Comeback Kids, I have accepted a fashion challenge over at Mikki’s blog, dedicated to getting out of debt. Well, I do like my pain discipline with a little pleasure so why not have a fashion challege to make this fiscal medicine go down a little easier.
The task is to buy a complete look: (shoes, misc accessories) for $50.00 cash (not using credit cards symbolizes not accumulating additional debt). And since I am the Comeback Girl of the world, I must have some sort of inspiration for the A.D.D in befitting me.
Well…… tada!!!! “Superhero Worship”. Its one of the fall 2008 trends. Ok so I won’t be wearing a cape. And this inspiration is subject to change if it bores me or abhors me.
stay tuned comebackers, we have 7 days to complete this challenge.
7 Comments
Tuesday, August 26, 2008 at 10:12 am
HMMM
what is fashion
who said what is not fashion and what is fashion
i dont care what is fashion ..
i just wear clothes wich i feel happy in it and i dont care what other people think about it
Tuesday, August 26, 2008 at 4:14 pm
them boots in that picture is bad!
where can I get those lol
Wednesday, August 27, 2008 at 3:49 pm
LOL E calm down…its ok..music tomorrow. fashion is my little addiction.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008 at 5:37 pm
lol comeback girl
you got a point there with fashion
as ya know i teach at a school and i see these how and what the kids nowadays wearing
pffffff
i mean woow if i did wear this wenn i was at highschool my mum would kick my***** and send me to my granmum from wich i got a speech and some more kicks lol
watching people is also fun
if ya just sit in a park and watch around how people dresses its fun to see
i have done this ones with my art teacher
just sit and watch and observate
you will notice some things ..
okay thats it
hugss from a friend from far
Wednesday, August 27, 2008 at 9:11 pm
I just found out lalah hathaway is going to be at detroits jazz fest this weekend with diane reeves and rashaan patterson, lawd i think im gonna be sick *Cough cough*
I so need to be home this weekend,, i will feel like a total fool for missing a free concert with some of the best artist around
Thursday, August 28, 2008 at 4:09 am
quote :
Detroit Jazz Festival opens with a tribute to Marvin Gaye
When the call came from the Detroit International Jazz Festival asking if he would arrange and direct a Marvin Gaye tribute, bassist Christian McBride didn’t hesitate.
Yes, was his immediate reply to festival director Terri Pontremoli. But knowing Detroit audiences, McBride realized he’d better not mess too much with the prince of Motown, especially with Gaye’s melancholy 1971 masterpiece, “What’s Going On?”
He’s OK with that.
“This is Marvin Gaye; you don’t mess with perfection,” McBride says. “I don’t need to be a self-important artist and say, ‘Look at what I can create with Marvin’s music.’ Not in Detroit, not in front of the people who love this and have a significant investment in that music. I’ll put some new harmonies in there, and some fresh spices, but for the most part I’m going to leave everything intact.”
The Marvin Gaye tribute will kick off this year’s Jazz Festival, which takes place in downtown Detroit over Labor Day weekend. The theme is “A Love Supreme: The Philly and Detroit Summit.” McBride, the festival’s 2008 artist in residence, will perform with several different groups throughout the four-day festival, including at a “Philly-Detroit summit” with Randy Brecker and others.
But the highlight for McBride will be doing right by Gaye in his hometown.
“I don’t want any apple cores coming up onstage!” McBride says. He has, after all, felt the sharp sting of a Detroit audience’s contempt. One of the bassist’s first out-of-town gigs was a booking at Detroit’s Hotel Pontchartrain when he was just 19, playing behind trumpeter Freddie Hubbard.
“Freddie didn’t show up,” McBride says. “And the audience got mad at us. We said, ‘Don’t get mad with us! …We don’t baby-sit that man. We don’t know where he is!’ The promoter was so angry, he said, ‘You guys just get out of here!’ ”
The band got off the stage and out of town, fast.
That kind of intensity is something that Detroit and Philly have in common, McBride says. “If the music is not right, they will let you know. Most people will say, ‘Oh, I guess they’re experimenting, trying something new, let’s wait it out and see where it would go.’ No … that won’t happen here!”
For a guy who’s just 35, born a year after “What’s Going On?” was released, McBride is deeply versed in music history. He’s a fan of the R&B and jazz scenes of Detroit and Philadelphia, and his first bassist hero, his father Lee Smith, played with Philly soul acts like the Delfonics and Billy Paul before joining Mongo Santamaria.
McBride also grew up hearing his mother’s Temptations albums in their West Philadelphia home. Those Tempts records introduced him to his second bass-playing hero, Motown’s James Jamerson. The youngster didn’t know Jamerson’s name at the time, just as he didn’t know that it was Bootsy Collins playing funky bass on some favorite James Brown records.
But he loved what Jamerson was doing, particularly on cuts produced by Norman Whitfield on the psychedelic edge, like “Cloud Nine” and “Runaway Child, Running Wild.”
