Comment Of The Day: Phase II - The Roxy Edition

The nature of the internet is everything you wish would go away lasts forever, and everything you wished would last disappears.

My favorite old music blog, The Last Days Of Man On Earth went offline some point in the past year or two. I loved it for the music the guy posted and for what he chose to write about the songs, EPs, and albums. One post would be a classic punk record, another would be some art-rock obscura from the Midwest, and another would pull up another moment from when scenes collided. You'd often find posts about New York in the late '70s and early '80s, when punk and pop and rap all seemed to be playing in the same club. One such club was called The Roxy, and this dude Phase II made a little tribute to it. Here's what Last Days Of Man On Earth said about the song, as preserved on the Wayback Machine:

The Roxy (Celluloid) 1982. Phase II was another graffiti artist from NYC who took a stab at recording with "The Roxy". Not as mind-alteringly cool as "Beat Bop" but still pretty wild. Note the great vocodoer vocals. Makes me wanna do the robot.

About Phase II – The Roxy in Phase II's own words:

"The Roxy was a collaboration between me and Material. The recording session wasn't such a great experience, though, because the song was never really finished. A certain school-taught bourgoise musician cat who thought himself to be above us bum-rushed the demo and pressed it up. Everyone seemed to like the song but me, because I know it wasn't done properly. The vocals weren't in sync, and so forth.

The coolest thing that came out of The Roxy was the New York City Rap Tour, with the Rock Steady Crew, the Dark and Lovely Double Dutch Girls, Grandmixer DXT, Afrika Bambaataa, Fab Five Freddy, the Infinity Rappers, Futura, Dondi, Rammellzee, Take 1, Frosty Freeze, Ken Swift, Crazy Legs, Little Norman. We went to France and London. That influenced people in a major way, because it was the first time that all the so-called elements of hip hop were seen under one umbrella."

And that makes me think about writing on the internet.On a busy day, you take a stab at a story, run some lines about it, and try to get the news out. Maybe a month later, an hour later, a minute later you realize a better way to have phrased it all or found your focus. And that's what reader Also_Ran noted on today's story about a possible BMW M2 Gran Coupe getting posted immediately after today's story about Skoda possibly coming to America:

Also_Ran saw a matchup, an angle I didn't. The stories are already out there; it's too late to make a change. The most I can do is listen to some old rap and work more tomorrow.

Cheers, all.