#james gadson

[rainingmusic]

Gloria Gaynor - I Will Survive

[mitjalovse]

Patti Labelle's intriguing career should be looked at, though we have to check her introduction to hear what I mean. Nonetheless, her debut should not be called a debut at all, since she was already something of a veteran by that point. What this sentence attempts to say – this is a platter of someone who is already familiar with all the traps of the style, yet she has to comprehend them now on her own. Of course, she does equip herself well to the challenge, yet she feels timid at some times. One can understand that being a part of a group – she was in Labelle – and being alone are two completely different things. However, there are also some moments, which showed her later prowess, yet they only became noticeable with some hindsight.

[nigelgodrichproducer]

Old NG Interview I Saved

Hello Nigel, where are you at the moment?

I’m in London, I’m in my studio in Brixton, which is basically a big room with lots of recording equipment and stuff, [Nigel turns his camera round to show us the room] that’s basically it.

How long have you been down there?

I have been here for four years or something. The last few years have been very hard to quantify time-wise, haven’t they? Something like four years.

That room looks familiar, is that where you’ve been doing the new series of From The Basement?

That’s right. I’ve had a few different large studios in London and when I was looking at this place, one of the things that struck me was, ‘oh, it’s just about big enough to film in’, because the main reason that we stopped doing From The Basement all those years ago was that it’s so expensive and we thought about trying to find a permanent location that we could use to bring the cost down and make it more economical and that was one of the contributing things that made me realise that we could probably do it again, because it’s just easier, home turf and a bit more space and time to play with.

What is it when you get that itch to do some more From The Basement sessions rather than, say, make a new record?

It’s like a busman’s holiday really, it’s a completely different thing. It’s not vocational as much, it’s more of an extrapolated hobby, something that I really enjoy doing. It’s more like scratching an itch of being involved in live music. When you’re making a record, you’re really constructing something, it’s like doing Lego, it’s a very fine minutiae in a laboratory, creating something and building it slowly. You start with nothing and you end up with the Notre Dame built in Lego and sometimes you miss just being around people playing live music. That’s what was really fun about doing From The Basement. The original instigation was to try and do an exceptionally good version of a live filming event, but it’s not my job, it’s just something I want to see. So I was like, ‘wouldn’t it be fun to do that?’.

When you’re making records with bands, there’s a moment when you sit down at the beginning and you’re just playing through the material and it’s very exciting when people are in a room and just playing their instruments, if they’re good songs and they know what they’re doing, it’s an amazing feeling and the idea of trying to kind of capture that moment, which is a short period because then you have to translate that into something that bears repeated listening. It’s not as simple as going to a gig.

The From The Basement sessions look great and have a really rich sound, which is where TV music shows usually fall down. No-one should ever judge how good a band are live by watching them on Jools Holland. These things feel more like companions to the records instead of lesser versions.

Yeah, I think what I’ve found is through my obsessive nature, what you should end up with is more like the equivalent of a live EP but filmed. That’s how I see it. I am glad that you say that, I’m glad that you think that because that is the intention really, to make something exceptional, to try and do your best to try and one would hope that it will be a sort of elevated version of that, it’s not wheel them in, wheel them out again, it’s take the time.

One of my very first thoughts about it was when I was doing a Beck record and we had this drummer James Gadson with us, he was Bill Withers’ MD. There’s famous Old Grey Whistle Test footage of Bill Withers playing Ain’t No Sunshine and James is in there. It starts on Bill Withers then it zooms out and there’s this guy with this enormous afro and a gold tooth and a toothpick playing the drums and it’s amazing. I was asking him about that because it’s such an iconic bit of footage, exactly the kind of thing that I felt was missing, and he said that they spent the whole day getting the sound and that really resonated with me because I’ve been in those situations. I mean, Jools Holland is an institution and beyond criticism but there’s a lot of volume there, what we’re doing is something different, it’s more focused on particular things. That was the idea, the priority was making it sound good. I’ve done plenty of TV and radio sessions when you get in and you’re just working against the clock because you have a very small window to get things done. We have the luxury of our own space and I can take my time with the audio afterwards.

How much has the idea evolved given the technological advancements since you started doing it?

