We saw "Django Unchained" and it was Quentin Tarantino

This was certainly no Pulp Fiction nor even Jackie Brown (though I may be the only person who liked that movie) but it was a good Tarantino film, even if it's a bit long. If you don't like Tarantino, skip this one.

Django is nominated for best picture, no way it's getting that. It's a solid B+ if you like this sort of movie.
( Some details, no spoilers )

Music the father, music the son

We saw George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic last week. I'm still trying to condense that incredible 2.5 hours into something I can write about. In part, I'm doing that by telling people about it and I'm finding that there are people who have no idea who George Clinton is, what funk is, or how important it was.

In my world, music is history. All music is created by people who've been hearing music since their parents sang them to sleep, since they went to church as children, since they sang in school choruses or on street corners with other kids. The music they grow up with is in their heads when they begin to create their own, and as musicians play together and with and around each other, influences pass back and forth like air. Trying to describe funk I try to explain how it has elements of blues and jazz and rock-and-roll and gospel and soul and scat and Motown, to name a few things. I also try to explain how funk begat disco and influenced rock and more or less directly birthed hip-hop... none of which tells you much about what seeing P-Funk is like, so I'm still working on that.

Some people do this sort of telling for a living, though, and they're way better at it than I am. Here, courtesy of a link in Boingboing, is the story of Stagolee or as I first knew him "Stagger Lee" - a song the Grateful Dead introduced me to in their cover version.

http://www.daveyd.com/historystagolee.html