more akin to flatulence, at some points its hilarious and refreshing to know that someone can be that comfortable around you to fart, and they know that you won’t care much, or you’ll laugh. On the other hand, if you’re in the middle of sex, or at a funeral or at the Opera, farting might be frowned upon, and your normal audience of at most 2 people are going to be annoyed.

I get where he is coming from, there is nothing better in life than entering into an argument where you set it up to where the other side has zero chance to come across as normal or sane, I know Bill O’Reilly has been doing this for years, and is far better at it than Maher. You see, Maher is a blowhard and a douche bag, who plays the role of the educated elite. Bill O’Reilly is the educated elite who plays the part of a blowhard and a douche bag.

That is where my problem is with Bill Maher, he has a bias. It’s not a liberal bias, it’s not a conservative bias, fuck it’s not even a remotely reasonable bias. Bill Maher is his own bias. Bill Maher would love nothing more, than to light some candles, take a bubble bath, turn down the bed, turn on some PETA artist and masturbate to a barrage of different Bill Maher based media, that and centerfold of this month’s best strain of weed.

It’s okay to have a bias and have your opinion, just don’t try to post your opinion as a fact. What I am typing is not factually based, it’s how I feel, Bill Maher needs to learn the difference. He’s not a political scholar, philosopher, theologian, actor, funny, he’s just a pot head with a loud mouth that got a lucky break 30 years back and forgot that he is the joke.

Now, occasionally, Bill Maher & Bill O’Reilly have some bits of genius. They are truly both equally rare, except in one case it’s not that rare, he gets paid to give out erroneous information, and the other one pretends that he gives out the only information and the media is trying to silence him and their objectives voice…wait, that still didn’t clarify my point. Let me try this again in a new paragraph.

The difference between Bill Maher & Bill O’Reilly is that one of them has intelligent conversations with people he agrees with and berates and denigrates people that he vehemently disagrees with. The other person has passive aggressive yelling matches with people he disagrees with and has thought provoking intellectual conversation with people he agrees with…wait that still doesn’t help…one more time.

Bill O’Reilly is a man who has a Masters from Boston University & Harvard University has a huge following, knows what the hell he is trying to do, makes obscene amounts of money. Bill Maher wants you to know that if you don’t smoke weed, something is wrong with you, and if you aren’t atheist, something is wrong with you, and if you eat meat, something is wrong with you, and that my friend leaves you with a target audience of about 9 people and $10.

Knowing who your target market is the key to being successful, both the Bills are successful, but if all you do is get your information from Two Bill’s all it will end up doing is rotting out your brain and help you confuse the difference between information & knowledge, and opinion & fact. Because clearly the Two Bills know what they are trying to achieve...Fart louder than anyone in the room.

Sincerely,

Icy Mike

The Paxtons Avenue A....Album Review

As with all of my album reviews, there always needs to be a bit of a back story to the review itself, now, you might say, “Icy efff that, we just want to know if it’s good or not” and I’ll say, “you don’t matter anyway, your illiterate.” to where you’ll reply, “Aiight joe, continue.” LOL! Anyway, one of my friends asked me this week if I felt that Hip-Hop was dead, I said “Definitely, the culture has been gone for some time.”

He said, it is one of the few art forms that has remained virtually unchanged since 1982, the same subject matter, the same boom bap & the fact that they are just talking on beat, now the latter portion came from a friend of mine who felt that hip-hop has been dead for years. There are no more emcees, and he has a Grammy.

I say all of that to say this about The Paxtons as a whole, Chris asked his Twitter followers last week how & who you would use to describe their sound now. For me that is tough, because The Paxtons have evolved to whatever they want at the exact time that they want to sound like. Take a look at their catalog of music Members Only, Work, Manhattan Project all have that feel good hip-hop 1982 flow. You know, 16 bars, hook, 16 bars, wave your hands in the air and smoke something, I love it, and support.

Then there is Avenue A. This is what being a musician & artist is all about. Taking a risk, being a Marcel Duchamp in a time where artist are so far up their own assholes, and he says “efff it, I’m doing my own thing, you bore me to tears, I can’t take loving her anymore she’s fucked every man…even UMC.” Because, Avenue A is a new found animal that refuses to be contained or even defined, it is something grander than I can even express in this form communication.

Avenue A is a breath of fresh air, at a time, where everyone with a laptop, a pair of earbuds, and an internet connection can put together something that resembles what I fell in love with in 1989. Avenue A is inadvertently a musical & avant-garde art fair packaged as a Hip-Hop album.

Sure, it shares, rhyme schemes, cursing, hooks, slang, but, there are moments on this album to where, you are not sure what they are trying to do, or what they are trying to convey, but they throw so much at you in 29mins packed into 7 songs, you will find yourself, going back and listening to it for more. The production is top notch, the mixing is fantastic and the engineering is phenomenal. Most importantly, it’s big on something I am not in this Album Review…brevity.