From an audio perspective, not at all because it’s exactly the same equipment I’m using and everything’s the same and it’s the same person doing it. But interestingly, the first time we ever did the original From The Basement in 2005/2006, the reason that we managed to get funding was because we were filming in HD, which was a new technology then. It enabled us to get money from Sky Arts, which was a new HD channel that didn’t have any content and needed content. Of course, what’s happened to television since then is now everything’s 4K. What’s happened is the visual side of it is technologically the state of the art, it’s gone forward. But I would say nothing else. I mean, in terms of recording live music, it’s the same story, we’re still using the same microphones that The Beatles used and that’s something that people talk about when they talk about recording technology versus film and video. Basically, the things that we used to record in the 60s and 70s are too expensive to be made today so we still use old gear because it’s the best quality. All my equipment is 50 years old. It’s quite funny.

Let’s go back to the beginning of your career. What was your first job in music?

I discovered that the only way that I could get into what I wanted to do was to basically to get a job like an apprentice at the bottom. I wrote 100 letters to the 100 24-track studios that were in London in the late 80s and I got a job. My first job was as a tea boy at this place called Audio One that was basically the rebranded Trident Studios, which is in the West End, a very, very famous studios. In the 60s, The Beatles recorded there, Bowie recorded there, Queen were part of the whole thing. It was like a real institution. But basically, I had a pager and I sat on the fourth floor next to the kettle waiting to be beeped, ‘three teas and two coffees in Studio One please’. You were basically finding the opportunities to be able to get in the room and be around the equipment and when people weren’t there, you could go and fiddle around.

Did anyone pull you up on your tea skills?

I was a good teaboy. I make a great cup of tea. I actually worked in a cafe before that so I knew how to make a good cup of tea, very important. Tea making was a very important skill for the up-and-coming record producer back in the day. That’s how Flood got his name. It was the same studio. Two guys started on the same day, they nicknamed one of them Drought and they called him Flood because he was always bringing tea. But they told me when I worked there, “Oh, count yourself lucky, in the old days the assistants had to cook everyone breakfast when they arrived in the morning.” It was that kind of vibe, but it was a really great place to work because it was a very substantial, important place.

Did you feel immediately that you were in your natural habitat?

No, I remember sitting there and thinking, ‘Well, I’m on the first rung of the ladder.’ I was very aware that this was like a temporary situation, the idea was just getting into the right place, basically. I actually was in a band and we went to a studio in Wapping Wall called Elephant Studios, it used to be in Elephant & Castle, that was the first studio I ever went to and it was to do a demo with a band that I was in. That was when I walked into a studio and realised that I wanted to be in this place. It was just this amazing environment, a quiet laboratory of sound. It was very exciting because one of my favourite Pogues records, Rum, Sodomy And The Lash was recorded there so I was asking the guy questions. I was impressed as a 16 year old kid.

How was it going through the Radiohead vaults for the reissues of OK Computer and Kid A Mnesia? Is there anything you were surprised about?

They’re very different animals. OK Computer was more of a regular process in as much as we had some songs and we went into various places and tried to record them and did it different ways and ended up with the best possible outcome, whereas Kid A was taking everything that you’ve gained and worked for and throwing it in the air and looking at the pieces and going, ‘Okay, well, this is what we’re trying to do’ and starting again. And, obviously, I worked on the Kid A stuff more recently and there’s a lot more of it, and there’s a lot more stuff that went by the wayside that was for good reason.

It’s funny when you go back and look at stuff, especially when you’re looking at it from the perspective of looking for things that haven’t been released or extra material that might be interesting, everything is for a reason, you left it off for a reason, you go back and what I was surprised by was that all of the decisions that I made were absolutely right. And also my memories of things, I can remember recording Everything In Its Right Place and it was just me and Thom in a room trying to do something that was not what we’d done before and I remember him singing the vocal once, singing it a second time, looking in his notebook, saying, “ah, ‘yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon’, I can’t say that,” and me saying "yes, you can, you’ve got to say that, let’s do that!" and doing that take and it being like this magical thing, then going back to the tape and looking at what’s on the tape and there it is, the first take it’s got no lyrics, the second take it’s a repetition of “the two colours in my head” thing and then the third take it’s “yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon”. That’s exactly how I remembered it. And even though it’s more than 20 years ago, I can remember that process and it’s there written down in a physical form for me to see.

