Beedie - Above The Weather FreeP

Tall Black Guy - Sparkling Adventure

I know that I am very late to the party, but have you ever had someone put you on to something and it kind of goes in one ear and out the other?  Well, that's what happened with Tall Black Guy.  Months ago (maybe even a year) Buscrates played some of his tracks for me and I liked what I heard, but for whatever reason I never followed up on it.  Somehow during my travels through the internet, I stumbled upon Tall Black Guy's work again and this time I was more than ready for it.  You'll definitely be seeing more of his work on the blog in the future.

@BusCrates 16-Bit Ensemble - Ascorbic Acid 2​.​0

B. White - The Evidence Mixtape

The 58s - The 58s Mixtape

Beedie - Cardiac Arrest & Beedie Sings The Blues (Music Video)

Cardiac Arrest & Beedie Sings The Blues are featured on The Beat Bully LP.

I Wish The News Covered MY Pittsburgh

It's funny, I used to often talk to friends that aren't from this area about my city and my less than positive opinion of it.  Most of those I talk to a pretty smart and know there way around the internet.  I would tell them about how much I dislike my city and why, while they would see different articles online about how livable or affordable it is.  I would always tell them that its great if you're white, but as a Black person . . . not so much.  The images of Pittsburgh and Pittsburghers are pretty much whitewashed on a nationally.  The successful Blacks in the city are primarily athletes that play for local teams (read: STEELERS) and are just passing through.

Beedie - The Beat Bully LP

Hannibal Buress Live In Pittsburgh May 26th - May 29th!

Hannibal Buress will be in town for a total of six shows at the Improv.  I highly recommend making it to one of his shows if you are in the area.  You don't take my word for it:

“If Steven Wright, Mos Def and Dave Chappelle had a baby, that would be disgusting, but it would sound like Hannibal Buress. The funniest young comic I’ve seen in years.”

Chris Rock

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My Life As One Of The Most Hated Men In America

A friend of mine recently sent me this blog entry titled, The Short End Of The Stick: Women, Height Preferences, and Hypocrisy.  When I originally saw the title, I was definitely suspicious for two reasons.  One, the friend who sent it has playfully chided me about my height along with her love of Vince Vaughn's height.  She's also thrown around the term, Napoleon complex, once or twice.  Secondly, considering the subject I assumed that me along with my vertically challenged brethren would be the butt of yet another joke at the expense of women and taller men.  I must say that I was pleasantly surprised.  Not only did the blog not ridicule, but it actually read like a blog entry that I have kicked around in my head many times.

Big K.R.I.T. (@BigKRIT) Live In Pittsburgh On 4/25/11

Last.fm Event Listing or Eventful Listing

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Pac Div On Prince, Pittsburgh & Upcoming Album

Godzilla Comic Book (@IDWPublishing) Launch Event @ToonSeum!

If you happen to be in the Pittsburgh area you might want to check this out. You might even get to meet me.

Join us for the launch of a special issue of Godzilla Kingdom of Monsters!

The upcoming issue of Godzilla features 80 variant covers. Our friends at New Dimension Comics helped arrange a special meeting between Godzilla and the ToonSeum! Over 75 publishers, several conventions and one museum of cartoon art took part in the promotion.

Price of event ticket includes your copy of the comic. The first comic to feature the ToonSeum on the cover!

April 1st (we know, April Fools Day! but we promise we will be there!) from 7pm-9pm.

10 dollar ticket includes reception and 1 copy of the comic. Members are just 5 dollar..

All guest are 12 dollars at the door.

You do not have to attend the event to recieve the comic, just purchase a ticket and you may pick up the comic anytime after April 1st. To buy multiple copies of the comic purchase extra tickets. 1 comic per ticket.

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How Best To Support Your Favorite Artist

I download tons of free music, most of which is given away by the artists in an effort to promote, but when it comes to artists that I love I go out of my way to support them.  Sometimes I do that through attending a show, but most often its by buying their music. A lot of times that's through Amazon's MP3 store, although every now and again you can get the physical CDs for less than the download for some older albums.  I also like to support my local music shop and you should too. There's nothing wrong with helping a local business keep the lights on if he or she is running a cool establishment.  The following is an excerpt from an NPR article and their show All Things Considered on the best way to get the highest percentage of your consumer dollar to the artist you support.

