This is a true rock’n’roll story from the dawn of the 70s spiced with street gangs, territory fights, illegal trades, drugs and prostitution, rivalry, murders and the fresh spirit of The Beatles.
Three brothers, Benjy, Victor and Robert Melendez were among the founding members of the Ghetto Brothers. While the 1960s was giving way to the rise of gang culture in the Bronx, the Melendez brothers were playing Beatles pop songs on street corners in a tribute band they called “Los Junior Beatles”. Later, they began paying attention to rising urban activist groups such as the Black Panthers and Puerto Rican nationalist group, the Young Lords. “Los Junior Beatles” officially took the name “Ghetto Brothers” and played frequently at community events. The songs they wrote became more socially conscious, as did their gang. Empowered by the revolutionary spirit, the Ghetto Brothers became a positive organization that cleaned up their streets, pushed out the drugs and prostitution, boosted morale and kept the community safe. The Melendez brothers were also Sephardic Jews that practiced their religion in secret while being part of a Hispanic community.
The “Power-Fuerza” album was informally released in Read more Ghetto Brothers – Power-Fuerza (1972) ›

First of all, there are several enthusiast and eulogistic reviews, which is pretty cool considering that we’re talking about an experimental jazz trio. Pitchfork call it “something totally unprecedented”; NPR considered that it’s “sounds like something completely different”; The New Yorker felt like “an hour flew by in what seemed like minutes”; The Guardian stated that “it sounds like nothing else right now”; The Los Angeles Times heard “a mysterious, vital sound with a pull all its own” while The Wall Street Journal describe it as “deep, entrancing soundscapes”. It’s all cool and honoring, but in my humble opinion Dawn Of Midi simply picking on the nowadays fancy, pattern based, some say soulless, computer based and programmed music, making (bitter) fun of it in a subtle, sober way. So, this is a jazz trio playing live a music which is basically – and murderously – minimal, monotonous and repetitive just like 99.9% of the contemporary and computer based “music”. They actually repeat the same note/chord till the very limit of supportability and just when you consider that you had enough, and only then, they change a note, introduce something wickedly cool. Pretty clever. It’s definitively a (modern) form of art, I actually pretty much enjoyed this album, consider it relaxing by it’s monotony and lack of interruptions and disturbances, but then again, this is much more a statement then revolutionary, unheard, strikingly bold and unthinkable new way of express yourself, express feelings or build-up music. Might be surprising for those who are actually believe that Michal Jackson was some musical genius, but never heard of Liszt… Read more Dawn Of Midi – Dysnomia (2013) ›