SOUNDTRACK: CONWAY THE MACHINE-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #84 (September 23, 2020).
Several musicians have tinkered with the “home” component of the Tiny Desk Home Concert.
Conway the Machine’s “home” is in the Queens, NY restaurant lil’ Sweet Chick, where he performs five songs, and has a fine looking plate of chicken and waffles.
Conway the Machine is part of Griselda, a Queens-based rap trio. I watched Benny the Butcher’s Tiny Desk recently and rather enjoyed it. Conway’s songs seem grittier and darker (especially when you learn the origins of “Front Lines.”
He opens with “Lemon” (prod. by Daringer & Beat Butcha) as a waitress brings him a drink (a lemon squeeze?). The music is dark and grimy and it works very well with his voice.
Up next is “Front Lines” (prod. by Beat Butcha) which was inspired by the George Floyd incident–he wanted to record a perspective from the upset angry protestors. It speaks directly to the racial profiling committed by cops while policing Black communities with this outstanding verse:
I just seen a video on the news I couldn’t believe (nah)
Another racist cop kill a nigga and get to leave (again?)
He screamin’, “I can’t breathe”, cop ignorin’ all his pleas
Hands in his pocket, leanin’ on his neck with his knees (psh)
Cracker invent the laws, that’s why the system is flawed
Cops killin’ black people on camera and don’t get charged
We ain’t takin’ no more, we ain’t just pressin’ record
Can’t watch you kill my brother, you gon’ have to kill us all
Just ’cause he from the ghetto, that don’t mean he sellin’ crack
He drivin’ home from work, you pull him over ’cause he black
Think he gangbangin’ ’cause he got dreads and a few tats
He reach for his ID, you think he reachin’ for a strap
He get out, put his hands up, and he still gettin’ clapped
But if he try to run, you just gon’ shoot him in his back
What if it was my son? I wonder how I’m gon’ react
I bet I’m finna run up in this precinct with this MAC (brr)
I swear to God
“OverDose” (prod. by The Alchemist) has what sounds like a zither as the main discordant musical tone. I like the way the bass is slow and his rapping is really fast.
Then comes “The Cow” (prod. by Daringer) “The Cow” is, as he says in the intro, “one of [the] most personal and transparent records I ever wrote,” in which he speaks about losing one of his best friends and getting shot in the head and neck. The injuries led to permanent facial paralysis. The song has brought Conway to tears in the past, and the memories clearly get to him again here.
Last is “Anza” (prod. by Murda Beatz) which is a pretty traditional bragging rap, with maybe a touch more aggression than other.
As the set ends, he thanks lil’ Sweet Chick for the ambiance: “I’m about to get into this chicken right here … tastes like it was made with a mother’s care.”
[READ: September 23, 2020] Three Hundred Years Hence (excerpt)
During the COVID Quarantine, venerable publisher Hingston & Olsen created, under the editorship of Rebecca Romney, a gorgeous box of 12 stories. It has a die-cut opening to allow the top book’s central image to show through (each book’s center is different). You can get a copy here.
This is a collection of science fiction stories written from 1836 to 1998. Each story imagines the future–some further into the future than others.
As it says on the back of the box
Their future. Our present. From social reforms to climate change, video chat to the new face of fascism, Projections is a collection of 12 sci-fi stories that anticipated life in the present day.
This first story is by Mary Griffith. Written in 1836, it looks, literally, three hundred years into the future. Romney writes:
It is the story of a man who gets caught in an avalanche of ice in 1835 and wakes up in 2135. It’s often cited as the earliest utopia written by an American woman. The author imagined a future in which society’s advancements increase dramatically due to one major structural shift: supporting women in science. Born in 1772, Griffith herself was one of the nascent United States’ earliest practicing women scientists, with special contribution in geology.
The ice man, Hastings, is given a tour of the country–New York, Boston and Philadelphia–by a man named Edgar. Edgar updates him and tells him about al of the changes that have taken place.
The writing style of this tory isn’t all that interesting–it’s a little preachy and dry. Since this is an excerpt I’m not sure if there’s a plot necessarily. But in this excerpt it’s mostly just meandering around.
Some things we learn about the future:
It has been upwards of two hundred years since horses were used either for the saddle or the carriage. The “brutal” field sports of horse racing are no more.
Amusingly, the dress in the future is very much like the Quaker clothing of the 1830s. Except that the Quakers themselves have been extinct for two centuries. Now (in the future) they wear heavy gold buckles on their shoes and have long ruffles on their hands and they wear a cocked hat, whereas Quakers wore a hat with a large round rim.
Somewhat disappointingly, the are no good artists now, Portrait painting went out of fashion in 1870: “It was a strange taste, that of covering the walls with paintings, which your grandchildren had to burn up as useless lumber.”
There is still art (mostly sculpture) at the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Philadelphia, (the Athens of America) has seen great changes over the last 30 years. But some buildings are still standing: that beautiful building called originally the United Sates Bank, the Mint, the Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb and the Girard College [and are still standing in 2020].
To get to it they must cross Pennsylvania–the state is covered with railroad tracks–self propelled vehicles. You can see all the farmland is now run my machines.
The most shocking part of this excerpt to me is the part about dogs. She goes on for several pages about how there are no more dogs in the future. They were the cause of hydrophobia [rabies] as late as 1930 and many people and other animals were bitten and killed by the disease: Even Hastings says, “It is strange that so useless an animal was caressed and allowed to come near your persons, when the malady to which they were so frequently liable, and from which there was no guarding, no cure, could be imparted to human beings”
So basically after a hundred thousand people were killed by rabies, all the dogs in the country were rounded up and killed. Children are more afraid of looking at a dog than a Bengal toger.
The second odd thing is the length of time they talk about what an orphan actually is–someone who lost both parents or just one parents–much debate about this topic.
In Philadelphia, they go to the market on Market street which the Recorder of Self-Inflicted Miseries says was once a detestable nuisance and the manner in which they were selling things through the streets was shameful.
The Market is now very nice with the clean Delaware River flowing underneath it. And the women here are clean and calm. In the old days women used to bawl through the streets, and carry their fish and vegetables on their heads, but now “they were dressed in close cap and snow white aprons, stood or sat modestly at the baskets–their hair was all hidden save for a few plain braids or plaits in front and their neck was completely covered.”
What is the cause of this change?
Why the improvement which took place in the education of women. Indeed it was a woman who brought about the technology that replaced the steamboat–a dangerous contraption if ever there was.
Griffith then name checks Lady Mary Wortley Montagu who I didn’t know.
Montagu is known for introducing and advocating for smallpox inoculation to Britain after her return from Turkey.
She saved thousands of lives and prevented what sometimes amounted to hideous deformity.
Hastings asks, about Dr Edward Jenner who pioneered the concept of vaccines including creating one for smallpox. Was he also forgotten?
Indeed not:
Dr Jenner was a man, which in your day was a very different circumstance. I verily believe that if it had been a woman who brought that happy event about, although the whole world would have availed itself of the discovery, her name would scarcely be known at this day.
Sadly we never learn what the mode of transportation was that surpassed the steam ship, or who the woman was who discovered it–maybe it’s in the full story.
I’m kind of amused by this story, but the tone and writing style don’t make me want to read more.
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