Botswana Meat Commission FC created Crasstalk.com when he saw the need for a crowdsourced solution to capturing Osama bin Laden. His heroes include Nick Denton and all Bronies ever.
You may have noticed that there is now a PayPal donation button on the sidebar of every post. Yes, we’re now accepting donations to help keep the site up and running. I don’t really enjoy begging for money, but we’re going to need some sort of operating fund to keep the site going strong and I made the decision that, for now at least, this is preferable to putting ads on the site.
We’re currently using a hosting company’s very basic “unlimited bandwidth” account. The problem is that “unlimited bandwidth” is more like “bandwidth is unlimited until you start using too much of our server resources and we force you to move to a dedicated server.”
The site has not had any downtime yet but I think the writing on the wall is that we will have to go with a dedicated server at some point. That’ll cost us in the range of $50 to $150 per month.
We need a plan for the future. With that in mind, I’m going to set aside all donated money for site improvements only. The first priority for the fund would be to pay for server/hosting upgrades. After that, we’ll consider using any extra money for paying a developer to design a custom theme for us or possibly to develop a custom commenting system.
What can I do?
Donate a few bucks. We’re not asking for a lot of money. Even if it’s only $5, we can use the money to directly improve the Crasstalk experience. Your donation is extremely safe and secure and your personal information will be kept 100% private.
Thanks,
The Management
P.S. If you own a web server and would be willing to donate bandwidth to Crasstalk, let me know via jfurfari-at-gmail. If you’re a professional web designer, we could also use your help!
Back in 1997, an obscure label called Strictly Breaks put out a two-disc compilation of songs that had been sampled by A Tribe Called Quest. Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to find these discs today (though they can be found as torrents if you know where to look). Continue reading →
I know how excited everyone is to jump into the fray here, and write posts, and add cat videos and help us find the location of Osama bin Laden.
I like your enthusiasm! (Slaps you on the butt.)
That said…. please, please, please try to be patient with little bugs you find or requests for author accounts or whatever issues you’re having. This isn’t Gawker Media. We don’t have a team of incompetent professionals handling technical issues. We have a team of one incompetent amateur working on solving all these problems. So bear with me.
If you requested an author account, I’m not ignoring you. I’ll be setting you all up tonight.
If you posted your first comment and are waiting for it appear, please be patient. We’ll approve it and then after that your comments will appear immediately.
If you’re interested in getting an author account, read this.
If you’re having problems posting comments, please read this.
If you’re having problems viewing the site, let us know at [email protected] and tell us what browser you’re using.
Great news, folks! Now you can embed YouTube videos in your comments. All you have to do is click the little “Embed Video” button right above the reply box and paste in the video’s URL.
Enjoy!
P.S. If you’re still having trouble posting images in your comments, know that it’s SUPER easy. All you have to do is type in:
When I created Crasstalk, I wanted to give everyone a chance to write their own posts. There are no rules here, no themes and no limits on what Crasstalkers can write about. So here’s the deal…. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE take a few minutes and write a post. Don’t worry about whether you’re boring other people. If you take the time to write about subjects that interest you… you probably won’t. Continue reading →
With all the attention paid to Girl Talk lately, I feel like we should get to know another big name in the mashup game: The Hood Internet. The Hood Internet is made up two deejays from Chicago. (They actually released a mixtape of songs entirely by Chicago bands/rappers, which is pretty neat.) Their style is much different from Girl Talk’s, though. Whereas GT likes to skip from popular song to popular song, Hood Internet’s trademark is mixing indie rock and electro with hip-hop. And instead of quickly fading from one song to another, they tend to let the beat ride a bit more, which isn’t necessarily bad. Continue reading →
Time for another music post. Today I’m going to hit you with a bunch of stuff from two artists who may or may not wear striped shirts and berets and smoke Gauloises. Here’s a small taste of two dope French musicians, Sebastien Tellier and Martin Solveig.
Alors…. ecoutez a la musique!
First there’s Sebastien Tellier. He’s this skeevy-looking crazy man who kind of sounds like a lounge-singing version of Giorgio Moroder and Simon Le Bon.
“Kilometer”
“L’Amour et La Violence”
“Roche”
“Divine”
“Sexual Sportswear”
And here’s some stuff from Martin Solveig. He’s more of a producer god than a singer. At one point there was a Facebook petition calling on Solveing to produce Michael Jackson’s next album. Silly euros. Despite making REALLY pop-friendly music (in English, even!), Solveig is criminally overlooked over here. C’mon people! Pay attention!
Editor’s Note: I’m reposting this today in celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
Has there ever been a more talented human being than Bill Cosby? Yeah, he may have gone far off the deep end of get-off-my-lawn crankiness in recent years, but not only was he maybe the greatest standup comedian of all time and starred in and produced one of the greatest sitcoms of all time, but he actually is a pretty amazing composer and musician.
Here’s “Martin’s Funeral,” his requiem for Martin Luther King, Jr. (It was later sampled by A Tribe Called Quest).