When you reach 51, you start questioning things that you remember and how you remember them and ‘was it really like that?’ and ‘did I actually do that?’, so to go back and look at something and it be plain as day how you remembered it was like, ‘oh, that’s fascinating.’ The other thing that was really funny about going through Kid A was the fact that we hadn’t really got the concept of file management together yet. I had to look on a video that I had of us recording to find the box that was the hard drive, which had everything on it that was not on tape, because we were working on tape and we were also working on a computer. It was like, ‘what are we looking for again? I’ve forgotten.’ It’s a SCSI drive that looked this particular way, something that is completely obsolete now. They found it on a shelf, dusty at the back, nobody knows what it is and then not being able to open all the stuff on it was pretty funny. There’s some bits we can’t find.

They’re in a room somewhere, like at the end of Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

Yes, exactly. There is one of those, a kind of Radiohead equivalent of that.

How different is the relationship with you and Thom from project to project, does it change if you’re doing Radiohead to Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes or to a solo project like Anima?

Well, obviously, it’s really different. I mean, the whole kind of instigation of us like doing The Eraser was off the back of that I was not going to work with the band again because we thought I needed a break, we’d gone through Hail To The Thief and it was like, ‘foof, everyone’s tired.’ and they went off to start working on songs for the next record. I was like, ‘okay, it’s fine.’ Thom was like, ‘Maybe we’re gonna work on our own, we’re gonna work it out,’ and I was totally cool with that, and then I basically got a call two days later saying that he wanted to do this solo thing and so we started working together.

What we found was, interestingly, when we were in a room when it’s with Radiohead, I was always butting heads with him because it was basically me and the band, I’m trying to manage a relationship between him and the band and it’s me butting heads with him and trying to work on behalf of the band. As soon as he and I were alone, we found that the dynamic was completely different, we were pulling in the same direction and it was incredibly productive. So it worked really well and we did that record and then actually I ended up doing In Rainbows anyway.

You know, relationships change. It’s nearly 30 years now we’ve been working together so things do change and the way that you work changes. But I think that what’s evident is that you only really have formative relationships like that once. So Thom will never find another me and I’ll never find another Thom because we’ve just worked for so long together. And that goes as well for the other guys in the band but in a different way, because obviously Thom and I have gone off, I’ve done something like 14 albums with Thom, whereas I’ve only done nine or something with the rest of them. There’s so many different permutations of how it works but the fundamental bottom line is it works. We just have this ability to just be very productive together and that’s a really precious and important thing and it changes in within the context of whatever we’re doing. It doesn’t really matter, so then we go and do Atoms For Peace and it works in a different way but it’s still fundamentally the same relationship. It’s crazy. It’s a long-standing thing.

Which record that you’ve been involved with do you think is the most overlooked?

Here We Go Magic’s A Different Ship. It’s a band I really loved and it’s one of those stories of finding something you really love and working trying to help them and then them imploding pretty soon after the record was finished so the whole thing just ground to a halt as it was in that format, a couple of people left. It’s a shame because I think they were a really great band in that format and they could have moved forward and carried on being great band. I feel like that’s a little gem.

What’s been the hardest period of your career?

I definitely had a beam me up moment when we were doing that Band Aid 20 single!

Haha, go on…

Well, it was just one of those things where you feel like, ‘if I can contribute something then I can help and it’s such a good cause I should do it’ and getting musicians together to do something like that is quite difficult. I was working with McCartney at the time so I managed to strong arm him into coming in and playing bass. And obviously Geldof’s hassling Thom so I had this sort of funny superstar band, which is Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood and Danny Goffey on drums and Paul McCartney on bass and Fran Healy doing the frontman-y bit to get the backing track. It just was a bit of a clusterfuck trying to get the actual track together. The whole thing is just so not me and then what happened was we just couldn’t really get a good take so I was up until three in the morning trying to like cut it together without much help from certain parties. It was like, ‘What’s going on here?!’.

Tell me about the making of The Smile record. Out of all the Radiohead and Radiohead-affiliated records, that’s the one to me that has the most mystique, it seemed to come out of nowhere that Thom and Jonny had started a new band.

