A “Money Bomb:” the Future of SOMM
July 6, 2009 by dwil
This month Ovation TV is airing a program titled, “Electric Purgatory: The Fate of the Black Rocker.” The gist of the documentary is that black people have been and continue to be systematically excluded from the musical genre of “rock music.” This, despite the fact that the foundation of rock music is based on the playing of three chords, often in some form of the I-IV-V chordal pattern that is blues music.
Like so much that is allegedly Euro-American – the “flutterby” for instance – rock music and its first cousin, blues-rock music, is inherently Black music. And like the term flutterby, the word slaves used to described a North American flying insect that flitted before their very eyes, flying much like a leaf on the wind. White people appropriated the word and chose to rend it into something unrecognizable and not at all related to its manner of flight.
They termed the insect a “butterfly.”
And as Black men and women have and do play blues, blues-rock, and rock music, in the tradition of the observation of a flutterby, many, many White people co-opted what was ours, wrung it through their guilt-ridden minds, and out came something that, to its roots, is today nearly unrecognizable – a butterfly. But when Whites remain true to the three chord paradigm of roots music, some of the most compelling music known to modern human is more often than not the result.
But the stars of rock music are not Fishbone or even Bad Brains, but their White compatriots the Red Hot Chili Peppers, No Doubt, and Green Day, just like they were Led Zeppelin and Cream, the Rolling Stones, Faces and the original Fleetwood Mac with guitarist Peter Green, instead of Albert King, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and Bo Diddley.
Sure Jimi Hendrix seeped through the cracks. Yet he was made famous in large part though the verbal aegis of members of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and then called “England’s own.” But as soon as Jimi wanted to stretch out and experiment with his music, as soon as he wanted to return to the primal collective unconscious root of the three chord archetype and turn it on his perfect pitch ear and give us something far beyond Charlie Parker and Miles and Trane and the Gypsy Django, or even Wes when not constrained by an all-white crowd and the ever-present tug of paying the rent for his family – and do it with two other brothers instead of solely with Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding (though Mitch was a devotee of the circular pattern of jazz drumming of the one and only, Elvin Jones), Jimi became a “problem” requiring containment through threats and kidnapping and getting busted, and finding he had no money with which to realize his dreams.
And ultimately, when it was understood that Hendrix could be a far more profitable commodity out of the way…
it was required that Jimi be dead.
But you say, oh no! There is R&B and Hip-Hop, and Rap.
But understand Barry Gordy was the equivalent of a a sell-out assimilationist with his perfectly dressed and coifed Jackson 5 and Supremes. Understand that Man-Tan is Li’l Wayne and Flo-Ri-Da, and even Curtis Jackson as soon as he came to the understanding that his White CD-buying constituency was far engrossed with his bullet-ridden body than his lyrical prowess, and began to remove his shirt each and every concert to either expose his slug-scarred abdomen, or expose his bullet-proof vest. the vest amounting to a call girl’s silk, see-through Victoria’s Secret “I’m yours” top.
And fully know that Justin Timberlake replaced every Black male R&B singer with his Disney-developed pipes. And now has every Rap “artist” wanting the Tennessee-born and Mickey Mouse-bred White boy on his new project for that “hittin’” hit single.
John Legend, stick to the piano and crooning for David Stern.
As I watched “Electric Purgatory” a lonely feeling came over me. It was the feeling I dulled with all manners of illicit drugs and drink when I played rock music in bands and was the only young, Black rocker around for as far as the eyes could see. The depth of the feeling just a few nights ago made up for all those gigs played hearing drunk crackers yelling, “Let’s see if you can really play and play some “Skynard,” in refernce to the white, Southern band Lynard Skynard, know for playing with Confederate flags waving from all corners of the stage.
That lonely feeling was also for today.
It is for what happens to Black writers who spring forth through the will of their work and their willingness to touch the bottom of the collective unconscious’ well and bathe ourselves in the deepest waters of the ancient spoken and written I-IV-V. Assimilationists tell us how “important” our words are and how ‘important” our voices are while stabbing us in the back in front of their White masters with double-bladed daggers. Whites tell us how much they love the “potency” of our work while also telling us they’d love to publish us and extol our virtues to the world ———– if only what we’ve written wasn’t written before, or if only they could figure out where on the shelves of the national bookstore chains our writings belong.
