MC Diatribe, August 6

The following is an interview I conducted for the Somerville News with Mark Mclaughlin, also known as MC Diatribe, a local independent rapper and activist:

What do you do at Bridge Over Troubled Waters?
I'm a street outreach worker. Basically, it's my job to find homeless youth and try and get them to come into our program.

And what do you get out of that?
What? Personally?

Yeah
I mean, it's getting kids off the streets. That always feels good. It's the first step hopefully in getting them to turn their lives around. So, it's always a good feeling.

I've read somewhere that every kid in Somerville is taught the word "gentrification" in school. What are your views on the gentrification of Somerville?
I don't know if they're taught it in school. I think it's definately become part of people's vocabulary. I think it was an unspoken thing for a long time. People knew what was happening. I remember kinda learning the word and thinking "Oh, that's what that is, that's what's going on." My views on it? Well, there's good sides and bad sides, you know. And you can't ignore the good side, it's a safer place to be, it's a cleaner place to be. The quality of life is better. But the negative side is lots of the lower class people don't get to be around to see all this great improvement. And that builds a lot of resentment. When it's a place, you know, you grew up in your whole life and I'd like to reap the benefits of this too. You hear a lot of people claiming that it's taking credit for cleaning up the city and the working class and immigrant communities should be grateful towards them, but the reality is, it's like "Ok, Davis Square is nice now. Too bad I just moved to Chelsea, or I just moved Everett, which are basically in the same conditions I left" Lots of these other communities are where Somerville was ten, fifteen years ago, so nothing's really changed for the working class or the immigrant community in Somerville. They're just getting displaced to someplace simular to what they just left. I want people to stay around for the benefits, to see how the great the city's become.

What do you think of the Green Line extension?
Same thing. It's great. Obviously, I can't deny the benefits of it. Like I'm not sit here and be like "Oh, it's a terrible thing." But I think that gentrification, centered right now around Davis Square, is gonna spread to untouched parts of the city. Whereas, right now, Somerville is still, in my opinion, a working-class city, besides the Davis Square area, which the Red Line brought. So, now you're gonna have the areas of Winter Hill and Union Square and East Somerville and Assembly Square, and all these things, you know, it's gonna bring agreat resource, but with that resource, am I gonna be around for the Green Line? You know, I live in East Somerville now because I got priced out of this neighborhood. Now, am I gonna get priced out of East Somerville too in a couple years? It's be like "Ok, this is great. Somerville has the Green Line. I live in Brockton." You know, that's the way it goes. I don't see the roots of this city. You know, the true people that have been here for generations, they won't be benefiting from this.

So, about five years ago, I don't know where exactly in the city this happened, someone graffitied...
Right here

Oh right here? Someone graffitied "Kill A Yuppie" What's the motivation for something like that? Is this a common feeling?
I mean, I think a lot of teenagers have felt a lot of resentment and there's a lot of anger and misunderstanding. Well, that's when they started learning this word gentrification. People are just really angry about losing there place in the city and they took it out on what they saw as a threat to their community. And that's where we, Save Our Somerville, came in to mediate and be like "You can't have beef with these individuals that are moving in. They don't know. They aren't doing anything on pupose. So the real problem you wanna fight with someone, come to City Hall and it's not a violent fight. There's not gonna be an armed struggle here. It's gonna be, you know, political. You need to get out there and vote and become a political presence in the city. That way, City Hall is gonna look at you if you say 'Hey, we this huge constituancy over here and we vote and we're not happy with what's going on.'" That's the way we try to make that shift, tried to harness that anger that the youth was feeling and turn it into something positive...which is a difficult task.