“They started leaving those long vamps at the end of the track, all this bad stuff,” McBride says. “Plus I loved ‘Bernadette’ with the Tops, that’s one of my favorite (Jamerson) bass lines.”
The ghosts of Motown
During a July visit to Detroit for an educational workshop at Wayne State University and a gig at Baker’s Keyboard Lounge, McBride took time to tour the Motown Historical Museum on West Grand Boulevard for the first time.
The bassist listened intently as tour guide B’Daren Payne explained how instructors in Motown’s Artist Development department paced out the dimensions of the Fox Theater’s stage so they could show Stevie Wonder just how many steps he needed to take to the front and side of the stage.
McBride lingered in Studio A, communing with the spirits of Funk Brothers past. He spoke of one Motown trick he particularly loved, the way three Motown guitarists could each play different parts without getting in each other’s way. Even today, Wonder’s two young guitarists play that way onstage.
The Funk Brothers had been using three guitarists on one track for years, but it first struck McBride when he heard it on Gladys Knight’s 1969 Soul (Motown) single “The Nitty Gritty.” You can hear Eddie Willis playing one of his funkiest riffs, while Joe Messina adds backbeat, then Dennis Coffey comes in (he also adds wah-wah later on).
“They’re all hovering around the same range, around A flat,” McBride says, “and it’s like, ‘Man, how are they able to do that. They have three electric guitars and an electric bass, and they’re making this work!’ ”
The visit to Motown affected him more than he expected.
“I had a picture in my mind (of) what it was going to be like, but to actually feel the energy, you can’t prepare for that,” McBride says, taking a deep breath. “I’ve seen photos, I’ve even gotten to know some of the people who were part of the Motown legacy, but to actually be here, where it started, that’s something completely different … it’s like at the Apollo Theater. When you’re there, the wind and the ghosts go through you. Ohhhh, man!”
Tricks of the trade
McBride grew up in West Philadelphia and graduated from the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts in the same class — 1989 — as the soulful singing group Boyz II Men, Hammond B-3 organ whiz Joey DeFrancesco and percussionist Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson of the Roots.
Sitting in an alcove at the Motown Historical Museum, he reminisced about those days.
“The care that was shown with us, it’s like being here in the museum, where they talk about Motown’s artist development. They made sure these young artists were trained, they said, ‘We’re not just going to have you make a hit record and go out and make a fool out of yourself. We’re going to teach you the tricks of the trade, teach you about etiquette, basic music theory.’ Sadly, that care is gone.”
McBride pays that sort of care forward by working as co-director of the Jazz Museum in Harlem, exposing jazz to young people who rarely encounter it in their everyday lives.
As a teenager McBride immersed himself in studying classical and jazz, and his list of bass heroes expanded to include Jaco Pastorius, Larry Graham, Marcus Miller, Paul Chambers, Ron Carter and Ray Brown.
He had a lot to live up to: Philly has always been a hotbed of bassists. Philadelphia musician/historian Allan Slutsky reeled off a list of some of the more notable ones: “Alphonso Johnson, Gerald Veasley and Victor Bailey, all played with Weather Report and Percy Heath played with the Heath Brothers.”
Even with that legacy, McBride stood out. After high school, he won a scholarship to Juilliard, but left to join saxophonist Bobby Watson’s band, then trumpeter Roy Hargrove’s combo. Since then, he’s performed and/or recorded with Ray Brown, Pat Metheny, Quincy Jones, George Duke and other jazz worthies. He dabbled in hip-hop with the Philadelphia Experiment, with former classmate ?uestlove, and even appeared in the Robert Altman film “Kansas City,” playing — what else — a bass player.
Two great cities
But over Labor Day, McBride’s many, divergent interests will narrow down to encompass the music of two great cities: Detroit and Philadelphia.
“I’ve always thought that in terms of jazz and soul music, Philadelphia and Detroit have always walked hand in hand,” McBride says. “First there was Berry Gordy, then Gamble and Huff took that blueprint and created their own with Philly International. I’m very fortunate that when I was a kid, Philly International was in its heyday.”
Putting together the right singers to interpret Gaye’s songs for the Philly-Detroit Tribute to Marvin Gaye was a challenge.
“I’d like to think I knew everything Marvin Gaye ever put out,” McBride says. “But then came the task of finding the right vocalists who, A) could not sing like Marvin but sing in that spirit, then, B) finding vocalists who were available. I’m very happy with who we picked. We’re going to introduce somebody, Jose James, he has a brand new CD that just came out, and we have Rahsaan Patterson, and Lalah Hathaway, the lovely daughter of the great Donny Hathaway.”
As an extra treat, McBride hopes to have Patterson and Hathaway sing some of Gaye’s duets with Tammi Terrell.
Thursday, August 28, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Its official guys I WILL BE IN THE PLACE!!!!!
yessssssssssssss!!!!!!!!!!!
I am so excited!!