Seattle HipHop

I'm discovering an underworld of misunderstood beats and the brave new world of jazz without brass.

I'm trying to play music without a pentagram, play a guitar without a tabs, whisper my breath into a flute that's escaped my hands - I'm trying to play with the big boys even if I'm still junior varsity on this world stage.

I miss the slinky curves of a note that flat. A full tempo spirito verse followed by a. Quiet. Quick. Quip. Staccatto. They use to tease me with a playful up and down in a chromatic shape with only two colors.

The days of raspy throatiness, glam and made up rock complete with armor and the child of Polaris are long gone. Now we're idolizing music that's hot for a moment, a day or two on the little iTunes sidebar and then dies of into the nothingness of the internet sensation of the hour.

Maybe I'm just melancholy about the days when heavy metal bands would read Hemingway, when Latin American bands would read Lorca. When artists would sing without televised concerts and governments would move. The days when you didn't need a promotional shirt with a continent outlined to care and catching a practiced smile of the reserved-for-dead-heads would make your heart swoon.

I'm not talking about skinny jeans and flannel and long beards meant to show a channeling of times past but that are so carelessly grown so as to create disgust. When tilting your head backwards and covering half your face with your hand and your smile was something not meant to be bastardized by thug thumping of a careless caribbean beat.

I'm not a snob but I like Caruso as much as the next un-classically trained amateur connoisseur.

I know some of you might say that hindsight isn't 20/20 - but from where I stand hindsight gives me a warm fuzzy feeling that no part of the future seems to provide. Maybe it's because I believe in Seattle poets more than Cereal box lycks on tracks.

D.O.A.