But there is violence in the city and you've witnessed it yourself?
Absolutely

How does that, along with the drug problem with youth in the city, inofrm your music?
A lot. I mean, it comes from...I use music as a self-expression and I, you know, I use it to get things off my chest. Growing up here, there's just a lot of experiences that I think people aren't aware of and I use music to express what I've seen and what I think a lot of people are unaware of. Especially, nowadays, when you think of Somerville, you don't think of these experiences anymore. And those are still very much alive in my life. I like to say, I'm speaking the untold story. There's a story here that a lot of people are unaware of, or it's not being told, or it's being forgotten, and I just wanna create awareness of the struggle here. And that we have a lot in common with simular communities, inner-city communities facing simular problems and I think, lots of times, when we think of Somerville, at least now, we don't think of these problems. And that's a bad thing because when you sweep it under the carpet for too long, things will fester and get worse. Lots of my music is outta respect and homage to my roots, just saying "This is where I come from. This is my environment" I always credit Somerville, and I why I think there's so much pride, not just in Somerville, but lots of Boston neighborhoods because Boston is place where people credit their upbringing, their roots for making who they are and I will always say Somerville made me who I am today.

What is backpacking rap, or is it backpacking rap?
I think it kinda comes from the idea of people just selling CD's out of their backpack. You know, just being an undergound MC, but it more goes with the term of being a socially conscious rapper, being more abstract, you know, being a little more poetic. It's basically become anti-mainstream-type rappers. I would definately consider myself a backpack rapper. But it's basically the term for the underground MC having the stuff in there backpack and going around. It's anti-mainstream, that traditional gangsterism or whatever you wanna call it, thug rap.

What's it like being a white rapper?
Pshhhh, nowadays, I mean (laughs) I don't think it's any different. I mean it depends where you're at. There are experiences of being like,"Oh he's good...for a white kid" and it's more like, "No, I'm just good. Regardless of color." Nowadays, I feel like that's a stigma that's really gone. Emimen is renowned as one of the est of all time and Boston, in particular, has a lot of white MC's. It depends on what circle you're in and it depends what kinda music you're trying to do. I think if I was a white guy trying to act, trying say I was from the ghetto, I was selling crack, doing all this stuff I'd be a little like "Ok, doubtful." but if you're a white dude adn you're from the suburbs and you're rich and whatever, I think you'll be accepted in hip-hop as long as you're honest. Just keep it honest and people will accept you. Not everyone's gonna feel it. Not everyone's gonna like it. Some people are gonna be like, "This guy's whack because I don't relate to that." But, I think if you're honest with it, I doesn't matter what color or what gender you are or what-have you.

Steve Earle/Dirty Dishes/Steel Train/Suspicious Packages

Filmmaker/Actor/Musician/"not gay, but we have sex" Casey Regan

I've learned a lot researching and reporting for this blog. I've built this collection of pieces out of nothing and wrote about what I love, music and art. Experience is the most valuable teacher and all you have to get some experience is do-it-yourself. It's meaning and benefits stretch beyond scene or group or culture itself. You don't need permission to live. You don't need permission to learn. If you have the right attitude, nothing can stop you. Do it yourself.

I've been so inspired by the art I've seen and the music I've heard that I have taken up my first love, music. I am playing bass in The BOOTS, a Mission Hill/Jamaica Plain band with rhythm and blues and post-classic rock n roll simplicity, somewhere between The Blues Brothers and The Bay City Rollers. We feature dreamboat Phil Wilcox on Springsteen-esque vocals and Air Castle guitarist Nick Hashem shredding on the guit-fiddle.

Keep an eye out for our gig at Hellgate at the end of the month.

I'm also playing guitar/percussion and vocals in the Emerson College-based outfit Charlie & The Dive Dolls featuring four lovely ladies and myself busting some heavy blues.

EP coming in October.

Hard work is rewarding no matter if you fail or succeed.

Applause, Applause, Applause for the Dirty Dishes. Boston's hardest working, perhaps most talented independent rock band. They are the hottest band on the local music scene, a group of Berklee kids recording music DIY. The term used to describe them is "shoe-gaze." What does that mean? I looked up the definition on the internet and I'm still not sure what it is. I truly on honestly think the Dirty Dishes are undefinable. They combine so many genres together, their definitions can and have only gone so far.

They soldiered through despite shitty sound, it buzzed and feedbacked all night and Jenny's vocals were muffled a lot. Drummer Mike Thomas yelled a crack about it. "Is there even someone running sound. Is this a joke?"