I think there’s a little bit of cards to the chest about the whole thing. I think it just came out of Jonny writing all these riffs, waiting for something to happen. I think he was writing music and it’s been such a weird time the last few years, Ed’s gone off and done his solo record so that’s kind of been out of the picture and then Covid hit, I think there was a desire to make music so him and Thom were getting together writing stuff. It’s just a quite organic process, it was over a long amount of time, over a couple of years. It started here in this studio and then I went off and did the Arcade Fire thing so that slowed everything down a little bit. And then when once that was done, I came back and finished it off. But it’s the same thing, it’s the same kind of ingredient, those people that I’ve worked with all this time so we’re kind of just doing what we do and we have our ways of getting things done.

With that in mind, how was it walking into Arcade Fire to produce We, working with a big band you hadn’t collaborated with before?

The thing with those guys is it’s a completely different animal. They’re very much the ultimate home studio recording artists in a way, they’ve always done stuff on their own and I think it was quite different for them to have a producer-producer. In some ways, it worked really well, in some ways it maybe made it a little harder, because I have my feelings about things and integrating that into the whole thing can be complicated. But I think, at the end of the day, we worked well and there’s a lot of material that actually isn’t on the record that is really good. But I think that they made a good decision by keeping that record short and sweet, so we’ll see what happens. I’ve known those guys for years. It’s a classic thing where you meet people around and about and then always in the back of your mind, you’re like, ‘Oh, this is a possibility.’ It was kind of miraculous that it happened, really, because of Covid what we did is we went to the middle of nowhere, outside El Paso, Texas, and basically lived in a cult for a couple of months. Nobody came in and nobody came out, people delivered the shopping, that sort of vibe just so we could be able to do it. It was a method to make it possible.

That sounds intense.

It was intense, yeah. Making music is intense sometimes, especially when you’re dealing with other human beings because there’s so much that goes on in the soup of making music, that’s why it’s wonderful.

Do you think there will be another Radiohead album?

I don’t know. Obviously, I can’t answer that!

This piece is coming out to coincide with Warpaint’s From The Basement session, how was that?

Oh, well that I love because, again, it’s a band I’ve never recorded but I know them all really well, they’re friends and have been friends for a long time for many years. It’s serendipity that it becomes a version of a way of working together that is really pleasing for all of us, just a day in the studio, and we get to record, capture this thing live and I get to fulfill my little fantasy of doing something with them.

[sheetmusiclibrarypdf]

Herbie Hancock (sheet music in the #smlpdf)

Herbie Hancock (sheet music in the #smlpdf) Best Sheet Music download from our Library. Please, subscribe to our Library. Thank you! Herbie Hancock - The Best Of Herbie Hancock (1979) full album Please, subscribe to our Library. Thank you!

Herbie Hancock (sheet music in the #smlpdf)

Contents List download: Herbie Hancock Greatest Hits transcriptions contentsDownload Jazz Play Along Vol. 14 Herbie Hancock (with MP3)

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Contents list download: Herbie Hancock - Jazz Piano CollectionDownload More sheet music by Herbie Hancock: Herbie Hancock Cantaloupe Island Herbie Hancock - Driftin Herbie Hancock - All Of You (Miles Davis) Herbie Hancock - Classic Jazz Composition & Piano Solos Herbie HancockDownload Herbie Hancock - Jazz Piano Collection Herbie Hancock - Jessica Herbie Hancock - Stella by Starlight - Solo Herbie Hancock Butterfly Transcription Herbie Hancock Collection Herbie Hancock Freedom Jazz Dance Solo Herbie Hancock Greatest Hits transcriptions Herbie Hancock, Immortal Jazz Herbie Hancock Keyboard Player Herbie Hancock Masterclass (Text In Japanese) Herbie Hancock Possibilities (Book) Herbie Hancock Rare Transcriptions, book 2 Herbie Hancock Rare Transcriptions book 2Download Herbie Hancock Rare Transcriptions Herbie Hancock Rare TranionsDownload Herbie Hancock The Piano Herbie Hancock The PianoDownload Herbie Hancock Waltermelon Man

