music

The ask fitz link has been lighting up in the past few days and I can barely keep up. So let’s get one out of the way shall we? Yes we shall.

Cory, from http://www.these-are-words.blogspot.com/ asks the following:

Question Fitz, have you ever been to a rave? If you have, how was it? And if you haven’t, why the fuck not?

And do you have any tips for making a blog more popular? (other than “Make more posts, dumbshit)

A rave huh? Well first off, I love techno, house, hard house, deep trance, hard trance, break beat, etc, etc. I think it’s because I play the drums and most electronic based music revolves around the beat. I also love songs that can take you somewhere in your head and actually change your mood, songs that you connect with emotionally. For example, I can listen to Pantera and actually feel like I want to rip someone’s fucking head off. I can listen to a hard house track by Commander Tom and at times feel the hair raising on my arms and back.

Now I don’t know if this qualifies as a ‘rave’ in the true sense of the word but I have gone to Ibiza. Not only that but I went there specifically for the music. This was in 2000 and it was AMAZING. There was literally 24/7 music events at hundreds of clubs and each one had a several famous DJs spinning. From Armand Van Buuren to Danny Tenaglia to Tiesto to Sasha and Digweed. It was insane!! And the clubs there are something you have to witness to appreciate.

There was one night at Club Manumission where the DJ was spinning from a platform that was in the middle of an Olympic sized swimming pool. He had some crazy trance song going with a huge breakdown in the middle. The song built back up to a furious crescendo and just before he kicked it back in the house lights went dark, several thousand people lit sparklers, the DJ looked at the crowd of nearly 9000 people, threw his hands up in the air and then swung them down as he kicked the track back in. THE PLACE ERUPTED!!! No drugs needed….pure musical ‘high’.

As for how to make a blog more popular, hmmm don’t really know. I think the main thing is to just be yourself. Don’t even try to make it popular. If you have whacky shit on your mind just write it down, post it and let it fly. If you want to try to get some good traffic you can submit your stuff to stumbleupon or digg.com or any of those social networking sites. Also, encourage people to comment and make sure you engage people in the comments. I mean after all a blog is more of a discussion than anything right? Otherwise just keep a diary lol.

Someone named Byron asked me the following:

Hey fitz, great site! This isn’t toilet related but what are some of your favorite music artists or songs?

Well Byron, I went over to imeem.com and created a playlist with a few of my fave songs of all time. Most are old some are new. Enjoy!

I love rap music. I grew up a metal head but one fine day while on my 15 minute break at SHOP-RITE I ‘found’ a Sony Walkman in the break room. Inside the Walkman was a Big Daddy Kane tape (Long Live the Kane) and it changed my life. The drums were unreal (I am a drummer) and I really dug how Big Daddy would rap about household items such as Calgon bubble bath, 7-up soda and other weird shit. Thanks to Big Daddy I became a huge fan of Tupac, Biggie, Tribe Called Quest, Wu-Tang, Jungle Brothers, etc.

In my 20 years of listening to rap there have been two times that white rappers have impressed me. The first time was Third Bass. Their album ‘Derelicts of Dialect’ was amazing from start to finish and is still fun to listen to today. The next is obviously Eminem who is fucking brilliant. But that’s it. End of story. Case closed. White men can’t rap minus two exceptions. So please young white men of the New York City Subway, stop rapping while listening to your ipod. I love Nas just as much as you do but…. I don’t love YOU singing Nas. YOU sound like an idiot.

And don’t try to prove me wrong or I will just make you look silly.