New Jersey Wins

[TL]

I know they're considered "soft," but PM Dawn are from Jersey City.

As an outsider and a huge fan
NY/NJ sound has always been pretty indistinguishable
In rap I mean.

Yeah - I don't think there's really ever been a different sound - northern NJ is in the NYC media market - the KISS FM Friday night Mastermix was what everyone into hip-hop grew up listening to, from the middle of Long Island to probably close to Trenton, and there always seemed to be less territorial pissing between NJ and NY than there seemed to be between the boroughs of NYC themselves - Queens Bridge v. South Bronx, Brooklyn v. The Rest of the World, etc.  It's like Staten Island and Jersey were never in those battles.  In '84 I do remember a song that was big on KISS and BLS that was actually about Newark - Club Zanzibar and what was actually a lot of cool shit going on back then, but after that, it wasn't until the whole Tribe Called Quest/Queen Latifah/Vioators axis started rising that you started hearing about Newark and the Oranges again.  Then came Naughty By Nature and the Fugees, and NJ started getting more mass-media respect, but it seemed like within the hip-hop world, it was never really "dissed" per se - it was just part of the mix, albeit a less "powerful" (?) one.

[gravy boat]

No disrespect TL, but my friend, who's a huge, huge Tribe fan, always says they came out of Queens - near where he grew up. It was a point of pride for him as he would play Can I Kick it? Yes you can - over and over again.

[JonFromMaplewood]

This isn't just about hip hop! This is much, much bigger. None of us would be listening to recorded music if it wasn't for Thomas Edison - a resident of West Orange, NJ.  No Redman. No Raffi. No Hooters.

[I am waiting for someone to give me the "Zeitgeist" counterargument to my "Great Man" argument... To which I will have no counter-counterargument.]

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

Yeah, Tribe is from Queens.  Jamaica, right?

I had an awesome Jersey day yesterday.  The wife and I went out to Cliffside Park for the interview, and were thinking, there's no way these guys are going to hire us.  But the guys - these three middle-aged, North Bergen Italian dudes (the place is in N. Bergen, not Pal Park as previously reported) really seemed to like us.  Then we got on the wrong Bergenline assvan and wound up in Jersey City, but it was such a nice day that we decided to walk to Hoboken.  Lo and behold, there's an elevator down the from the Heights to Hoboken.  We had some decent Indian food at the Karma Cafe on Washington Avenue, and were both like, "we could live here."

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

This isn't just about hip hop! This is much, much bigger. None of us would be listening to recorded music if it wasn't for Thomas Edison - a resident of West Orange, NJ.  No Redman. No Raffi. No Hooters.

[I am waiting for someone to give me the "Zeitgeist" counterargument to my "Great Man" argument... To which I will have no counter-counterargument.]

It's OK, Jon, I hear the Zeitgeist was from Jersey too.

[TL]

True - Queens and East Orange.  My point is exactly that, actually - just that there's no real separate Jersey hip-hop world (at least within the NYC area).  According to Wiki, Q-tip was born in Harlem, but yeah - grew up in Queens, you're right.  There was a period of time, though, when they were coming up in the early 90s, when I remember him talking about living with his grandma in East Orange.

[gravy boat]

This isn't just about hip hop! This is much, much bigger. None of us would be listening to recorded music if it wasn't for Thomas Edison - a resident of West Orange, NJ.  No Redman. No Raffi. No Hooters.

[I am waiting for someone to give me the "Zeitgeist" counterargument to my "Great Man" argument... To which I will have no counter-counterargument.]

About that Edison fellow  . . .
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23444712-5005961,00.html

[gravy boat]

True - Queens and East Orange.  Q-tip lived there for a long time, definitely still has family there, and I think Fife has some EO connections, too.  My point is exactly that, actually - just that there's no real separate Jersey hip-hop world (at least within the NYC area).

I guess I was just thinking more about silly bragging rights.  For a state that gets knocked around a lot, it's nice to have a rich rock legacy of YLT, the Feelies, Bouncing Souls, Rye Coalition, Ashley Tisdale to counter those NYC snobs and say "who do you got, The Strokes?"

[TL]

This isn't just about hip hop! This is much, much bigger. None of us would be listening to recorded music if it wasn't for Thomas Edison - a resident of West Orange, NJ.  No Redman. No Raffi. No Hooters.

[I am waiting for someone to give me the "Zeitgeist" counterargument to my "Great Man" argument... To which I will have no counter-counterargument.]

It's OK, Jon, I hear the Zeitgeist was from Jersey too.

Nope - Zeitgeist was from Paris, apparently:

The 10-second recording of a singer crooning the folk song “Au Clair de la Lune” was discovered earlier this month in an archive in Paris by a group of American audio historians. It was made, the researchers say, on April 9, 1860, on a phonautograph, a machine designed to record sounds visually, not to play them back. But the phonautograph recording, or phonautogram, was made playable — converted from squiggles on paper to sound — by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.

[neilnumberman]

This isn't just about hip hop! This is much, much bigger. None of us would be listening to recorded music if it wasn't for Thomas Edison - a resident of West Orange, NJ.  No Redman. No Raffi. No Hooters.

[I am waiting for someone to give me the "Zeitgeist" counterargument to my "Great Man" argument... To which I will have no counter-counterargument.]

It's OK, Jon, I hear the Zeitgeist was from Jersey too.