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JS_AGPz9J4 Tracklist: 00:00 - - - A1 — DOIN' IT (Remix) . . . (6.43) . . . . . . . . . . Players: J. Gadson, M. "Wah Wah" Watson, R. Parker 06:48 - - - A2 — I THOUGHT IT WAS YOU . . . (8.55) . . . . . . . . . . Players: Chancler, B. Miller, M. "Wah Wah" Watson, R. Parker, R. Rekow 15:45 - - - A3 — CHAMELEON . . . (7.38) . . . . . . . . . . Players: H. Mason, P. Jackson, B. Maupin, B. Summers 23:24 - - - End Side a) 23:41 - - - B1 — HANGUP YOUR HANG UPS . . . (7.27) . . . . . . . . . . Players: M. Clark, P. Jackson, B. Maupin, M. "Wah Wah" Watson 31:09 - - - B2 — READY OR NOT . . . (6.30) . . . . . . . . . . Players: R. Parker, C. Escovedo, S. Escovedo 37:52 - - - B3 — TELL EVERYBODY (Disco Version) . . . (7.48) . . . . . . . . . . Players: J. Gadson, E. Watkins, R. Obiedo, S. Escovedo, The Waters 45:40 - - - End Side b) PERSONNEL: Herbie Hancock: All Keyboards & Vocals Paul Jackson - Bass (A3, B1) Byron Miller - Bass (A2) Eddie N. Watkins - Bass (B3) Melvin "Wah Wah" Watson - Guitar, bass, voice bag vocals (A1, A2, B1) Ray Parker Jr. - Guitar, drums, background vocals (A1, A2, B2) Ray Obiedo - Guitar (B3) Michael Clark - Drums (B1) James Gadson - Drums, bacground vocals (A1, B3) Leon “Ndugu” Chancler - Drums (A2) Harvey Mason - Drums (A3) Bill Summers - Percussion (A3, B1) Sheila Escovedo - Percussion, timbales, congas (B2, B3) Coke Escovedo - Timbales (B2) Raul Rekow - Congas (A2) Kenneth Nash - Percussion (B3) Bennie Maupin - Saxophone, flute, bass clarinet (A3, B1) The Waters (Oren, Maxine, Julia and Luther): Vocals, bacground vocals (B2, B3) Art Baldacci, Fred Dobbs, Don Kerr, Chris Mancini - bacground vocals

Read the full article

[parkerbombshell]

The Supertone Show 158

Thursdays 10pm EST bombshellradio.com This week, we hear masters of the rhythm Jerome ‘Bigfoot’ Brailey and ‘Bootsy’ Collins (Parliament), Stewart Copeland and Sting (The Police), James Gadson and Melvin Dunlap (Bill Withers), Larry Mullen (Jr) and Adam Clayton (U2), Zigaboo Modeliste and George Porter Jr. (The Meters) plus Neil Peart and Geddy Lee (Rush). Read the full article

[tonyvwright]

Kissing My Love - Bill Withers with members of The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band

[plus-low-overthrow]

Michael White - I Like It (Elektra)

drums, James Gadson & prod. Wayne Henderson & Don Mizell, 1979.

[rainingmusic]

Leonard Cohen - Waiting for the Miracle 

[writer-kermit]

1. Bernstein, Corinne. “What Is Cognitive Bias? - Definition from WhatIs.com.”

SearchEnterpriseAI, Feb. 2017,

www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/definition/cognitive-bias.

2. Baldwin, James. “Day 4: Understanding Our Bias and Its Consequences.” United Way for

Southeastern Michigan, 2022, unitedwaysem.org/equity_challenge/day-4-understanding-

our-bias-the-consequences-of-bias/.

3. Gadson, Bug. Art Imitates Life: The Representation (or Lack Thereof) of Black Women in

Video Games. 21 Dec. 2021, p. 24,

scholarworks.arcadia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?params=/context/showcase/article/1416/&

path_info=Art_Imitates_Life__The_Representation__Or_Lack_Thereof__of_Black.pdf.

Accessed 16 Nov. 2024.

4. Lewis, Stephen J. “From the Combination of Racism and Sexism, Here Is the Story of a

New Word.” News.northwestern.edu, 4 May 2023,

news.northwestern.edu/stories/2023/05/professor-coins-new-word-misogynoir/.

5. Tymur Solod. “The Importance of Story and Character Development in Games | Pingle

Studio.” Pingle Studio, 5 Sept. 2024, pinglestudio.com/blog/the-importance-of-story-and-

character-development-in-games.

6. Ranjan, Ritesh. QUEER THEORY: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS of ITS IMPLICATION in

ART HISTORICAL READINGS. Vol. 2, no. 2, 2581,

www.ijciras.com/PublishedPaper/IJCIRAS1287.pdf.