With this change in audio, you could hear each individual member of the band for how talented they are. Jay getting extra heavy by employing mutli-string bass "chords" as it were. Mike wrecks yet controls his drums like sage warrior defending his tribe. Jenny's footwork on the pedals and solo was off-the-charts as usual. Alex headbangs as the medula oblongata, the brain stem of the band.

They proved quite adaptable by the end of "Into Thin Air" playing with the feedback and grinding instruments on amplifiers. This show forced them to sound raw and forced them to be raw.

This time they were perched on an actual stage, as a band of this caliber deserves to be, a level above us. In my ideal society, talented artists are often held in the highest regard. This stage was in the Enormous Room, which is a bar-sized room, not that enormous, featuring expensive drinks, but a saucy back door that can be easily snuck in through. Follow the graffiti to your freedom.

Last week, I saw Steel Train at the Middle East Downstairs. They held there guitars tight to there chests and played them well. Fast rock, but not that much punk, too dramatic to be punk. They are kind of like the So-So Glos from Brooklyn and a pinch of the Arcade Fire. I'm getting bogged down in details, point is: They fucking rocked! There show had such a fantastic energy, everyone was rocking and rolling, have the best time, dancing so naturally it might have been a music video. My girlfriend and I met some young ruffian college kids as we were innocently gulping white wine on a parking lot outside as they indulged in tequilla, whiskey and pocket beers. We introduced ourselves. It was my girlfriend's idea. She's so friendly. I love her, btw.
We saw them inside, flashing their whiskey bottle. They saw me, remembered and offered me a swig. I took it. Later, I went to the bathroom and came back, seeing a big ol' security guard dragging all three of themm off holding the whiskey bottle in his hand. Boys were busted.
I danced with my girlfriend engaged a lot of ridiculous, grotesquely cute PDA. Like it said, the show had a great energy.

I saw my Dad's old friend and folk outlaw legend Steve Earle, trucking as ever, playing an epic acoustic set at the House of Blues. Phil, of my band The BOOTS, came and got to meet the mythical agitator with a backstage pass procured by my Pops. He still has not stop talking about the redemptive power of that meeting. He felt cleansed. My dad and Steve Earle rule. That's also what Phil kept saying.

Steve broke out classics like "Copperhead Road" and "Guitar Town" and more recent stuff from post-rehab Steve, like a personal favorite "South Nashville Blues" where the man plays some pretty intricate bending chords with a capo. He said after finishing, ripping off the capo "That song sounds a funner to play than it actually is."

He prefaced "City of Immigrants" by saying "This song is about the city I live but it could just as easily have been about this city" I feel a part of it, as I might as well be an immigrant, living in Boston from Chicago suburbs. Is that saying too much? Do you know what it's like? I feel like an immigrant, man.

He saved the best for last, playing his Emmy-nominated song from the HBO show Treme. It's about Post-Katrina New Orleans. Steve plays a street musician. He only had the greatest things to say about the city, and so passionately as well. He called it the heart of American music.

The man is an American legend, a man who journeyed to the edge of the dark side and almost dove in, but came out better than ever. Even he thinks he's making the best music of his career, and I would agree, so does fellow young person Phil. He's accumulating a new generation of fans. He's in a great stride. His greatest ever.

On the final hand, I went to he rawest, roughest, sweatiest, newest, most amateur show in a third level apartment on Ashford St in Allston last night. It was the debut of the buzzy power pop trio Suspicious Packages, featuring Brock Ginther and Casey Regan playing their hearty heart hearts out. They were both drenched in sweat rocking out. They sounded like if Dead Kennedys went foward in time and liked Primus a lot. Some of the faces Casey made, especially while singing, were so absurdly contorted. He entered a new level. The man is on most days an actor and a filmmaker. He can really cut loose. Keep and eye out for our comedy troupe Worst Birthday Ever. And our upcoming independent horror short Meat Me In Plainville, small town goes crazy after being cut off from it's main source of delicious protein....human meat.

I've seen a lot so far and I hope to see a lot more. I actually just aqcuired an unpaid internship at the Somerville News. I'm no longer just a boy, just a student, I'm a reporter.

This would be the part in the movie where the proud music quelled and I smiled into the camera.

You stay classy, Boston town

Steve