We had to travel from Lund, Sweden to Gothenburg.  It was only about a 2 hour’s drive, but this is a great opportunity for me to show you the tour bus that has become my second home!

Everybody tries to act like it doesn’t matter where anyone sits, but the truth is everyone has their favorite spot and that seat to the right is mine..ha ha!  It’s in the front where I can see out the front windshield and play the Playstation 3, have some say so in which movie is watched and never get left!  Here’s other pics of the bus:

We like to call this the bedroom. There’s a door that allows this room to be private.  The room also has its own tv, surround sound, DVD, PS3, Satellite and light dimmers in about 10 different colors.

These are the bunks where everyone sleeps.  There are only 6, so you know someone has to sleep elsewhere.  I personally sleep in the seat I showed you earlier.  It actually reclines to about 120 degrees.

This was supposed to be my bunk, but there is a draft from outside that was making me sick.

Windows Media Center with over 300 movies and a router for wireless internet on the bus!

Here’s a pic of everyone in the front watching a movie.  This was before I claimed my seat…ha ha!

This is the inside of the venue for Gothenburg

Above is a shot of the stage.

We didn’t spend the night in Gothenburg, so I don’t have any city shots.  But here are pics of outside of the venue in all of the snow!!!

It was snowing pretty hard!

The Parking Lot

The sidewalk.  They had to dig out a path for people walk through!  Do you see the evening rush to the right?

Outside of the venue.  Can you believe people actually came to this gig?

The fried chicken that blessed my soul after the show!!!

Stan Steam and “The Feel” from DetoxXx.Music on Vimeo.

My New Boss - Angie Stone - Photo by Dave Ellis

Hey guys!  For those of you that don’t know I’ve recently joined Angie Stone’s band and I have been doing shows with her all over the US.  It’s been a great experience and as of Monday 02/22/10, it’ll become an experience that we’ll take over seas to Europe! We’ll be visiting Sweden, London, Norway, France, and Poland over a three week period.

I’m very excited about this opportunity and another chance to see parts of the world that I’ve only seen in books or heard about in the movies!  As usual, I’ll try to blog as much as possible and post as many pictures as I can.  This will be a great adventure!  Stay tuned!

Let's Remember and Pray for the people of Haiti

My heart is heavy from hearing the news of the Earthquake in Haiti on Tuesday January 12, 2009.  This country had recently suffered numerous tropical storms that almost devastated the entire area.  Because of this and many other reasons the number of people that lived in a state of poverty was incredibly high.  The addition of a 7.0 magnitude earthquake to the woes of the area has caused near total destruction and over 500,000 people are feared dead.  The presidential palace has collapsed along with many other buildings.  The rising smoke right after the earthquake gave me a vision of what the end of the world or destruction of the earth would be like.

This is a great time of mourning for the world.  My heart is heavy for the people that have lost their lives and the families all over the world that have been affected.  I continue to think and wonder what if this had happened in our city or country?  I remember how blessed I am and I am admonished to pray for the people and the families of Haiti.  I’m going to make a donation to the American Red Cross and I urge you to help in any way that you can as well.  We give because we are blessed.

You Can donate here: American Red Cross International Response Fund

Atlanta seems to be bringing in the new year with a bang!  Less than a week after The Peach dropped into Underground Atlanta to welcome a new decade into the world, a ferocious storm attacked Georgia dumping inches of snow in Atlanta!  Thermometers every were have been struggling to make it past about 25 degrees and Ga Power executives are somewhere celebrating over the revenues that only God can bring as heating systems continue to run non-stop.

Maybe I’m exaggerating a bit about it being an actual blizzard, but we did truly get some snow fall.  Anyone in Atlanta that’s not from Atlanta knows that the whole town goes crazy at the mention of snow.  Roads shut down, schools close and there are accidents galore!  We’re talking about a city that may see 8-10 inches of snow a year.  Everyone thinks we over the top with our reactions to the weather, but we’re just not used to it and just not equipped to operate in something that we hardly ever experience.

The pic above is of my car while I was pumping gas.  I didn’t have the luxury of staying at home this time around.  Unfortunately I have the kind of job where there are no vacation or sick days!

I didn’t have much difficulty driving in the conditions.  You just have to drive much slower than normal.  Besides, driving slowly and being the only car on the road helps you to get nice pics!

While it was a pretty site, the snow was more of a dusting than a blizzard!   I didn’t have much of a chance to enjoy it other than taking pictures.  Let’s see what next week brings!

