One strategy that major record companies have been employing lately to deter downloading is adding bonus computer content to new CD releases. I recently discovered that this technique is not unique to CD's, but had in fact been practiced in the vinyl era as well. That's right: there were a handful of records released in the late 70's and early 80's that contained computer programs as part of the audio. This is totally insane, and totally great.
Most of these programs were written for the Sinclair Spectrum home computer series. The Sinclair Spectrum was a relatively cheap home computer system that used a television set as a monitor and loaded programs from tapes. It thrived in England in the early 80's
Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA contains 13 essays exploring the hip-hop scenes of Europe, Canada, Asia, Australia and the Pacific. It has been published in the US by Wesleyan University Press.Anyone interested in investigating hip hop as a subculture will be pleased to know that this book is available in the Architecture/Music Library.
'Global Noise looks at how hip-hop has been 'indigenised' by performers around the world who've adapted the template to fit their own language and political concerns,' Dr Mitchell said.
'While the genre in America now seems cliched and brutal and lacks any political perspective, elsewhere rappers with divergent backgrounds of race, nationality, class and gender are using the form as a powerful expression of opposition and resistance.'
Bit players in the cinerama epic of punk, Narthex played shows in Philadelphia and vicinity from 1980 to 1983. From the unknown chapters of punk history, here is their story along with an album's worth of audio.