7. “Dominic Cianciolo - the Second City.” Secondcity.com, 2024,

www.secondcity.com/people/dominic-cianciolo. Accessed 17 Nov. 2024.

Cognitive Bias in the Mortal Kombat Fandom

❥ GENRE: EXPLORATORY ESSAY

❥ COMMISSIONED OR SELF MADE: SELF MADE

❥ W/C: 1,314 (W/O SOURCES)

ঞ SUMMARY: The world is changing, and so has our perception of media. So why are we against these changes? What if everything remained the same from the beginning?

ᰔ KERMIT'S NOTE: I haven't made an exploratory essay since 2022. Mostly because I was afraid of what people might perceive me as. But for a while, I gathered the confidence to start writing more essays based on my personal views. Maybe that will help my writing skills. If you wish for more content like this, feel free to ask! Thanks for reading!

ʚ TAG LIST: @fsfghgee @laismoura-art @loiola00 Thank you for giving me the courage to write again 🫶

ʚ WARNING: Spoilers (maybe???) Racism, Misogyny/Misogynoir, and other graphic content.

Before I start, I just want to say that I only know Mortal Kombat through NetherRealm Studios, so I will be referring to them more than Midway. Now, I’ve only been a fan of Mortal Kombat for two years. I first started getting into it when my friend showed me a video of the Mortal Kombat 9 gameplay in 2022. Since then, I’ve been consuming so much of the MK media. From video games, to animations, to fanfiction, you name it! However, as I delved deeper into the Mortal Kombat rabbit hole, I noticed that there is a strong “bias” within the fandom. Now don’t get me wrong, there isn’t anything bad about having biases. In fact, some biases can improve problem solving skills by identifying different patterns and thinking accordingly to solve the problem. But since I’m talking about Mortal Kombat here, there won’t be as much problem solving. When it comes to NetherRealm Studio's interpretation of Mortal Kombat, fans and critics are quick to have some sort of cognitive bias. 

So why specifically cognitive bias? What even is a cognitive bias? Well, cognitive bias is a systematic thought process caused by the tendency to simplify (or fully reject) information through a filter of personal experience and preferences. But if cognitive bias helps with problem solving, how can it be harmful? In most cases, cognitive bias can contribute to poor and unfair judgment, especially when that judgment can affect the way we consume media. From my experience in Mortal Kombat, fans have the most bias between different characterizations; whether that’d be race, gender, or sexuality, plot, and even the companies itself.

Race/Ethnicity: Black female characters such as Jacqui Briggs, Tanya, Cyrax (MK1) are more prominent to be discriminated against based on their appearance, motives, and depiction throughout the MK series. Unfortunately, this isn’t just a Mortal Kombat problem. In fact, black women in different media are heavily underrepresented and often looked down upon. In the scholar work “Art Imitates Life: The Representation (Or Lack Thereof) of Black Women in Video Games” by Bug Gadson, the author makes an important claim that because of the systematic racism built on white supremacy and misogynoir (racism and misogyny), the “historical evolution of Black feminism in the United States not only developed through [black stereotypes],” but also how the media consume these types of harmful portrayal and use it to characterize all black women (Gadson, 2021). This is almost ironic because Mortal Kombat is known for its diverse characters. As a black non-binary student, it’s very painful to see racist comments of these black characters on Reddit, YouTube, and even Tumblr.

Gender: Along with racism, misogyny in the Mortal Kombat fanbase is no secret. As Mortal Kombat progressed over to NetherRealm Studios, women have grown to be less sexualized and played more dominant roles throughout the series. Because of this change, most fans complained that the women were ‘unattractive’ and threatened the NRS developers to revert to their revealing attire. One example of this outrage is when YouTube commenter, TrueUnderDawg made a petition on his Twitter and YouTube community post to enforce “cyber-swimsuits” for female Cyrax and Sektor, further engaging with the sexualization of female characters in video games. With Sektor and Cyrax being gender-swapped in MK1’s DLC: Khaos Reigns, fans believed that the gender swap was only implemented to add more relationships within the new timeline. While it’s true that Sektor and Cyrax were intended to pursue romantic relationships, I believe that it doesn’t overall deter their characterization. In fact, any form of relationship can build up motives and create a sense of agency for that character. For Sektor and Bi-Han's relationship, both share goals and concepts of building the Lin Kuei, so even if there is a gender swap, their relationship does make sense to a point (it’s also hypocritical to criticize Bi-Han/Sektor to justify Bi-Han/Sareena as both ships have their flaws). Tumblr user @fsfghgee made some pretty good points on Bi-Han and Sektor, so I recommend looking at them for more information.

