BBS Value Tour’s LiVe Fandom artist BLAQMEL (aka Melvin C McKnight) is hot these days as a solo artist and with his band Malicious Soul. Already a resident artist at Makedas Restaurant in New Brunswick, NJ aka Hub City and home to the historical Cross Roads Theatre, Blaqmel has been dubbed by the local media as the “Godfather of the New Brunswick Music Scene.”

“A McKnight performance is something to behold with the guitarist playing like Jimi Hendrix and jumping around the stage … and sometimes on the bar … like a Lynn Swann.” —Chris Jordan (Central Jersey Home News Tribune)

His career has included him touring with TM Stevens’ touring band, the Trammps, and John Legend. Since August of this year Mel has opened for Jazmine Sullivan, Will Downing, and last Sunday, November 8th for Leela James.

Blaqmel is working on securing bookings at major venues throughout the East Coast and will be the headliner for the BBS Value LIVE FANDOM Tour in the Spring of 2010.

Read article just published November 6, 2009 in the Central New Jersey Home News Tribune http://www.mycentraljersey.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200991103025

Melvin C McKnight aka Blaqmel is available for concert, live performance, and studio bookings, interviews, drop scripts, and workshops. Contact TaylorAdams Marketing & MgMt at (215) 774-1237 or email booktalent@bbsvaluetour.com

by Jacqueline Taylor-Adams
http://www.ourstage.com/play/track/LUOZPBFBVYLQ-what-kina-cool
</br/>

Young artists have went retro. They are mixing their voice with the culture, dress, and sounds from the 1920’s – 80’s. With the recent passing of our brother, Michael Jackson, we are really going to see a resurgence of the past.

As a lover of art and not frequent enough attender to live performance venues (and here in Philly, the live events are off-the-charts), I’ve been blessed to watch this retro phenomenon unfold.

A three piece female group who incorporate the sound and moves of the Supremes, “Boy Wonder” barely 21 kills the guitar with blues and soul so good he gets the ‘old heads’ on the floor, “Government Cheese”, an old school hip hop rock band whose name reminds us of the days of creativity…and to top this off, more and more younger people (age 28-35) are at the oldies parties! Go figure.

But, this didn’t just happen. It’s been a few years in the making. Old becomes new. Well, to be honest, it’s new to the younger generation and maybe its the grace, sophistication, and commitment of previous eras may be the attraction.

In 2006, Melanie Heimberg, a staff writer for the Golden Gate Xpress, states, “In an act of rebellion, music listeners everywhere are turning their backs away from their own generation’s music…” in an article entitled Retro Music Has Modern Appeal. Melanie further shares San Fransisco State humanities professor Saul Steier’s statements, “This phenomenon is particularly strange because nostalgia is usually reserved for old age. No prior generations have been more consumed with the past than today’s college population.”

Just think about it, Outkast bringing the 20’s to hip hop, Erykah Badu brought popularity back to jazz and blues for many younger artists who are reflecting this influence in their music. Jazmine Sullivan, Jill Scott, Rihanna, and on…

And the ladies aren’t the only ones. Philadelphia’s own, HEZEKIAH, a 20 something year old producer, emcee, musician with vocals, and Cody Chestnutt, reminding you of Marvin Gaye, brings you right back to the 60s. Their collaboration, “WHAT KINA COOL”, is an epitome of today’s retro.

This conscious cool 60s throwback will get you to thinking as well as help garner a new audience for young Hezekiah. While, he is definitely hip hop, his mixing of live instrumentation, use of horns, jazz undertones, and more conscious diverse content definitely garners him a significant 30-45 year old audience. An audience not yet targeted, but should be considered, who are a more established, committed, consistent income audience who love a good music and a good show. Now, Hezekiah musical peers of course are 20 something sharing his same love and reflection of older musical styles.

“What kina cool will we think of next to hide behind?” Check-out the song http://www.ourstage.com/play/track/LUOZPBFBVYLQ-what-kina-cool and the “making-of-the-video” vid http://bbsvaluetour.ning.com/video/blog-18-the-making-of-video

Now, what say ye?

“What Kina Cool” is on Hezekiah’s Cure For The Common SOUL (The Mixtape) mixed by Mr. Sonny James (aka DJ Statik) – Free download http://www.jukeboxalive.com/music_listen_2164473.html

Bruce George and Dr. Louis Reyes Rivera are at it again. Still riding the business and social success of The Bandana Republic: A Literary Anthology by Gang Members and Their Affiliates, Mr. George and Dr. Rivera again believe the meat of greatness, depth, and overcoming comes by way of the people, even sometimes the terminally labeled and disenfranchised.

