Bi-Weekly-ish newsletter of Marcel A. Wiebenga - Issue #12
Hey reader!
Back on a Friday morning again, bi-weekly-ish newsletter number 12! This time including Rap moguls galore; great news if you’re into drummers that after an accident still broke the world record for fastest drummer; something about Looney Tunes and my possibly redundant, yet unavoidable, two cents on the Joe Rogan / Neil Young controversy.
Enjoy your Friday!
Sharing and liking as always appreciated.
1. Pepsi’s star-studded halftime Rap carnival.
The countdown to Super Bowl LVI is on, and Pepsi is whetting fans' appetites with a first-look preview of this year's halftime show roster. In a nearly four-minute cinematic teaser, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, and R&B legend Mary J. Blige are shown during their creative processes as they prepare for this grandiloquent (yeah, I googled "epic synonym") musical event. Judging by this teaser, one thing is obvious; the 2022 halftime show will be bigger and better than ever!
Super Bowl LVI is held in Inglewood, California, and the halftime show is a tribute to that city and the hip-hop legacy it brought forth by bringing these five artists together on stage for the first time.
Now I don't get American Football, but I most certainly get my golden-era rap music, and I cant wait to see how this all unfolds. If I have to predict what will go down at Super Bowl LVI, it will be that the Tupac hologram that was floating around a while ago will be included.
2. Highlighted: a YouTube channel that makes you lose yourself.
Speaking of rap and my recently developed adoration and fascination for anything related to Eminem. I was recently re-introduced to the sheer unsurpassed YouTube channel “Highlighted”.
Highlighted, with a mere 88K subscribers, highlights the rhyme schemes and lyrics of many of your favorite rap songs, giving insights into the sometimes genius complexity, creativity, and inventiveness of both contemporary rappers and rappers of yore.
Available tracks, of course, include the entire Superbowl lineup from above. Still, the most popular track is by your favorite rappers' favorite rapper MF Doom and his pièce de résistance "Figaro." Watch the film below to immediately understand what made MF Doom your favorite rappers' favorite rapper.
3. Joe Rogan vs. The World.
In the world of current affairs, the currentest affair of all is that of Neil Young removing his music from Spotify, protesting against Spotify's podcasting headline-act Joe Rogan, who Young deems is spreading untruths about Covid and Covid vaccinations.
A lot has been written about the incident. The New York Times and Music Business Weekly see a change in how music is commercialized and identify the first dents in the perceived superpower of the streaming platform. Music biz critic Bob Lefsets highlights the dangers of misinformation on a broader scale, especially for the upcoming elections in America. Spotify thinks it can fix the issue by adding warning signs to its content, and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek gave a big internal speech on how Spotify is a distribution platform and not the publisher and, therefore, not liable for its content. Meanwhile, Joe Rogan made a statement promising to do better by presenting a wider variety of opinions, which gained him support from anyone and everyone who considers her- or himself a free speech advocate, most notably meme-king Elon Musk. (tweet pictured above).
The most subtle pro free speech input on this subject was this tweet by Andrew Yang.
Yang is a former Democratic presidential and mayor of New York candidate. He's a tech entrepreneur, writer of the highly recommended book The War On Normal People, and very pro-Universal Basic Income.
Yang, in his writings, is a voice of reason which seems to understand that the world is experienced in a non-binary way. Even though there is scientific proof (truths) that when you're vaccinated, you are significantly less likely to end up in the hospital due to Covid, there are substantial reasons why people can doubt these truths. Doubts that are often created by governmental and institutional mismanagement or simply by human error, and that are subsequently fueled at scale by podcasts like Rogan's. To collectively move forward, these doubts need to be understood and addressed.
I started listening to the hot button episode already a while ago. I got annoyed with Rogan's overblown simplified and nonsensical reasoning, so I turned it off and listened to some music instead. I want to say it was Neil Youngs' "Keep on rocking in the free world," but I'd be lying!
#yanggang
4. Jason Barnes the worlds fastest drummer.
A few years ago, Jason lost his right arm during an electrical accident and thought his music-making days were over. Enter Gil Weinberg and the Georgia Institute of Technology, who stepped up to give Jason’s music career a second chance. They created a prosthetic that interprets the electronic signals from Jason's limb and translates them into movements for drumsticks. This prosthetic arm allowed Jason to become the world's fastest drummer.
Amazing story below!
5. Behind the (Looney) tunes.
Sometimes the almighty algorithm whips up something unexpected and unique, like the short-form documentary linked below about Tregoweth "Treg" Edmond Brown, the sound-effects mastermind behind Warner Brothers' Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. Together with composers Carl Stalling, Treg created the soundtrack to decades of children's lives, a soundtrack that has become part of our collective pop-culture (un)consciousness.
Treg was the first to step away from the tradition that the orchestra also produced the sound effects. He would bring in sounds recorded for random feature films. If someone came to a quick stop, he'd put in a car skid from a gangster movie. Porky Pig receiving a blow to the head and consequently falling out of a window is emphasized by a thunderclap and plane sounds recorded for the film Dawn Patrol. This imposition of realistic sounds into the cartoon fantasy world provided a comic impact unknown at the time, and as an adult, you tend to overlook how absurd the doinks and twangs truly are.
Get reacquainted with your inner-child by watching the film below.
That's all folks!!!
As always: please consider forwarding this to a friend, family, and colleagues if you enjoy the content. Smash a like, suggest a subject and have a great weekend.
Till next time.
Marcel