They, spend no time warming up an intro for 45 seconds before they fall into the same damn 16 hook 16 hook then bridge boring as fuck formula. There are so many odd and amazing ambient sounds on this project. To be honest, this was not what I expected from them, not at all, I was expecting a Phrenology, Electric Circus, Section 80 sound, but what I got was…

Better than I ever imagined. The Paxtons dreamed up an audible treat that is impossible to understand how grand or important it is at this time, I really believe by the time Avenue D is released next year, people will fully understand what Avenue A meant to the band and to a larger group of people.

After 20 full listens through of Avenue A I can honestly say this is the best project I have personally picked up this year. At first listen, I didn't get it, I didn’t understand it, I came back to it a day later, and listened without boundaries. I haven’t felt this good about an album since; How I Got Over, but I would say more realistically, Toxicity. So many styles and it all works together in an amazing weird soundgasm ear drum orgy.

I give this album 5 out of 5. It’s a classic, it’s a classic ahead of its time. It’s a magnificent work of art, it’s not just rap, even though it’s rap, it’s not too avant-garde, but it’s not afraid to flex its knowledge and life experience, it’s a young man who has grown up, moved out, become great, become flawed, yet still is able to find its self at a board meeting discussing philanthropic works and then smoke something. It’s ushering a new style of Hip-Hop, yet it’s doing in the right way.

It’s coming up like our generation that refuses to be over simplified, and pigeonholed. We are all of those negative things you think young people are, but we are so much more. You might look us over once or twice for the tried and true, but we are coming, and we are creating our own lane. We are creating a whole new run of Avenues…look out for us…

The Paxtons Avenue A is a Classic it is 5 out of 5. Period.

http://paxtonavenue.com/ with there lead off single and video.

Banks Have Confidence That You'll Blow It Every 8-15 Years

Every 8-15 years the Banks run out of money, then the government gives them more of our money, then we give them more of our money out of our paychecks...So, we get a car loan or a home loan, then the bank gets an insurance policy to back up there loan of your purchase, and realistically, they are more happy that you will probably blow it, so that way they can collect insurance money from your default and then...this is a big then...sue you and garnish your wages, we call that the double whammy around here.

That sounds like the best thing ever actually! I mean really, how big of a scum bag do you have to be, to bet on not IF but WHEN someone will fail to make full payments on their mortgage or car loan or credit cards or if there bank account goes a $.03 negative...I mean, I will take bets like that, but usually at a much smaller scale, albeit it is usually not if the person will succeed, but more likely if they will fail.

Now for me, it’s funny and I make or pay out $5. I made a bet with one of my students of not IF but WHEN this person would be kicked out of school. We both knew him well enough to know that it was a WHEN situation. Sure enough, i had to pay my fellow student $5 because he got kicked out one week too soon for me to win...still kinda pissed about that...lol!

But, here is a major issue; Banks have been doing this kind of shit for fucking years. I bet if I felt like writing a book on the absolute retarded nature of Banking & Insurance i would find out that John Dillinger worked for Bank of America and also got to collect on Insurance monies after the other guys banks got robbed. Because the insurance industry is backed by individuals, or sometimes even larger entities and it can't be all coincidence that Chicago is the Insurance Hub of the world...now that i have said that i am a bit more pissed.

Right now, we have Chase banks going up every three feet from each other, not because they really need more Chase banks, but probably more to do with all of the bailout funds they received, and they'll be God Damned if they actually help out the people who pay for their existence. I mean, why help out the economy, when you can stimulate your own or something like that.

I mean, if they are building a new chase branch, they are proving that the economy is back on track, or more realistically, they are hoping that you will have confidence to put your capital into their bank so they can blow it on some really stupid ideas like "credit default swaps" & “mortgage backed securities” because those are backed by insurance companies, until said insurance company takes a shit, and then when that happens, it is backed by a governmental organization or central bank or both or other countries or other currencies or us again.

So...now we are looking at all these awesome ideas out here, I have some money in my hand, not much let’s say, $1000, but my landlord doesn't take cash, so i need to get a bank account, so, i go get a bank account, they say. "mr bliss, you need to keep a $25 positive balance in your account at all times or your account will accrue a $75 a min fee." i say "okay mr bank man, i understand how it works, because ummm...you know...i actually don't, but, you know, i will do my best." So your rent is a $976 but the bank said, "you must keep $25 positive or pay the feeeeeee...oooooooooo" so i'm like "fuck it, i need a place to live, and i will have that other $1000 put in the account 3 minutes after it is paid" So, you get a nice $225 fee! so, awesome to be banking!

Now, that same fucking bank that took your money & charged you a $225 convenience fee lent it to some random hobo that said, "i need a $3,000,000 mortgage to smoke crack out of" the bank said, "do you have a pulse? are you a mammal? you're approved!" because the bank had that mortgage backed up by an insurance company betting on when it would default, and then you had the biggest of fuck faces of the investment world Hedge Fund managers at Goldman Sachs say, "hey i think it will default in far less time, but in the mean time, i heard there are these real knob jobs in Greece that want some of this horrid option action" so the bank said, "that’s awesome, because i have the insurance companies to back this all up!" so they chest bump each other and do some coke off of Michelle Obama & some generic pretty white lady politician.

