Tasha LaRae Radio Interview

Check out our girl Tasha live on a radio show called Queens of Radio.  Here's a link to a tape of the broadcast so give it a listen!  Hearing the opening song reminds me that I need to pick up a few albums to finish off my pre-1997 KRS-One collection.....

EDIT:  Oops, I thought it was replaying the show, but the KRS-One song was the beginning of a different show...  The link above does point to Tasha's appearance so check it out!

Heroes of the Harvest Hidden Track

Well,once again, just when you think you have Arrested Development's discography figured out, along comes another surprise.  Here is an apparently hidden bonus song from I presume the original, Japanese release of Heroes of the Harvest.  This album was later released in the US via Vagabond but unfortunately doesn't include this song.  So now you can complete you copy of the album with "U Complete Me".  This is primarily an R&B track, and I'm not quite sure who is singing- it doesn't sound like Eshe to me and was the only female vocalist at this time.  Speech checks in with a great verse as well.  It's not the best quality version but I can't find the Japanese release on sale anywhere, so we'll have to make do.

If you've been out of the loop on AD, I highly recommend picking this album up as it is a great bridge from the old crew to the new crew- plus, you get to hear a lot from Eshe and Rasa Don who are involved to a greater degree then any of their other releases, especially Rasa Don.  There's some great music on there.  Anyway, that's my spiel on that one!

Also, thanks to Kel for sending this to me!  This is how he works- he asks if I've heard of the song and if I have it- I don't- so next thing I know he sends it to me when I'm supposed to be sending it to him....

Concert Review From Malaysia

Here's a review of a recent AD show at the Hard Rock Cafe in Kuala Lumpur by MSN.  Great pictures included so check it out.

Recent Interview With Speech

Here's a link to a recent interview with Speech from On Wax Magazine.  Sounds like Speech has begun writing some new material, which is great news.  Here's a good section:

On Wax: Do you think you receive more love away from home or at home?
Speech: We’ve been doing this for about 20 years and over the years different places have showed us more love. But I think that that’s just been dependent on the culture at home or the culture over there at the time. When we first came out America was our biggest market. We got back together in the year 2000 America had went to more of a materialistic driven, CEO driven-style of Hip Hop – where the Hip Hop artist was bragging about being CEOs, bragging about being corporate, and they were bragging about flying private jets and drinking Crystal. The whole emphasis of Hip Hop became more about materialism than the music or the history or the culture. At the same time overseas wasn’t on that tip. They heard our records for what they were.

I thought this was cool too:

On Wax: Is he (Baba Oje, 78) planning to continue being on stage with you guys?
Speech: I don’t think he’ll be able to perform to be honest. He still gets paid. In our group we got a social security program. We still make sure he’s taken care of.

A Twitter Chat With Tasha and JJ Boogie- And An Update on the Site

Here's a link to a "twitter chat" with AD members Tasha LaRae and JJ Boogie from a site called Dryer Buzz.  I think I would've preferred just a straight interview with them, but there you go!  

As far as the site, no, I did not set a New Year's Resolution to shut it down.  I did set an arbitrary goal of having a post a day from the start of the blog to the end of the year- which I was able to accomplish, barely, and with the much-appreciated help of a few contributors as well.  But after that, frankly, I ran out of stuff to post.  I am still following Arrested Development and Speech religiously, and will still post things as I run across them, of course.  To be honest, from the patterns I saw I don't think this was ever a site that people checked out everyday, so I don't see it as an issue if a post just shows up every few days- or even longer.  Conversely, there might be days where I have five posts- if I run across five things of note- because I won't be saving anything just to maximize my arbitrary goal.  So that's that, and I will still be here- so you be here too!

Lastly, for no particular reason other then to take note of AD's worldwide appeal, I like to keep track of visitors from different countries that have popped up here.  So hello to everyone and anyone from Spain, Luxembourg, Ukraine, Mexico, Greece, Indonesia, South Africa, Pakistan, Croatia, Indonesia, South Africa, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Slovenia, France, Thailand, Paraguay, Kenya, Egypt, the Netherlands, Malaysia, Chile, Hungary, and Portugal that have checked this blog out.  As you can see, it's been awhile since I updated that list, so a lot of different countries have shown up!  And we've seen at least one visitor from every continent with the obvious exception of Antarctica show up, which is kind of cool.  

Speech's DJ Mix

Check out Speech's new mixtape series called "Musical Safari."  This is his first DJ mix, called Excursion, and he plans on touring for a part of this year as a DJ.  It features songs from artists worldwide and should be a very interesting listen. 

AD Live in Australia

Here is some live footage from Arrested Development's current tour in Australia- it's the crew performing "People Everyday".  Listen to the crowd- very loud!  Wish I was there.

Disciples

First off, hope everyone had a good New Year!  I've had a couple requests as of late for the skits from the Disciples of a Lyrical Rebellion project, so here you go.  If you missed it the first time, I also included the remixes and rare songs from that project as well.  Some of the skits are kind of goofy and show off Speech's sense of humor, so they may be of interest to some of you.  And for those not aware, Disciples of a Lyrical Rebellion was the original name of what would become Arrested Development.  Some day when you're on Jeopardy, you'll thank me for that!  

Great Speech and Eshe Interview

The title says it all!  Here's a link to an article from a blog called Brother Jesse Blog.  And here's a choice section in my opinion:

BJ: Now, I also read, in your bio, that you didn’t stop working, you really more so started to focus on your solo work. Please talk about some of things you were able to accomplish within that time period.

SP: In 1996, the group stopped recording albums and I still was creating music and I didn’t know what to do with it. So, in essence, I just played some music, some experimental music, for my record label and they liked it and they released it as a solo album called Speech. It was very experimental. I was starting to sing, a lot . Going though the various emotional roller coasters that I was explaining earlier, me singing started to feel more soothing to my conscious and to my spirit. At the same time, that type of style was, to some extent sort of the rebirth of neo soul. But, the label was sort of starting to self destruct. EMI was starting to go through a bunch of changes and, long story short, it didn’t do well in the United States. So, I was left basically with trying to determine what should I do with my newfound, in a sense, career and what should happen but God really blessed me in that the same album that didn’t do well in the States was doing extremely well in Japan. It was the number record for about seven weeks straight and I decided , of course, to go over there and start to tour, start to see what was going on. When I got there, it was just an amazing reception. That became ‘home” for me, musically, not physically for about five years that would follow and I would have Number 1 hit records or Top Ten hit records for the next four records that I produced.

Happy New Year's!

With another new year upon us, it seems like a great time to go back to last New Year's, when AD was live in Osaka, Japan.  Here's some footage of them doing a couple of songs from Strong- "The World is Changing" and "We Rad, We Doing It."  Unfortunately both performances are incomplete, but it's better than nothing.

And happy New Year's to everyone!