All of which are codes for, “Fuck you and what you write you unchained, don’t want to be slaves-ass niggers. We’ll teach you to attempt to tell people about what lies behind the veils we’ve so painstakingly created to dull the minds of the populace.”
But thanks to all of you who read SOMM, the lonely feeling only lasted a minute. I realized that I am fortunate enough to have an audience of well-educated and aware people who care about THE story rather than his-tory, care about our present and our future, and love it when that care is put into words every day.
And so…
Now that SOMM is returning to the Internets – more like, I’m back and fully recharged – it is high time I began to add some new features to the site, namely full-time Tweeting and use of the Meebo Live Chat. In the near future I also want to begin SOMM podcasts. The goal here is to widen SOMM’s audience and take the next step to begin competing with some of the staffed, non-mainstream sports websites, and.of course, the “big boys.”
To accomplish this I, understandably must devote extra time to the site. That means more time spent with all of you, but less with my family. So, for SOMM to continue and for me to incorporate these features the site will need some webmaster work and I will need to work additional hours on a constant basis.
As much I have turned down suggestions to do so in the past, I am at the point where it is “Money Bomb” time (yes, I’ve run through all available monies of my own and no, the ads on the site do no amount to remotely enough money to cover site costs or even register SOMM as a “Doing Business As.”).
My goal is to raise $25,000 in the next two weeks. Obviously, to do so I need your help. I ask those of you who enjoy SOMM and who can, to aid me in this endeavor.
After nearly three years, this is the most important time in my website’s existence. For me and for SOMM it is a make-or-break moment.
I recognize that there are very, very few people on the Web who provide anything remotely close to the type of reporting, commentary, and analysis disseminated here at Sports On My Mind. If you want to see SOMM not only continue but expand and flourish, please aid me in this endeavor.
Money can be sent through my Pay Pal account – Just click on the Pal Pal button in the right-hand column - or sent to me in the form of checks to: David Wilson 4403 Avenue C, Austin, Texas 78751, “Pay to the Order of” David Wilson.
Thank you all for your help and your continued support of Sports On My Mind.
-DWil
—————
As Dwil will be returning from his brief hiatus, I will be beginning a longer one as I have just embarked on a new work-related initiative that will consume all my time in the near future. Ironically, my will to blog is linked to my professional work with youth. Helping teens realize personal self-empowerment is a beautiful thing, but doing so without separately addressing the greater institutional barriers is merely symptom-work. Addressing sports media imagery is a form of “root work”.
Looking back, my very first sports article I ever wrote was ”ESPN’s Rap Sheet: Pacman as Black Man“. It caught the eye of a radio announcer who invited me on his show where we mostly covered ESPN bias. After doing a 15-minute segment, the announcer initiated a call back to tell me how well it went, how he liked my style, and how he would like to have me back on the show real soon. Shortly thereafter, everything changed and I could no longer reach him. Someone had obviously got to him.
A lesson was learned.
Write ”Pacman just doesn’t get it!“ for the 453rd time and there will always be a place at the mainstream table. Write the truth, and there is a price to pay. And that cost is professional and personal. For me it came to a very ugly head last year sometime at 1:30 AM when she said the words that made me instantly drop the keyboard:
“You like blogging more than pussy!”
Ouch! Double-ouch! After immediately checking myself into blog rehab, I had to admit that there was a problem! Still in recovery folks 
…
And truth be told, my output isn’t even one-third of Dwil’s. So yeah, I get exactly where D-Wil is at and support any support that folks could bring. Either way, your readership is deeply appreciated.
They say “It’s hard out here for a pimp” – but that’s a damn lie…
ESPN is doing just fine.
MODI
– “Blog4change or die trying”
Yeah, I’ve seen the movie. It’s nice reminder…
Good write-up!
