Fieldnotes

The following is an examination of the MySpace pages of Providence is Burning and Micah Jackson.

FIELD NOTES: Providence is Burning/ Certified Bananas

Myspace.com/providenceisburning

Poster is the profile picture… huge skull with a single tear… cats coming from other sides and red hands…kind of just really creepy. In big bold letters at the top: PROVIDENCE IS BURNING—creepy letters that look like zombie print. [pre-cursor to goosebumps?] words and letters around it completely disorganized.

Only 3 songs up—two of which are by Certified Bananas [one by Sammy Bananas, one by both Certified Max and Sammy Bananas]

The Tracks:
1. Woaoooh Looow: techno mix of old popular Venga Boys song? Mixed with “Get Low” Catchy, starts out as head-nodding, eventually gets faster and just incredibly dance-y, but bouncy dance-y more than anything else. Only two songs…has the potential to be more mash-up, but feels a lot less A.D.D. than Girl Talk. 3 and a half minutes of an old, guilty 90s song and apple-bottom jeans. Interesting.
2. Dat Funk, by Sammy Bananas: starts out with basic beat, leads to dialogue—ghetto voice asking questions, says “Funk that!” rather than “Fuck that!” leads into what sounds like a little bit of a Salt N Pepa beat. Questions again, then “Smack That” comes on in the background, replaced by “It Takes Two.” Fades out into drum beat again.
3. Shake and Pop, Bananas Remix: techno beat, “Fergalicious” over it. Has what sounds like an 80s riff, shifts into a male rapper—Fergie does the chorus, male rapper does rap, digital voice repeats “Shake…and pop. Shake and pop.”
Best lyric ever: “I like electro, I like retro. I like ghetto, house, and techno.” Goes on for about five minutes—switching with male rapper, Fergie, digital voices. This song is considerably catchier and more dance-y than the other ones.

Besides the songs, the profile is incredibly plain—under the category “sounds like,” the creators of the page wrote, “BOOM.” Underneath the poster in the “About Providence is Burning,” part, there are photographs of the past events. There are only five photographs, all horizontally displayed, with a red tint. There isn’t anything really special about the photos—it looks as if they were just taken randomly to capture the crowds. There are DJs and random instrumentalists, though—including a tuba player and a couple of trombone players. The performers are dressed oddly—one has his face painted like a skull, one is wearing what looks like a Nixon mask, and the others just have regular clothes with a silly aspect—like a chickenhead hat.

Looking through the crowds, though, the audience looks almost completely white, and incredibly [annoyingly] hipster, with their keffia scarves and plaid shirts. The “Top Friends” on the profile are all Providence-based DJs, mostly with profile pictures that advertise this month’s GOOSEBUMPS party. It feels as if the Providence is Burning hasn’t been visited in a while—the last login was in July, but I don’t think that there’s a new profile for Goosebumps itself, which is basically just Providence is Burning with a different name and a different headliner. Providence is Burning’s number one friend is Certified Bananas—which also has an incredibly plain profile. The last login was in December.

I think that Providence is Burning/ Certified Bananas have been kind of out of the loop for a while now. Most e-mails for the DJ battles/ parties themselves have been about Goosebumps, with the main DJ as Micah Jackson. I’m really interested to find out what caused this change and how the dynamics of the parties have shifted. Are the audiences still predominantly white?

Micah Jackson Tracks:
1. Sing Sing Bare Bones Edit: way more funky—starts out with a guitar and bass groove, and continues on in the same fashion. There is no incorporation or mash-up of modern hits. It’s actually quite boring—it’s a really long song, with the same things over and over again. It’s a good dance beat, but I can definitely imagine a crowd getting bored unless there were some kind of mind-altering substances involved.
2. Spooky Acid: Kind of soft dance beat in the background, woman whispering. Boring again. I’m only two minutes in, and I really have no desire to finish listening to this track.

I can’t really imagine Micah Jackson parties being more fun than Certified Bananas ones, but I guess one never really knows. What caused this shift—the music feels completely different, and yet it’s basically the same crowd who goes to these parties. I want to examine why Micah Jackson has won out over Certified Bananas—I just don’t get it!