I have to admit, I did not see this coming.

Queen Guitarist to Complete Doctorate
Wednesday, Jul. 25, 2007 By AP

(LONDON)—Brian May is completing his doctorate in astrophysics, more than 30 years after he abandoned his studies to form the rock group Queen. The 60-year-old guitarist and songwriter said he plans to submit his thesis, Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud, to supervisors at Imperial College London within the next two weeks.

May was an astrophysics student at Imperial College when Queen, which included Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor, was formed in 1970. He dropped his doctorate as the glam rock band became successful. Queen were one of Britain's biggest music groups in the 1970s, with hits including Bohemian Rhapsody and We Will Rock You.

After Mercury's death in 1991, May recorded several solo albums, including 1998's Another World. But his interest in astronomy continued, and he co-wrote Bang! The Complete History of the Universe, which was published last year. He was due to finish carrying out astronomical observations at an observatory on the island of La Palma, in Spain's Canary Islands, on Tuesday, the observatory said.

May told the British Broadcasting Corp. that he had always wanted to complete his degree. "It was unfinished business," he said. "I didn't want an honorary Ph.D. I wanted the real thing that I worked for."

B-Boy Bonanza

It's Rock Steady Week in NY! Check out this link for the full schedule of events, commemorating the 30th Anniversary of the Rock Steady Crew.

As if that wasn't enough, the free Harlem Hop Series starts next week (see flyer above), put on by my pal, Christie Z. Pabon, whose Tools of War page you should already know about (but just in case you don't, it's the place to go to find out about hip-hop events that you would actually want to go to and/or can actually afford).

Even if you aren't particularly interested in b-girling/b-boying, you should try to attend at least a few of these events (if you're around NYC), for the following reasons:

1. Despite what Jamie Kennedy may think, b-girling/b-boying is not corny...it's just not. Trust me.

2. They always play really really really good music at breaking events.

3. I will be there, and I'm quite personable, if I do say so myself.

4. If you learn a few basic moves, you can do this at your wedding:

5. If you really devote yourself to it, you could do something like this (FYI: here's some background info on Nunavut):

Livin', Lovin', Overdubbin'

Back in college, my friend Tex had a theory that James Brown was not a person, so much as an exalted state of being, fully consonant with the rhythms of the universe, and that the musician we knew as "James Brown" was just some guy that happened to have achieved that state. It didn’t really make any sense back then either, but it had an appeal, specifically that you could, on some extremely abstract level, divorce the qualities you admire about an artist from their mundane existence as a human being. And wouldn’t that be nice….

I was thinking about that when Jalylah sent me this video of Sly Stone performing this past Sunday, as part of his first concert tour in 25 years:



All things considered, it’s actually a pretty good performance, but I resent having to consider all things to enjoy Sly Stone. It would be nice to be able to think that Sly Stoneness exists eternally on some other plane and that this individual we see before us – who, after all, is still a pretty good singer - is accessing some of it, and that if he is never again able to access all of it, that doesn’t mean that all of it doesn’t still exist, just that it’s just somehow beyond our reach now.

As I’ve noted before, Sly Stone is/was one of the greatest singers, songwriters, arrangers, lyricists, performers and bandleaders of the last 50 years, and each independently of all the others. This is a guy who wrote some of the most profound lyrics of his era, played the guitar, bass, harmonica, keyboards, sang, wrote out the horn parts in formal musical notation, recorded and mixed the whole thing himself and (according to Joel Selvin’s book) still remembered to hand out W-4 forms to the musicians before they left the session! So the fact that he can still sing and kind of stand up is cold comfort, though it is comfort nevertheless.

Whatever it is that he’s been dealing with for the last quarter-century (and it is worth noting, in this ultra-confessional era, that both he and his family have gone out of their way not to tell us*) I hope he finds, or has found, peace. And, also, if there is any justice in the world, he will get his publishing rights back from Michael Jackson. Or at least some of the money.

*for the record, I personally do not believe it was drugs (or – more to the point- I suspect that whatever his issues were, drugs were the symptom and not the cause).

"Picture us coolin’ out on the Fourth of July..."

I don’t know, it just feels like kind of a weird time to be proud of America…right after the president overturned the jail sentence of a guy who committed a felony for him and everything (Gary Tyler’s still in jail). I’m too young to remember what July 4, 1974, felt like, a little over a month before Nixon resigned, but it was probably something like this.

I spent the afternoon at Njeri’s barbeque, with her family and assorted friends. Last time I was there, Mae laughingly berated me for walking out the back door into the yard… "Can’t you read?" she said, and pointed to this sign:

Which was funny, but also kind of deep, since Mae actually grew up under segregation.

You know, a lot of people forget to sing the last two verses of "This Land is Your Land":

As I was walkin', I saw a sign there
And that sign said "No Trespassing"
But on the other side, it didn't say nothin’
And that side was made for you and me.

In the squares of the city, in the shadow of the steeple
By the relief office, I saw my people
And they were hungry and I was wondering…
If this land was made for you and me.

Things that I've done or observed lately that there's really no reason you should care about but here we are nevertheless

1. Strolled over to the Afropunk Block Party in Clinton Hill Sunday, where I ran into virtually everyone I know. One of the many great things about Brooklyn is that there is still a real neighborhood quality to it. At least 25% of the people there were people that I’ve seen before…somewhere. Actually, I recognized one guy from having seen him the day before doing Capoeira in front of the Brooklyn Museum. There’s something cool about having the same people just turn up in various places, even if you never actually meet them. For some reason, it seems to contribute to the sense of narrative. Jalylah’s pix can be found here. Oh, and if I didn’t mention it before, you should be reading her consistently excellent blog, Hello, Babar.

2. On the way over, I heard a guy end like five consecutive sentences with the word "son": "Nah, son. It ain’t even like that, son! I wasn’t even there, son! Well, it must have been somebody else, cause it wasn’t me, son!" And so forth. After a certain point, I began to mentally replace the word "son" with the word "stop" and pretend he was sending a very emphatic telegram.

3. Left the block party early to see "The French Evolution: Race, Politics & the French Riots: works by Alexis Peskine," at MOCADA (Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts), which I have to admit, I didn’t even know existed despite having lived next to it for several years.

4. Discussing their new instrumental funk album in the New York Times last week, Nate Chinnen referred to the Beastie Boys as "The Uncredible Bongo Band". Props.

5. On the way back from Boston the other day, I passed Albertus Magnus College…I’m no Latin scholar, but doesn’t "Albertus Magnus" mean "Fat Albert"?