I think the key to growing the site is making unfounded accusations about tennis players and performance-enhancing drugs…and then showing up on ESPN to defend yourself…and having Skip Bayless or someone yell at you for four minutes.
It worked for that MidWest Sports Guy. Glad to see you took a page from his playbook.
CD-
Me ad MODI thank you…
Myron-
I don’t know if you’re being sarcastic or not ———— but Nadal’s PED use was well-documented. And I have written many times of the doctor who provided the details about Nadal and EPO… and waaaaaaay before whichever person from the midwest thought of it (he probably stole his understanding of Nadal and PEDs from me).
I’m talking about the broad who lost to one of the Williams that you mentioned in the other article. You said she was on something.
Myron-
Oh, I see. Having played the game on a high level I can testify as to how difficult it is to make the kind of improvement to one’s game Dementieva made without taking time away from the tour. If you read the article I wrote and posted on Federer and his competition, I detail what it took for Andre Agassi to rework his body and game – and he, like Dementieva, was already known as being one of the fittest players on tour.
It takes months to retool your game, especially when you are used to playing a certain style for most of your life. Then many more months to implement on the court what you’ve learned; months to understand, through match play, exactly how to use what you’ve learned; months to have confidence in what you’ve learned, months to make the changes instinctive parts of your game.
So, the question remains, how did Dementieva achieve this kind of leap in her game without time off and without time to implement those changes?
I guess you aren’t aware of the blog scandal of the month regarding Ibanez.
http://deadspin.com/5287199/the-unfortunate-ambushing-of-jerod-morris-raul-ibanez-post
Jerod Morris actually argued that Ibanez was probably clean and got him a scolding on Outside the Lines (and probably a billion hits).
I’m just suggesting that if you want to follow that business plan, you can. You probably need to write about things other than woman’s tennis.
Myron-
Firstly, it’s not a “business plan” to suspect athletes of using PEDs – and I’m unsure why you would think I’d do something like that ….. The name of this website is not Steroids Nation.
Secondly, I know about Ibanez – since there is an offseason in baseball and since baseball players who last long enough tend to have career years where they exceed all prior personal stats, I would never make the, ‘he used PEDs’ statements made about Ibanez.
Thirdly, there is so much graft and grime and more happening in tennis that it’s worth it to me to write about it – whether or not anyone else cares is on them.
You see, what you’re basically saying abut women’s tennis is that I cannot use that segment of the game to draw parallels with other sports because, what, it’s boring? Women’s tennis is meaningless? What?
And… I know what I’m talking about – intimately – with tennis and through my analysis of players and the game itself, have made that point very clear. So I find it saddening that you would even pretend like I don’t have any idea about what I writing and am fabricating something about Dementieva “just because.”
You’ll find (and I think you probably know this) I have never done that in ANY of the 1500 or so posts of mine on SOMM. So it serves no purpose for me to do so now.
Finally, this stuff about Dementieva belongs with the post I wrote about her and has nothing at all to do with the above post, though you tried to somehow make that so, If you want to continue this in any form or fashion, please attach your comments onto the proper post.
besides the obvious racial problems with “back to the future”, i think what the movie is about is ownership of rock and roll. marty goes back in time before chuck berry and “invents” rock and roll. that way, elvis is not stealing rock and roll from black america, he is reclaiming it for white america. it’s a storytale ending! also, marty goes back in time and gives the mayor-to-be the idea for running for mayor, essentially giving him permission from white america to be mayor.
aaron dw-
dayum…. i never gave much thought to “Back to the Future” but you’re right…. ahhhhh, the propaganda never ends!
“hey chuck, it’s marvin. your cousin!! you know that new sound you’ve been looking for….?!”
Many of the blogposts are admirable and even courageous, but being outspoken runs the risk of errors. I couldn’t imagine that ‘flutterby’ , as introduced by American slaves was the original word for ‘butterfly’, the insect being such a notable creature. Sure enough the word butterfly goes back over a thousand years in English. This mistake doesn’t do much to burnish your credibility, as it is the set-up to your point of view.