Now, mean while, you have a president of a country in which i live in says, "we must bail out, the banks." we all look at each other like "what the fuck is he talking about?" then he says "my good buddies at Goldman Sachs are here to help." and were all like "yeah, they sound fancy, lets role with that" then we hear that GM is in financial trouble, but then we find out it’s because they are treating there horrible cars like they are some odd investment for their retirement plans and GMAC’s lending of money to crack head based mortgage vehicles for all to drive...no pun was intended, but unfortunately it fits here. So, we bail there bitch asses out, and now they debut all these new cars, that are made and designed in Germany.

So, we are listening to all of these knob job lunatics talking about..."we have no money! we need more money! we know all of our rich fucking uncles won't give it to us because he's a dick and even though he and 20 of his other friends control 85% of all the wealth here in the US, he's a dick and won't give it to us...i mean, it’s why he elected us into this office." so we say "okay, but what’s in it for us, this seems to be a continual crisis here, i mean, this has been going on for well over 160 years and you keep fucking us every 8-12 years like clockwork." so the banks, insurance companies and government officials say...

"You have our confidence and we promise we will continue to blow it every 8-15 years like clockwork" and we turn around and say, “can i still get this sammich, i'm kinda hungry?" they reply...."ummmmm, sure…?"

The End.

You're Fucking Out! I'm Fucking In!

So, it has been a multitude of months since Rockwell Knuckles released 'You're Fucking Out! I'm Fucking In!' and further more a good way to digest art. Realistically, As a person who consumes a lot of art, I should do a much better job of actually taking time to see how well does the art pair with life a few months after it is released, instead of just going off of instant excitement and other things of that nature.

I've seen Rocky live a few times, he is one person that if you hear that he is performing in a city near you, you need to see him. Rocky is honestly worth $20 just all by himself. Rocky's stage presence is amazing to say the absolute least. When you listen to 'Silly Human' you will not be disappointed, when his stage presence matches that intensity. Now, back to YFOIFI....

I took me a while to write the review for YFOIFI mostly because its been hard to categorize this album precisely and i'm pretty sure that is exactly how Rocky wanted this project to come across. The album starts out loud with a clear message on Bullet Train Army...he IS the Conductor simply, off of structure, and who am i to argue, the man commanded my attention.

I've been listening to Rocky for about 4 years solidly, I'm happy to see that his projects are becoming way more concise and the development of the Rocky Knuckles brand is picking up steam and garnering much well deserved praise and attention. I mean, this is a guy to where when he yells in to a Mic, you are going to give him your full on attention.

This is an album i have listened to 18 times in its full entirety, I can easily say, this is one of the better albums of this year. i give it a solid 4.38/5 and that is a very damn good score. Realistically that is the same score Common's Finding Forever receives. The biggest difference here in all of this is, Rocky has no major name production, or mixing or studio engineers, and the fact that he has not found a staple home to help feed him, not just yet.

You're Fucking Out! I'm Fucking In! is a great piece of sonic art. it always seems to find me at the right time. Pure Stand Outs: Bullet Train Army, Silly Human, Baking Soda feat Tef Poe, Controlled & my personal favorite Every Angle...This Album hits on all strides and picks right up where 'Choose Your Own Adventure' left off...

As always, if you do not have this project yet. please download this project and let Rocky know what you think of the project. Cheers & Enjoy!

http://smokingsection.uproxx.com/TSS/2011/03/download-rockwell-knuckles-youre-fuckin-out-im-fuckin-in

Icy T-Shirt Designs

This was another one of my designs from last year, I did this in support of my friend from school who is a professional photographer, she gave me the green light to do so, so i made this awesome t-shirt in honor of her business.

This was a shirt that I designed for one my friends for her daughters birthday. Her daughter got an awesome t-shirt! As did this lucky gal!

This is a T-Shirt I designed recently, I think its pretty awesome. The Shirt was so awesome, it got on stage to spit some bars with the one and only Rhymefest, the T-Shirt was so lucky.

One of the T-Shirts that I designed last year, it's something I Have enjoyed doing for a few years now.

MCH---Korean War Era

This is one that was hard to sell. I really like the uniqueness behind this piece. It's very imperfect as the Ammo Magazine goes, but that will happen after 50 years or so and it is still absolutely gorgeous. Its one of my favorite ones i have made so far.

I have a deep appreciation for all of our service men in women, and I am grateful that i am able to reclaim and reuse all of these old Ammo Magazines. This is a way that i can take something that would otherwise be lost, and not used, and turn it into a wonderful piece of functional art.

Thank you and enjoy this New addition. Ohh, and buy something allready.....Sheeesh!