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[angelajenessa.livejournal.com]

(((Cross-Posted in Personal Journal)))

I attach no importance to what people call style and by which they flatter themselves that they can recognize an author. I want to be recignized by my ideas, or better still, the results of them. All I attempt is to make myself understood as succinctly as possible. I have noticed that when a story does not grip the mind, it has shown a tendency to read too quickly, to grease its own slope. That is why, in this book, I turn my writing around, which prevents it from sliding into a sraight line, makes one revise it twice over and reread the sentences so as not to lose the thread.

~~The Difficulty of Being, Jean Cocteau

Comments

[fototropical.livejournal.com]

What is this band The Negro Problem who writes songs called Heidegger in Harlem?! What are their other song titles? Any info would be greatly appreciated...
alicia

The Negro Problem

[angelajenessa.livejournal.com]

Here are some other titles:
Doubting Uncle Tom, Ghetto Godot, 2 Inch Dick Mobile.

Heidgger is off of their CD - Post-Minstrel Syndrome.

They are a really sharp and intelligent kinda underground pop band. (not really pop so much though).
Here is a biography of them:

Invariably, first one must discuss the matter of the name. The name the Negro Problem is meant ironically, but it's in no way used for simple shock value. Indeed, the name illuminates the entire raison d'être of the band: although artists as disparate as Jimi Hendrix, Love, the Chambers Brothers, and the Fifth Dimension were making psychedelic rock music in the late '60s, a disturbing racial divide has reasserted itself since then. The concept of a supposed stylistic division into "white music" and "black music," a holdover from the first half of the 20th century when records by black artists were shunted over into the "race music" category, has insidiously grown back since the genre-busting, polyglot days of the immediate post-Civil Rights era, into an even stronger and more invisible divide. Once in a blue moon, a Prince or a Lenny Kravitz might gain a foothold in the rock marketplace, but more often, a genre-busting artist like Chocolate Genius or Shuggie Otis remains firmly locked, in the industry view, in the euphemistically-named "urban" marketplace. This is why singer/songwriter Mark Stewart's band is called the Negro Problem, and it's why that is such a brilliant name: how else will the music industry see an otherwise white band fronted by a black man whose primary influences include not only Sly Stone and George Clinton, but also Jimmy Webb, Stephen Sondheim, Burt Bacharach, Syd Barrett, Brian Wilson, and Paul McCartney, except as a problem?
Stewart, who goes by the name Stew (at least partially to differentiate himself from the British-born former singer for the Pop Group and New Age Steppers), fills his lyrics with that sort of bracing, ironic wit, and his tunes mix soulful vocals, the muscularity of hard rock and the unabashed prettiness of his beloved Webb (the group did a surprisingly rocking cover of Richard Harris' "MacArthur Park" on an early single, and Stew counts Webb protégés the 5th Dimension among his all-time favorites) into a trippy but accessible brand of psych-influenced power pop. Surprisingly, Stew did not enter music professionally until his thirties, forming the Negro Problem in 1995 after resettling in the Los Angeles suburb of Silverlake after a period spent living in Europe. The original lineup included keyboardist Jill Meschke Blair, bassist Gwynne Kahn (formerly of the Pandoras), and drummer Charles Pagano, with the Wondermints' multi-instrumentalist Probyn Gregory helping out as an auxiliary member.

The group made their recording debut with an attention-grabbing limited-edition boxed set of five singles in late 1995, following that with the equally eyebrow-raising single of "MacArthur Park" (changing the key line to "Someone left the crack out in the rain" to illustrate the L.A. landmark's decline) and the "A Quick One While He's Away"-style multi-part pop-operetta "Miss Jones" the next year. Both of those songs showed up on the group's full-length debut, Post-Minstrel Syndrome, in 1997, along with 11 other freaky, Phil Spector-on-acid psych-pop gems. The album gains extra emotional heft, however, from the five unlisted bonus tracks: three haunting solo acoustic performances by Stew, the anxiety-ridden full-band performances "Camelot" and "Racket," a mélange of silly on-the-road tape recordings and giggles that are meant as a farewell to the original lineup, which was breaking up as the record was being completed.

...There is more and the rest can be found at: http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&uid=1:38:06|PM&sql=Bmr7m96hofep5~C