Guest Blog - @BedstuyBetty Reviews J*Davey's Evil Christian Cop

Review by Bedstuy Betty

Underground indie vets J*Davey have once again laid down upon us what can only be described as aural manna.  While we still await the advent of New Designer Drug, the upcoming album by the innovative twosome; they have provided us with Evil Christian Cop, the second EP in the series The Great Mistapes. For the uninitiated masses still strolling through life with blinders on, J*Davey is an LA-based duo comprised of Briana Cartwright (she performs as Jack Davey) and producer Brooke D’Leau.  Through an eclectic mix of electronica, funk, soul, R&B, rock, and new wave, they continue to blow our minds and in an almost deity-like fashion, they do it for free.

@Toonseum To Visit Chicago's @c2e2

The ToonSeum, Pittsburgh’s Museum of Cartoon Art, will be presenting several panels and exhibiting at Chicago’s C2E2 March 18th-20th. Guests include puppeteer Jim Martin, comedian Gab Bonesso, and cartoonists Rob Rogers, Dick Locher, Bruce Plante, and Scott Stantis.

Gab Bonesso, Will Work for Comics Comedy Tour
Date: Saturday, March 19
Time: TBA
Location: Variant Stage
Description: Geek Girl Comedian Gab Bonesso brings her high-energy alternative comedy laced with comic book, pop culture and technology references to C2E2. Imagine if Daria and Wolverine spawned a baby girl and she grew up (a loose term) to become a comedian. Gab has been featured at the ToonSeum annual Comics for Comics event and has been awarded the title as Best Comedian in Pittsburgh by both Pittsburgh Magazine and the Pittsburgh City Paper. A fixture on Pittsburgh’s radio and comedy stages, Gab is taking her brand of "honest absurdity" nationwide with her first appearance at a national comic convention!

Drawing Fire: Editorial Cartooning in a Partisan Age
Date: Sunday, March 20
Time: 12:45 pm - 1:45 pm
Location: 473
Description: There was a time when the loudest and strongest voice heard above the din on any political issue was the editorial cartoon, jumping off the page in dramatic black and white. In today's climate of vitriolic banter and self-righteous talking heads, where does the editorial cartoon fit in? A panel of internationally known editorial cartoonists discuss their genre of cartooning in today's changing media and political landscape. They will discuss how new media is reshaping how they reach an audience. They will share some of their recent more controversial cartoons, talk about reader reaction and impact, and share some cartoons that were killed by the editor because they were too controversial to print. Listen closely. Despite the decline of newspapers, editorial cartoonists can still be heard above the din.

Jim Martin, Beneath the Screen, Behind the Scenes
Date: Sunday, March 20
Time: 3:45 pm - 4:45 pm
Location: 473
In a conversation with animation historian and ToonSeum director Joe Wos, Jim shares stories from his career, the legends he has known, and the characters he has brought to life. Jim Martin has been a puppet performer, producer and director for over 30 years. His credits read like the history of childrens television. He has worked for such iconic shows as Mister Rogers Neighborhood, Captain Kangaroo, Bear in the Big Blue House, The Puzzle Place, The D.J. Kat Show and Johnny and the Sprites. He has been an Emmy Award winning director of Sesame Street for almost two decades. Jim has been the puppet perfomer behind such legendary characters as Gary Gnu of the Great Space Coaster, Ben of Puzzle Place and Leonardo in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III.

J*Davey & Blu Live In Pittsburgh On 4/8/11

Last.fm Event Listing or Eventful Event Listing

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Revisiting The Scene Of A Crime

Civic Arena: crime scene

But don’t wipe away the evidence; build something special

By David Conrad

Post-Gazette columnist Brian O’Neill finally said out loud what everyone knows is true (“Point of Realism Interferes with Preserving Arena,” Feb. 8): Whatever replaces the Civic Arena, in the end, must serve the needs and growth of the Hill District as much as it serves the Penguins’ bottom line.

A wound needs to be healed. A wrong needs to be righted. Seems like a no-brainer. But it’s not so easy.

The Penguins have legal development rights to the property. They can do almost whatever they want with it. They should not. They should show enormous forbearance, unprecedented in the history of corporate America, and agree to a cooperative master plan. One that still makes them money, but one in which they let other architects, the Hill community and local leaders have actual design power.

Yes, I am saying that a company with the legal right to develop property should relinquish substantial control. Call me a socialist, or a libertarian, or a whatever.

The Civic Arena was built by legal means. The group that tore down the Lower Hill was legally entitled to do so. The development was called a triumph. But it was a crime.

Big news: Just because something’s legal doesn’t mean it’s right. Just because you have legal rights to something doesn’t always mean you have no one to answer to when you want to chuck it. Especially when that something is a monument.

Yes, the arena is an important symbol, an historically crucial object. Because it’s a modernist masterpiece? I’m no architect, but I’d have to say, “No.”

It’s important because it’s evidence in a crime scene. It’s a weapon left on a battlefield. And this sword should be made into a plough share.