Not only was the OS a hooker, but the laptop seemed to cover many processor intensive tasks with ease… as if to say “Is that all you got?!!?!?! C’Mon Son!!!”  In the past year, I haven’t had one single Mac (hardware or OS) issue at all.  This means so incredibly much to me.  I’ve had an iPod nano (1st Gen) and iPod Touch (1sr Gen), iPhone 3G, then my MacBook Pro that I now use exclusively for music production and recording, and I now own the White unibody Macbook (and this little joint is a beast!) to replace those two PC’s that crashed.  From a tech standpoint, I am incredibly pleased at how well everything works and integrates seamlessly.  Everything works so well together with almost no user setup…. this is something that would take much time and headache to accomplish on a PC!

I’m so happy with my products that I almost feel contempt when watching those Windows 7 commercials!  I was in a tech store the other day and an employee told me that people often purchase computers with Windows 7, and eventually return to purchase XP!  What’s up with that?  Just kinda helps my case.

Bottom line, I love Macs right now!!!  And I think I’m becoming a MAC SNOB!!!

The first is a Black Soap called DuDu -Osun. A soap called DuDu, or even worse tropical DuDu at that.

The Second is a can of watermelon flavored soda.   I can’t tell if it’s racist or just a bad effort….

A Black Soap called Dudu (pronounced Doo Doo)...

Is This Offensive?

Equal Opportunity Offender?

I had the opportunity to watch MTV’s Video Music Awards tonight with intentions of enjoying yet another tribute to Michael Jackson and watching another highly anticipated performance by my favorite artist, Jay Z.  Little did I know in the beginning that all of my intentions would be easily eclipsed by this:

I’m sure by now that it is common knowledge in the world of Pop that Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift during her VMA acceptance speech to downplay her reception of the award and to acknowledge the artist that he truly felt deserved the award.  His actions were greeted by immediate disapproval in the form of “boos” and other jeers, character assassination via Facebook, Twiiter and many other social networking sites and ejection from the venue.  I must say that I agree Kanye’s timing was horrible and his actions seemed quite immature, but I couldn’t help but wonder why this elicited such the reaction that it received.

From birth, we are all socialized to become the people that we are and a part of that socialization includes the inherent learned knowledge of right vs wrong and good vs evil.  Whether from your family, schools, television or even the internet, these leanings take root as a part of our personality.  This then means that when an event like the one at VMA’s presents itself, it strikes a chord with our sense of morality and we instantaneously choose sides.  This does not come without consequence in that we begin to attack or judge the character of the person or idea that opposes our grasp of what is right.  So why is this an issue?

Let’s consider this.  In the midst of all of the name calling, and disgust in Kanye’s actions, did anyone take a moment to analyze why he felt the need to do what he did?  Did anyone consider the totality of the person that is Kanye West (the artist, unless you know him personally) and understand how this plays into the whole scenario?  Can we distinguish how he acted from his intentions?  A true follower of Kanye West fully understands that he is a very artistic, hip hop fundamentalist.  When I say this, I mean that he is a product of and a current driving force of the culture and it’s important to note that within the last few years, we have seen hip hop rise to dominance as an influence on pop culture.  Being a fundamentalist of the culture would then encourage a desire to see the art maintain its integrity and purity.

We also have to consider that MTV has one of the biggest influences on pop culture in America.  When MTV bestows an award on an individual or piece of work, this gesture has the power to subconsciously program millions of people and manipulate the destinies of many people.   So we now find a purveyor of his culture taking an inopportune moment to salvage what he felt should have been right in the eyes of the masses.  He didn’t seek to take the award from Taylor Swift, but he wanted to acknowledge that another video should recognized as one of most important videos of the century (thus far).  I’m not much of a Beyonce fan, but the “Single Ladies” video crossed so many lines and affected more people than many other videos in recent history.  It’s important to note here that past awards shows have seen Kanye express his disappointment for not winning awards that he thought he deserved (a few I’ve agreed with) and giving away awards that he thought he didn’t deserve (Outkast/UGK).

I’ve heard so many people call Kanye an “idiot” or a “nut” and talk about how wrong he was, but it seems that this only extends to what he did.  Did his opinion actually have merit?  I saw so many Twitter and Facebook updates that attacked and judged him, but there was no real discussion on the idea he established.  This all just reinforces my opinion that the masses in Pop culture tend to generally have no opinion of their own that can be soundly backed by logic and reason.  They tend to just sway with whatever the big machine (MTV, radio, etc) tells us is hot.  Many great artists never see great success because they can’t afford it (remember the recent radio payola lawsuits) or we collectively don’t demand anything different.  Kanye stood up for what he believed.  Kanye Goes Hard… And I’m Rolling With Him.