OK, kids. Strap on your day-glo backpack and floppy Kangol hat because we’re going back to 1998. It was a simpler time back then. Justin Bieber hadn’t been invented yet and the ecstasy flowed like wine. Here are some tracks to take you back to that sketchy warehouse party that was probably thrown in a former asbestos factory. You’ll have fun, as long as you avoid the bathroom. It’s filled with ravers and is almost definitely disgusting.
“Re-introduction” by The Wiseguys
A billion different samples, a never-ending scratch. The 90s were not the most subtle time for music. We generally liked to go overnboard. This one turned into a classic b-boy jam, so I can’t hate it.
“Trip II the Moon” by Acen
Science-fiction. We loved it back then. Basically, if you needed an idea for a song in 1996 and couldn’t think of anything else, you knew you could ALWAYS make it about space robots and call it “Flight 2 Da Moon” or something.
“Fucking in Heaven” by Fatboy Slim
Ah yes. Fatboy Slim aka Norman Cook. Here he pounds a single naughty phrase into oblivion. People just wanted to hear what samplers could do back then. Leave us alone, it was the 90s.
“Loaded” by Primal Scream
A psychadelic Stones homage made with a drum machine and a bucket full of drugs. Somehow it all works.
“King of the Beats” by Aphrodite
Here’s our first jungle track of the night. Aphrodite was known for putting out a BILLION records that all sounded very much like this one. Eventually his name kinda became a punchline. Still, I can’t hate on “King of the Beats.” When it gets all dark at the 2:00 mark it takes me back to my younger days when everyone wore thugged-out puffy jackets and huge boots to the rave.
“Under Mi Sensi” (Jungle Spliff X-Project Remix) by Barrington Levy
For a few years there, the huge trend was to mix dancehall reggae with jungle and call it “ragga jungle.” For some stupid reason it eventually fell out of favor. I say stupid because… jesus, this music is awesome. It makes me want to light a car on fire.
“What Goes Up” by Blackwing vs. Headhunter
Here’s another dark drum ‘n bass track. I think the music was so foreboding back then because we had a sneaky feeling the aughts were really going to suck.
“Drop That Beat” by Richard Humpty Vission
Ok, that’s enough jungle. Here’s an acid house/hard house joint from RHV. This music is just stupid frenetic and sounds like it was made for someone who just ate about 10 pills of E. I fully admit that this music is basically annoying as shit. I left it in because well, those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. So cutting out this song would be like denying that genocide happened. Are you happy now, monster?
“The Funk Phenomena” by Armand Van Helden
This song was an absolute scorcher in the clubs with that weird little keyboard riff and cool vocal line. I think this is one of the tracks that truly has aged well.
“To the Three” by S.P.1200
I love how on this record’s label it thanks “all the djs who like to spin the hard tracks.” The airhorn sample, the sped up vocals, the huge cymbals and claps… so so 90s. I don’t know why we thought it was so cool when the producer sped the vocals up to make it sound like a four-year-old was rapping, but we ate that shit up.
“Infatuation” by Onionz & Master Dee
This record was made by hippies from the West Coast, so it’s all “musical” and doesn’t give you a splitting headache. Whatever, hippies.
“Freed From Desire” by Gala
EUROTRASH! It’s not just a recent phenomenon, kids.
“Release Me” by Industry
“Get Get Down” by Paul Johnson
Ok, there are only three words in this whole song, but dammit, the way Johnson keeps shifting the vocal pitch down was ahead of his time. (I have a feeling he was using an akai sampler instead of ProTools but I’ll defer to the experts on such questions.)
“On the Run” by DeBos
We all dressed exactly like this couple back then. And we’d ALWAYS smash our dinner table to bits. That was funny to us.
“King of my Castle” (Roy Malone Mix) by Wamdue Project
A few years ago here in Atlanta I happened to meet a guy named Chris Brann who I rode motorcycles with a few times. It turned out he was the producer behind Wamdue. Small world! I love this anecdote from his wikipedia page: “Wamdue Project famously appeared on the initial nominations list for ‘Best British Newcomer’ [3] at the 2000 Brit Awards, before embarrassed organisers were forced to withdraw the nomination on account of the fact that Brann is American.”
“Little Fluffy Clouds” by The Orb
This song contains maybe the weirdest sample of all time at the beginning when the trippy-sounding hippie farmgirl talks about the “little fluffy clouds” in the sky.
“King of the Death Posture” by Van Basten
Technically this is what trance sounded like before trance grew into something that made you want to stab yourself in the face.
“Pumpin” by Bad Boy Bill
“Didjital Vibrations” by Jamiroquai
Jamiroquai was sort of the house band of the 90s rave scene. This was the perfect track for the chill-out room. Do they even have chill-out rooms anymore? It was where you went when your body was simply too exhausted to continue dancing but the drugs weren’t going to let you pass out just yet. I don’t think that exists any more with the invention of Red Bull.
