June 2017

Vol. 5 No. 1

 

Intro

“Don’t call it a comeback!!!” — L.L. Cool J, “Mama Said Knock You Out”

Can the third time be the charm for Type M? The first incarnation of this online magazine was implemented as a Yahoo! GeoCities website, and was published from time to time during the years 2007-2009. Then when Yahoo! essentially shut down GeoCities, I decided the time was ripe for me to re-do Type M as a WordPress publication, to take advantage of that site’s superior templates and authoring tools, higher “traffic” and an easier connection to material on the Type M blog, The Music Type. But that second incarnation never really got off the ground, as the one and only issue (Summer 2012) was never completed, so I never publicized that revival of Type M.

This current version, launched on the tenth anniversary of this magazine, is really the second incarnation fully implemented, as it uses the same WordPress template as its predecessor (albeit with more tweaks). Hopefully, this time the revival will take, but in the meantime, feel free to peruse a couple of articles from the previous incarnations that attempt to explain why I even engage in the labour-intensive process of publishing my own magazine. The first is the intro for the very first Type M issue, “Why We Write” ; the second is the intro for the Sept. 2012 issue,  “Why We Write — Again” .

Don’t Let Crime Hurt The Good Time

The 2016 edition of Sunfest, South Florida’s five-day music/art festival, drew 175,000 people to the downtown area of West Palm Beach, but not everybody was there for the good vibes. In addition to the few cellphone thefts reported in The Palm Beach Post, I happen to know of a couple of other incidents where pricier items were taken. One took place just outside the festival, but the other happened within. On the afternoon of the final day, my press partner Empress K of Reggae Reflection had a high-end DSLR camera stolen while we ate a late lunch at a crowded Clematis St. restaurant. Later that evening, Chinese-Jamaican artist Phil Fung had a large portrait of pop icon Prince go missing when he left his Sunfest art tent unattended.

Thankfully, for this year’s edition of the festival, both of my friends had no further incidents, but according to the Post, a number of festival-goers had their smartphones stolen. This story has a happy ending, however, thanks to the West Palm Police deploying a number of undercover cops for the weekend portion of the festival. On Saturday night, the cops arrested a Miami man with 29 phones in his backpack, so a number of wronged patrons had their phones returned.

Since smartphone theft at festivals seems to be on the rise nationwide, hopefully for next year’s Sunfest, the undercover cops will be deployed from Day 1.

S.I.R.

June 1, 2017

Lake Worth, Florida

Music Notes: Sunfest 2017 Overview

Ad-lib to Fade: It Was Fifty Years Ago Today…