He is risen!! In other words, glad to finally be posting in 2012. It's been a good year so far; I can't
complain about much. For those on board with The Casual Geographer, we are going to record our sixth episode soon, once the three of us are able to get into the same room at the same time
(that's the biggest challenge). I think Bret is circling some brewery in Oregon in his car right now, but he should be back
in SoCal soon enough.
I'm glad that southpaw shredder Eddie Solis aka It's Casual finally published this video, because I needed something awesome enough to influence me to get off my ass...onto my
ass, in front of my computer... and give some kind of update.
For those of you that know me, I'm a big proponent
of public transportation. If I can't take public transit to school/work, then I ain't living there at this stage of my life.
So, moving to Southern California, a region of the country quite possibly the most stigmatized in the universe for its shitty
public transit access, was indeed more of a challenge than a bummer for me. After doing some in situ research, I've
come to the conclusion that... well, I think that this song can say it, and express it, much more efficiently than I ever
could here.
It doesn't hurt that It's Casual produced an album that probably sounds more like Los Angeles than anything produced this century so far, ferocity and all. From what I've
gathered, Solis doesn't have a car, relying on those forms of transportation you see in the video to get himself around. No
matter how abrasive (read: the good type) his voice or his chords may be, his message has clearly resonated, gaining shoutouts
on the LA Times, Blogging LA, The Huffington Post, El Pasajero, and even a clearly sympathetic (in the tsk tsk NYC way) Generation
Records in the Village. It is no surprise that Angelenos are equally pissed about how pervasive the "you needa carrrrr"
ethos is in their urban dystopia (or pissed about how the auto industry turned it into a dystopia), and I'm glad
that Solis' message is resonating. Yeah, public transportation does suck in LA, but that doesn't mean that Metro doesn't care.
Also, that doesn't mean that anyone is too good to ride the train or the bus, which is especially pertinent considering how
many 30-something Angelenos have never set foot on a bus or a metro train.
Now to sit back and wait for
"The Blue Line" remix for all of his boys out in Long Beach. I would lobby for "The Green Line," too,
but nobody cares about that one.