Sexual Orientation: Since 2015, there has been a new splurge of canon and implied relationships in Mortal Kombat. In addition, there have been a handful of LGBTQ+ characters. Examples being Sindel, Mileena, Tanya, and Kung Jin. However, it didn’t stop fans from creating their own LGBTQ+ ships; with the most well-known ships being SubScorp (Scorpion x Sub Zero), Johnshi (Johnny x Kenshi), JadeTana (Jade x Kitana), and many others. With the new changes in MK1 (and Khaos Rain and Tanya’s relationship), most fans were claiming that NRS were erasing queer characters and relationships. For reference, I am pansexual. So, my personal view on ‘cis relationships’ might be different. While I do believe that NRS’s interpretation of relationships can be improved, it does have greater potential than Midway (sorry older fans). What really pisses me off is when fans were so quick to call “queer erasure” when non-canon ships weren’t implemented in the game. I’m not trying to say that NRS shouldn’t have more LGBTQ+ representation, but being blatantly cisphobic to the already canon ships within the series takes away actual queer erasure that purposefully diminishes the existence of the queer community throughout any other media platforms.

Writer’s Perspective: Ed Boon and Dominic Cianciolo are the main writers and directors for Mortal Kombat in NetherRealm Studios. As of 2023, they released a reboot of Mortal Kombat named Mortal 1 Kombat. After the dissolvement of the previous timeline (MK11), newly demigod Liu Kang resets the universe to create a more peaceful timeline. With the significant changes in the story, it’s almost difficult to adjust to the new storyline. Personally, I don’t like all the changes either. And I think it’s even more difficult to find someone who does like all the changes. Nevertheless, I believe that providing different perspectives can accommodate and even further regulate the story. It’s important to take note that the earlier timeline is nearly irrelevant to MK1. So rather than trying to implement older lore, why not use what is already canon and interpret our own theories? For example, let’s take Hanzo, who is a child in MK1. Hanzo’s survivor guilt could parallel Tomas (Smoke). Rather than accepting the death of his clan, Hanzo’s emotions could turn him to be vengeful and become more irrational and radicalized. Another example could be Bi-Han/Noob Saibot (The corrupted version of Bi-Han). His irredeemable actions and hatred towards his family could symbolize the corruption of leadership and foreshadow his ultimate downfall. Now here’s a side note: I know some fans believed that Bi-Han should’ve gotten a redemption arc, but this man openly claimed that he is willing to kill his OWN FAMILY to remain in power. So, like... I don’t know if he could redeem himself if tried. That being said, there is nothing inherently wrong with ‘maliciously evil’ characters if written correctly. However, there is a difference between ‘bad’ characters and ‘bad character writing’ (AHEM AHEM KOTAL KAHN AHEM).   

Overall Thoughts: I want to make it clear that there is nothing wrong with criticizing Boon and Cianciolo and giving them feedback to help them improve future games. However, there is a difference between constructive criticism and harassment. The NRS developers aren’t blocking people in different media because they can’t handle criticism, they’re blocking people because they are continuously being harassed and receiving death threats. Regardless of these changes, Mortal Kombat is still an enjoyable game and shouldn’t be torn apart by its own hypocrisy. There is nothing wrong with having bias. Sometimes, biases can help us interpret different information in a nuanced way. But know that change is necessary for the world to function, even if some of the changes can kind of stink. 

[mychameleondays]

Donald Fagen: The Nightfly

Warner Bros. 92 3696-1

Released: October 1, 1982

[crispytimetravelgardener]

Great video with interviews and live performances from some fantastic drummers. I particularly recommend the first part with Chad Smith playing Birdland from the Buddy Rich memorial concert. I think that is perhaps one of the best concerts ever.

[peter-tschirky]

Eddie Harris Funk Project

[dixiefunk]

Band of Pleasure - "Live At Kirin Plaza"

[lysergicfunk]

[nicocota]