Nope - Zeitgeist was from Paris, apparently:

The 10-second recording of a singer crooning the folk song “Au Clair de la Lune” was discovered earlier this month in an archive in Paris by a group of American audio historians. It was made, the researchers say, on April 9, 1860, on a phonautograph, a machine designed to record sounds visually, not to play them back. But the phonautograph recording, or phonautogram, was made playable — converted from squiggles on paper to sound — by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.

Damn! Had we known, we could've found out if Lincoln really had a high-pitch voice.

[JonFromMaplewood]

This isn't just about hip hop! This is much, much bigger. None of us would be listening to recorded music if it wasn't for Thomas Edison - a resident of West Orange, NJ.  No Redman. No Raffi. No Hooters.

[I am waiting for someone to give me the "Zeitgeist" counterargument to my "Great Man" argument... To which I will have no counter-counterargument.]

It's OK, Jon, I hear the Zeitgeist was from Jersey too.

Nope - Zeitgeist was from Paris, apparently:

The 10-second recording of a singer crooning the folk song “Au Clair de la Lune” was discovered earlier this month in an archive in Paris by a group of American audio historians. It was made, the researchers say, on April 9, 1860, on a phonautograph, a machine designed to record sounds visually, not to play them back. But the phonautograph recording, or phonautogram, was made playable — converted from squiggles on paper to sound — by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.

But it took someone like Edison to sell the sizzle - not just the steak!  At least, I think that's how Edison put it.

[TL]

This isn't just about hip hop! This is much, much bigger. None of us would be listening to recorded music if it wasn't for Thomas Edison - a resident of West Orange, NJ.  No Redman. No Raffi. No Hooters.

[I am waiting for someone to give me the "Zeitgeist" counterargument to my "Great Man" argument... To which I will have no counter-counterargument.]

It's OK, Jon, I hear the Zeitgeist was from Jersey too.

Nope - Zeitgeist was from Paris, apparently:

The 10-second recording of a singer crooning the folk song “Au Clair de la Lune” was discovered earlier this month in an archive in Paris by a group of American audio historians. It was made, the researchers say, on April 9, 1860, on a phonautograph, a machine designed to record sounds visually, not to play them back. But the phonautograph recording, or phonautogram, was made playable — converted from squiggles on paper to sound — by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.

But it took someone like Edison to sell the sizzle - not just the steak!  At least, I think that's how Edison put it.

Well, the really amazing thing about the phonautogram - the thing that gives me chills - is that it's actually a completely different conception of sound.  As they said, it was never meant to be replayed, only studied visually!  It's like raising a reluctant ghost from the past to actually pull the human voice through, via these scratches on a sooty piece of paper - it makes me wonder where else sound waves have been recorded - innocently or purposely - in non audio playback media (wood? water? wet concrete?), and whether we might be able to bring them to life, too.  Also, it's amazing that he basically sent the sounds he was recording down an evolutionary detour that didn't intersect back with the main flow of history and knowledge until technology within the main flow was ready to receive it - it really blows my mind - the development of audio editing software, which essentially digitally deconstructs sound waves and displays them as visual information, enabled the completion of the circuit this guy inadvertently started with the analog deconstruction and visual display of sound waves, completely serendipitously. 

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

Yeah, actually, that is pretty fucking mind-blowing.  I originally skimmed this, looking for the zinger, but whoa.  Imagine what this could do to history, archaelogy, or linguistics, to someday be able to mine sounds from inanimate objects?

The meeting of old and new technology is pretty great too.  There's got to be a name for that, maybe invented by that Henry Petrowski guy.

[TremblingEagle]

This isn't just about hip hop! This is much, much bigger. None of us would be listening to recorded music if it wasn't for Thomas Edison - a resident of West Orange, NJ.  No Redman. No Raffi. No Hooters.

[I am waiting for someone to give me the "Zeitgeist" counterargument to my "Great Man" argument... To which I will have no counter-counterargument.]

It's OK, Jon, I hear the Zeitgeist was from Jersey too.

Nope - Zeitgeist was from Paris, apparently:

The 10-second recording of a singer crooning the folk song “Au Clair de la Lune” was discovered earlier this month in an archive in Paris by a group of American audio historians. It was made, the researchers say, on April 9, 1860, on a phonautograph, a machine designed to record sounds visually, not to play them back. But the phonautograph recording, or phonautogram, was made playable — converted from squiggles on paper to sound — by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.

But it took someone like Edison to sell the sizzle - not just the steak!  At least, I think that's how Edison put it.

Well, the really amazing thing about the phonautogram - the thing that gives me chills - is that it's actually a completely different conception of sound.  As they said, it was never meant to be replayed, only studied visually!  It's like raising a reluctant ghost from the past to actually pull the human voice through, via these scratches on a sooty piece of paper - it makes me wonder where else sound waves have been recorded - innocently or purposely - in non audio playback media (wood? water? wet concrete?), and whether we might be able to bring them to life, too.  Also, it's amazing that he basically sent the sounds he was recording down an evolutionary detour that didn't intersect back with the main flow of history and knowledge until technology within the main flow was ready to receive it - it really blows my mind - the development of audio editing software, which essentially digitally deconstructs sound waves and displays them as visual information, enabled the completion of the circuit this guy inadvertently started with the analog deconstruction and visual display of sound waves, completely serendipitously. 

Makes me wonder how far human civilization could have advanced already if we could have given every great mind at least the opportunity to work on things like this. How many minds as great as this man or greater spent his or her whole life as a serf/slave or died on a factory floor. It could have been one unique person killed in some dumb war or something who could have got us to flying cars already.

I love you humanity...but c'mon guys.