This weekend is cause for celebration, for mourning, but most of all, for remembering. Sunday, April 1st marks the 23rd anniversary of Marvin Gaye's murder, one day before his 45th birthday. On Monday, April 2nd, Marvin would have been 68.

I believe Miles hit his peak at about 45 years old, and to hear some of the things he did after that point it becomes even more saddening to realize how early Marvin left us.

Even so, Marvin's legacy remains great, and I have immersed myself in his records so much that only a handful of artists even approach the time I have spent with his music. So thank you Marvin for what you created for me and for every one. Happy Birthday. We love you and miss you.

El-P - I'll Sleep When You're Dead

4Hero - Play With The Changes

Rich Boy - Rich Boy

Serengeti - Dennehy

VA/Sound Chronicles - Volume 1

photo by Angelo

I spent this past weekend trolling for SXSW freebies. Without a $600 badge or a $160 wristband a fellow has to start hustling a little. In all honesty, folks did most of the hustle for me. Ginny from Okayplayer made a few dozen calls. At one time me working as load crew for El-P was discussed. Guest list for Amy Winehouse? But SXSW authorities got all jumpy and finally she called Tayyib Smith, general socialite and industry insider, along with his own journalism and soiree endeavors.

Ultimately I just hung close to Tayyib and he handled the VIP hookup for me, Jill, his friend Sara, and anyone else who was nearby. Thanks Tayyib for the wave past the velvet ropes.

I spent most of my time at day parties because they seemed to be more accessible for industry related shows than the population doubling night bills. Monday, OKP posted my thoughts about the weekend on their blog. Check it out here. (Scroll to the SXSW 2007 headline.)

Two shows I wish I had seen, were the 50th Anniversary Stax Records Reunion, and Charles Wright with the Watts 103rd. (For some reason he's abbreviating the name now.) Both of those were at Antones, but Jill and I got crazy sunburned at the Stubbs Ghostface/Rakim show and slept right through the late afternoon and Charles' performance.

My good friend Kenny is on VH1! Check out the dreaded-out black guy playing keys. His brother Tony shows up at the end in a red track jacket. Look for Nya Jade on tour to see Kenny playing.

If the youtube link is down, try VH1.

My first freelance rejection slip:

Hi there

Thanks so much for your proposal for the 33 1/3 series. I’m afraid that yours isn’t one of the proposals we’ll be signing up, but we really do appreciate that you took the time to send it in – we enjoyed reading every one of them.

Very best wishes,

David

I submitted a proposal to write a book on D'Angelo's Voodoo for Continuum Publishing's 33 1/3 series. Last year there were 170 proposals and of those 20 books were signed. This year, in order to fill the same 20 slots, there were 449. Sweet. I guess I was a year late.

I just posted a new, semi-finished demo on my myspace page. I tracked most of it in mad dashes between my audio hardware crashing. As I was mixing though things kept crashing so much that I upgraded my whole system. Cool except that now my OS is too modern for my music editing software which means I can't even open the damn thing. So until I figure out a solution, here is my progress so far.

On a side note, I had planned to fade out this track until my computer crashed. So now with the full version you can hear me snatching Stevie Wonder lyrics out of the air at the end. Don't laugh, I improvised the end on like half a dozen takes and there's one where I was singing Usher.

When I was about 13 I heard this track called "Jazz (We've Got)" on a sneak preview of Groove Productions VG2. When I got back to Waco I couldn't find that song but I did find the artists newest release, "Beats, Rhymes & Life." I still remember pulling it out of a box below the display shelves in Wherehouse Music. That record is probably the earliest root of my musically elitist and snobbish tendencies.

It just so happened that A Tribe Called Quest emcee Q-tip had a cousin named Consequence he brought in on that album. Quence appeared on about half the cuts including helping to co-write one of my favorite songs to this day, "Stressed Out." Then Tribe broke up and a decade passed. Last week I got to talk with Consequence about his second chance at fame in a long quest to realize his dreams.

Here is the interview.