empty apartments (if you don't fancy rabbits much there's always the year of the cat)

'sometimes he heard them at night when he was supposed to be asleep. and yet, for this day and age a one-half occupied conapt building rated high in the scheme of population density; out in what had been before the war the suburbs one could find buildings entirely empty...'

sometimes it seems as if the city will never be empty again. people come because the work, the money and the life are still here. 

so horsemouth had a duplicate copy of do androids dream of electric sheep? he gave it away to howard when he visited yesterday. he made howard beans on toast and they drank a few bottles of beer. 

he watched the first two episodes of a chuck D produced documentary on hip-hop (fight the power BBC 2). 

it starts in new york in the 70ies, a city having a near death experience. it follows the chuck D script - hip-hop as social commentary, the black panther party, the last poets, there was no gangster rap etc. next week rap's glory years on the west coast. horsemouth normally blames fab five freddy  for uniting the graffiti artists, the DJs, the rappers and the breakers into once cohesive scene (but chuck D blames someone else). of course not everybody can get a mention, afrika bambaataa  hasn't had his mention. 

as dave toop notes in his book the early years are in some ways more interesting because hip-hop is more porous to influences. 

horsemouth is still shocked at how short these decades are, or rather how much progress is paced into them, just look at the breabeat  - kool dj herc begins isolating and using them in about 1973, the message (1982) turns the focus onto the lyrics and the track itself, those first jungle/ drum and bass tunes start coming out in 1992/1993. 

horsemouth liked how you could get the message across more directly with rap lyrics (similar in some ways to crass and anarchist punk). he didn't really understand the making of it. he liked dancing to it (it was better to dance to than anarchist punk). when house and rave came along he wasn't that interested (it just sounded to him like disco made on machines). 

later today horsemouth goes to play more guitar. monday a meeting of the communal endeavour. tuesday more dentistry. 

it is the lunar year of the rabbit in the chinese zodiac (a good auspicious year). if that doesn't suit you then in the vietnamese zodiac it is the year of the cat (a more determined go-getting kind of beast).