We should never forget what happened on those 28 acres. A strong, nationally known working-class neighborhood was wiped away. A neighborhood that gave Pittsburgh and America a symphony of cultural giants — musicians, actors, merchants, sports heroes and civic leaders — was chopped off at the knees.

The Hill gave generations of immigrants a foothold in this country, it gave them their first home and it gave them a voice — quite literally with the Pittsburgh Courier, which was to the African-American population The New York Times of its day.

The Hill. August Wilson’s crucible for the greatest play cycle in American literature. The home of the Crawfords, the fiercest baseball team that ever graced a diamond.

Pittsburgh’s Hill District. In a city whose racism went quietly unpublished but which could be as brutal as Selma’s, the Hill was a beacon to black communities nationwide. And then it was a parking lot. And a place to see the Beach Boys.

As they say in the vernacular, we gotta own that.

Building another Waterfront or South Side Works, surrounded by parking lots that block off the Hill, again, is not gonna do that.

Building “safe” evening entertainment for suburban sports fans is not gonna do that.

What greater Pittsburgh, as a whole, needs to own up to and answer to is our responsibility for the future of the Hill.

The Lower Hill development will for better or worse remake the face of the city for the next 50 years. There’s no larger, more central piece of property left to dream on. And that’s what should happen. What is built there shouldn’t just make a dime, it should make everyone, black and white, drop their jaws.

Pittsburgh, hard-bitten and practical though it seems, is a magical place. It’s weird and warped and beautiful and it makes you want to fight for it. The number of men I’ve seen cry openly as they told me how they wished they could move back here I can’t count.

Right now, we’re just starting to stanch the population loss, we’re getting people to love it here, we’re riding a national obsession with “authenticity,” we’re the heart of Steeler Nation, we keep getting called the “most livable city,” and we might be the only place in America were Republicans and Democrats could actually find some middle ground.

The city’s at a turning point. Pittsburgh’s poised to make it. And we are about to run smack into the greatest financial crisis in the city’s history. What to do?

Break the law. Yes, you heard me. Declare, as a group, that “we” the people of Pittsburgh “own” what happens here.

I’m not saying storm the offices of Oxford Development Company and the Penguins, but ask for a smarter plan. Ask that your leaders, your politicians, your sports heroes and your foundations stop shrugging their shoulders. It’s not so simple as “it’s up to the Pens” or “we just gotta get something built.”

No. That thinking gave us two empty department stores, 400 lofts no one lives in and a subway to nowhere. We’re better than that.

Make them step up. Three major foundations bought the site of the former Hazelwood coke plant to avoid exactly what’s being designed for the Hill — a soft outdoor mall town that would be the modern equivalent of what the arena was 50 years ago: a crime.

Why doesn’t the Hill get the same equity? The same skin in the game?

Pittsburgh and the Hill deserve a better shake. A deeper process. One that, in the end, will create something that not only makes everyone involved more money than a series of movie theaters and cheesecake factories walled in by parking garages but that also will be a thing of beauty and strength that ties the Hill back into the life of the city it was meant to be a part of. A thing that people all over the country will travel to see.

If getting a court injunction to save some of the Civic Arena serves that purpose by starting the process, then I’m all for it.

I’m not saying the Penguins could never build something great on their own. I’m just saying they probably won’t and, in some sense, it isn’t their responsibility. It’s ours.

They aren’t tearing down the arena for the benefit of the Hill; they’re tearing it down to make money, which is their job — aside from winning hockey games.

In most situations, I’d say, go to it. If the Hill District Community Development Corp. owned the arena and wanted to tear it down, I’d say, it’s all yours.

But who wins when you cut off your nose to spite your face? What monument does vengeance leave for our children to play in?

The circumstances are strange here.

In Pittsburgh? Go figure.

David Conrad, an actor who starred in the CBS television series “Ghost Whisperer,” grew up in Swissvale and now lives in Braddock.

*First photo courtesy of Scott Michaels
**Third photo courtesy of Kyle Kebert
***This was an opinion column that ran in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Beedie - Ruff Draft: J Dilla Changed My Life Mixtape

At this time of the year we are typically inundated with J Dilla tributes. You can't swing a cat without hitting someone with a mixtape full of songs over Dilla beats.  (Editor's note:  I am not advocating the swinging of cats, just stating that there are lots of Dilla projects.  I love dogs and like cats.)  That being said, I recently saw Beedie as one of the opening acts for Black Milk ( . . .who shut the place down, btw) a couple weeks ago.  I liked what I heard so I decided to pass along.

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Consequence - Movies On Demand 2 Mixtape

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