Submissions are now being accepted for the forth-coming best-selling revelation of the people, Street Smarts: An Anthology of Urban Survival Strategies.

Here’s an opportunity for the entire planet to hear your truth, our truth, about both our desperation and our aspiration, straight up from the streets. Street Smarts is an anthology of real life stories of how folk who have come from the bottom have developed their own ways and means to survive.

Street Smarts: An Anthology of Urban Survival Strategies is a literary first that focuses on how urban working class people enhance their earning power despite often being underemployed. How do lower paid workers make ends meet? How do the unemployed survive once they’ve used up their unemployment benefits? What happens to them once they disappear from official statistics? What tactics have they developed? Is there another economic system at work that is totally outside of mainstream standards? What does the underclass do to feed the family within a hostile environment? Are the strategies they devise parts of yet another working standard?

To what extent is there an underground economy that is not exactly illegal, yet for which there is no yardstick by which to measure its effectiveness? Given the current economic downturns and consistent losses of jobs, are the strategies and options that have long ago developed among the working poor still viable? What are they? Are they legal, extralegal or illegal? What common threads hold the underclass together? Do they bear their own ethics? How applicable are they?

The answers to these questions serve as the parameters for Street Smarts. The target audience includes the hundreds of thousands who, like never before, are faced with new challenges – unemployment, loss of homes, debts, etc., with homelessness and public shelters their potential options.

CLICK HERE FOR SUBMISSION GUIDELINES – http://o.b5z.net/i/u/10027100/f/StreetSmartGuidelines.pdf

Free stand alone player and Zshare download just 4you…

“I’ll listen to the wind blow, before I’d let that bullshit bang out my window.” —Keziah, “Keep Drivin”, Cure For the Common SOUL (The Mixtape)

Just when I thought OS was a walk in the twilight zone, I hear another, oh so familiar, cry from the wilderness, “WTF!”

This is a question creators and lovers of good art and music keep chiming. At first I thought it was just me. Maybe, I really didn’t have the ear for what moved the masses. Was everyone really brain dead? Of course not, so I felt maybe OS was just not the place for our artists.

Today, I read a message and its the third cry in one month saying the same thing, WTF! The best works are really hitting the bottom numbers and on the spoken word stage, too, which is one of the best stages for quality.

More artists are entering on stages, because other stages have a large number of competitors, not because they fit the genre. Rap artists, I mean negative rap artists, are on the spoken word stage. The one thing about spoken word is, it is a social change driven genre. How are you going to enter a bad rap that demeans women and/or with socially destructive content?!

How do you do the same in Alternative Hip Hop? Do you get the word “Alternative” that implies different, not the same?

Over 90% of the content on the Hip Hop and Alternative Hip Hop is just plain horrible and 99% of the top 100 is bad or mediocre. Only one of the current top 10 on the Alternative Hip Hop stage even deserves to be there. While, I admittedly have not judged on all stages, it seems to be pretty consistent that 50% of the top 20 clearly does not belong there based on quality and good sound.

O.k., so we’ve heard this bitch and moan before, what you gonna do? Well, I have sent OS a suggestion that I think would create an unbiased judging barometer. In the meantime, us pissed off folks:

1. shouldn’t leave
2. ban together
3. make our concerns known to OS administration as well as on the page and in messages
4. post real comments on quality pieces – even if it isn’t your favorite, let it be known that you feel the work is quality
5. join those fan clubs
6. network and refer – Atlanta Red and Max Parthas are good at this
7. GET MORE NON-ARTISTS TO JOIN. Too many artists judging. We need some PurT fans aboard

We don’t have to wait for others to tell us what is good and what isn’t. OS current structure isn’t a good gauge for the community response, but a good barometer does exists within the mess.

Although, we have not placed in the top 20 in months, we’ve gotten sales, awesome testimonies, and found some really great music and spoken word. Our artist Hezekiah just dropped a new mixtape May 1st he released for free. There have been over 2300 downloads as of today, it’s been reported on over 20 blogs including illroots and okayplayer, but he’s 303 in Alternative hip hop with only 9 plays. At the same time, he attracts a good amount of fans for us here on OS.

In other words, LEVERAGE THE GOOD and make the good shine. If we don’t and keep allowing poor quality to shine, OS won’t have longevity in the game and it will devalue our contribution.

In the tune of Ghostbusters:

When it sounds real bad
And it’s number 2
Who you gonna call
BULLSHIT BUSTERS!
___________________
“…You can’t fall asleep now, the shit is getting deep now, wake up and keep drivin’” —Hezekiah, “Keep Drivin”, Cure For the Common SOUL (The Mixtape)