In this week's Baltimore City Paper, my BPM dance music column featured news about DJ Pierre, DJ AngelBaby, Buck Jones and more, and I also wrote The Short List as usual.

Labels: Baltimore City Paper, Baltimore club, BPM, Buck Jones, DJ AngelBaby, DJ Pierre

It’s been about a week since I announced Tough Breaks: The Story of Baltimore Club Music and launched the official website, and I just wanted to put together a quick update of some things going on related to the project:

- The new issue of Words.Beats.Life: The Global Journal of Hip Hop Culture has just been published, and features an article I wrote about Baltimore club music. The Washington, D.C.-based peer-reviewed academic periodical asked me a while back to contribute to its Sex Issue, and the piece I wrote is titled “Sex In This Club: Gender And Sexuality in Baltimore Club Music.” It touches on the sexually explicit nature of Baltimore club lyrics, gender dynamics in the club community, and the role that female and gay musicians have played in the scene over the years, focusing on the late Khia “Club Queen K-Swift” Edgerton and the late Anthony “Miss Tony” Boston. The piece also features previously unpublished quotes from my personal interview archive from people like Ron “Dukeyman” Hall, 2 Hyped Brothers & A Dog producer Al “T” McLaran, and Club Queen Entertainment staffers Buck Jones, Lady Pitbull and Crystal Tennessee. Although the article, like my other freelance works, won’t appear in Tough Breaks, it can be considered something of a preview of one of the topics that will be explored further in the book. More information on Words. Beats. Life and how to pick up a copy of the new issue is available at http://www.wblinc.org.

- Baltimore club veteran DJ Booman and I recently taped a segment as guests of Baltimore public radio station WYPR 88.1FM, which will air next Monday, June 7th on Maryland Morning. In the 10-15 minute segment, WYPR’s Tom Hall interviews Booman and I about the early days of Baltimore club music and we get a bit into the history and the culture of the scene and the music, and Booman produced a special track for the occasion that should be fun for everyone to hear. The piece will air between 9:30 and 10am on Monday morning, but should also be available to stream on the WYPR site, http://www.wypr.org.

- The page for Tough Breaks on fundraising website Kickstarter.com has gotten off to a great start since its launch last week. In its first 7 days, the project has raised over $1,400 towards its $5,000 goal. There's almost a month between now and the July 1st deadline, but there's a lot still left to raise, and I hope anyone who hasn't already is considering even a small pledge, because if we don't reach the goal by then, none of the donations go through.

- The Tough Breaks announcement has been posted on a number of sites and blogs, including Unruly Records, Baltimore-Club.com, My Baltimore Diary and D.C. Mumbo Sauce, in addition to countless Twitter and Facebook postings. Thank you to everyone, please keep spreading the word!

Labels: announcements, Baltimore club, Buck Jones, Dukeyman, K-Swift, My Baltimore Diary, Tough Breaks, Unruly Records, WYPR

So...am I correct in noting that there doesn't appear to be a venue or location listed anywhere on this flyer? Because that's what we in the business would call a "key detail."

Labels: Baltimore club, Buck Jones, flyer

Labels: Baltimore club, Buck Jones, Club One, DJ Pierre, flyer

Labels: Baltimore club, Buck Jones, Club One, DJ Pierre, flyer

DJ Diamond K recently released The K-Swift Story, a DVD documentary about the life of DJ K-Swift and her passing last year, and he sent me a copy a little while back that I finally sat down and watched. It's about an hour long, and obviously it's a real passion project, low budget and a little awkwardly edited at times but with the best of intentions, a lot of what little video footage of Swift there is out there, news reports about her death, and a lot of interviews with friends and peers like Pork Chop, Rod Lee, Buck Jones, DJ Big L and others. If you buy it off of Diamond K's site some of the money goes to the Khia K-Swift Memorial Scholarship Fund.

Labels: Baltimore club, Buck Jones, Diamond K, K-Swift, Pork Chop, Rod Lee

Labels: Baltimore club, Buck Jones, DJ Pierre, flyer

In this week's issue of the Baltimore City Paper I wrote a piece about DJ K-Swift's passing last Monday. The piece includes quotes from Buck Jones and Ogun, as well as some quotes from an interview I did with Blaq Starr a couple years ago. It was a really surreal experience for me, to see K-Swift spin at Artscape, and then wake up 2 mornings later to a text message about her death. I didn't know K-Swift personally -- I briefly spoke to her on the phone maybe once or twice, and had many mutual friends. I saw her DJ several times, I own at least a dozen of her mix CDs (last week I loaded them all into an iTunes playlist and just listened to that constantly), and have spent possibly hundreds of hours listening to her spin on the radio. But it was still really strange for me to write about her life, and to be quoted in the Sun's obituary. Even after writing one about Mr. Wilson just a month ago, it was really difficult to write about someone recently deceased, to speak to people who knew them well and ask questions. I feel terrible asking about potentially painful memories, instead of just leaving them alone to deal with the healing process on their. But the article was also difficult for me, because, like I said, I didn't really know her.

Of all the people in the Baltimore club scene that I've interviewed or see around and am friendly with, K-Swift was one of the few people that remained kind of larger than life to me, distant and unreachable in a way that celebrities are, and in Baltimore she truly was a celebrity. Not that she was unapproachable -- by all accounts she was a nice, down to earth person. But after I made the tough decision last year to blog about an anonymous letter circulating locally that accused her and her station of a lot of unethical practices, I always kind of feared that she hated me, or would've had a good reason to if she was aware of me to any extent. I hope, if she ever saw those posts on Gov't Names, she also saw how much of a fan I was, and that I continued to write favorably about every CD she released since then, including one just a week before her passing. I always figured the right opportunity would pop up for me to really meet her and interview her, and possibly get her side of the controversy I'd help publicize (although by the time of her death it had all kind of blown over, and I was disgusted last week when a certain 'news' site, who'd never written about K-Swift during her life, dredged up that old story to float some kind of 'foul play' theory about the circumstances of her death). Now, I regret that I didn't pursue an opportunity like that while it was possible. But she was so omnipresent in the Baltimore music scene that everyone involved in it will feel her absence. Club music will always bear her mark.

(photo by Josh Sisk)

Labels: Baltimore City Paper, Baltimore club, Blaq Starr, Buck Jones, K-Swift, magazines/newspapers, Ogun