HearingTest isn’t dead, only hibernating. This has been a truly incredible summer and I’m sorry I haven’t had more time to post about it yet. As mentioned previously, I started journalism school this semester and it’s a lot more work than I anticipated. I expected a lot of work and fast deadlines, but I never imagined it would prevent me from posting here as well.

Therefore, there won’t be much happening here for awhile. If you love reggae and dancehall music, feel free to check out my personal site:

www.MolliFire.com/culture/

I don’t talk much over there, but I’ve been posting photos that I took at numerous reggae festivals and concerts this year. I also re-post a lot of reggae/dancehall/grime/dub stuff I find around the web as a way of compiling research for my next book and links into one place. I’m working on a new book about reggae culture worldwide and its influence on grime, rap, drum n bass, digidub, etc. so that site is helping me organize info.

Of course, if it’s music news, reviews and audio that you’re looking for, be sure to check out MOG.com. Numerous bloggers post about almost every kind over there, not to mention the numerous blogs that are part of MOG’s Music Network.

MOG.com

I’m not interested in retiring this site, so I will post here again someday. But with everything going on in the world right now, both good and bad, this site just isn’t a priority at the moment.
Thanks for all the love and support thus far! Stay strong!

The halt in new content here is congruous with how busy I’ve been in the “real world” lately. Last weekend, I had a BLAST at the CaribbSumFest in Long Beach. I snapped some of the most exquisite photos of my career with my new Fuji SLR digicam which I’m now in lOve with. I’ll post those as soon as I get them organized. Also, I uploaded pix from the Dizzee Rascal concert. If you missed the post before this one, jump over there to see the photo stream from my flickr…

Coming up this weekend, I’ll be swooning over Sizzla, Turbulence and Elephant Man at the Seabreeze Festival. So if you’re near Long Beach on Saturday, drop by and say hi. I’ll be in the photo pit again with my Fujifilm, so you can live vicariously wherever you are as soon as I upload the pix.

I wish I could say that things will return to “normal” around here after that, but I think it might be awhile. I’ll probably have to reduce the number of news posts and focus on feature articles with more substance. I just cut my hours at MOG this month, but it’s to make time for school. I haven’t taken more than 1 class at a time for years, so I’m actually pretty excited about it! The classes are journalism related, so I may use this space to explore homework themes or post photo projects. It should be interesting at least. Not sure what this site will be like for the rest of 2008, but I know I won’t abandon it any time soon. I only wish I could incorporate more than music into this space. In the winter, all I really want to talk about is snowboarding and come Spring, I’ll be trying to wrap up work on a new Dancehall/Dub/Jungle/more Scrapbook so it can be published before Thanksgiving.

As you can see, it’s a busy year for up and coming historians like myself. So much to experience, document, hone, tailor, process, upload and present for public perusal. I’m loving every minute of it, so something good has got to come of it.

Maybe I need a personal assistant who works for coffee and sugar highs? Or maybe I just need to outsource some of the stuff I shouldn’t be stuck on, like website overhauls. If you have any suggestions, feel free to email me. Otherwise, sit back and enjoy a nice fat blunt. You deserve it! Lighta!!!!

July is going to be a bangin month around here, I have a tidal wave of great content to start posting here! I’m back from one of the BEST MUTANT FESTS EVER and I’m feeling super jazzed about this summer. I have a stack of killer albums on rotation that I’m trying to review as quickly as possible, I’m finally catching up on all the concert reviews of the last 6 months and I finally started using my flickr account. BIG TINGS!
([More →])

New tradition here at HearingTest - Starting today, I am publishing raw press releases as I receive them. Ideally, this will deliver the breaking news to you faster, without the frills that take extra time and delay publishing.

You Can See The Difference In A Glance

The press releases look different than the articles I write (at least on the site they do), so it will be easy to tell them apart at a glance. The headline for press releases end with [Press Release] and the URL has -pr at the end. Also, the text of press releases are enclosed in blockquotes, shown here in dark brown. That way, you can tell just by looking at the page whether it is a press release or original content.

Now it won’t be so quiet around here when I’m busy doing interviews and writing feature articles!
Enjoy!

It’s been too long since I posted here! Hopefully the lack of new content has given y’all a chance to dig through the archives, coz there’s a LOT of great stuff in there. I still add new tunes to the player every week, so be sure to check that out regularly. This site is just over a year old, but it’s been a crazy busy year. I’ll do my best to get some news up here this week and next, but things are going to stay quiet until the end of June. - Sorry about that - June is the biggest month of the year for me personally and professionally. This year, it’s straight festivals every weekend and trying to maintain my 9-5 M-F while writing the follow up to the Reggae Scrapbook in my “free time”. Whew! But the real reason I haven’t been writing and posting about all of it is because I’ve been toiling away behind the curtain to bring you some SUPER FLY new features! Oh I can’t wait to launch the improved music page, it’s gonna be the coolest thing on the web! (In my humble opinion,yes…)

Anyway, I’ll be reporting live from the Harmony Festival this weekend in Santa Rosa, Cali, then I’ll be away from internet and cell phone coverage for a full week at the Autonomous Mutant Festival! Half work, half vacation, it’s the best week of the whole year for me, so I’m very excited. After that, I’m gonna try to hit the SNWMF coz BUJU is playing! That’s going to be so hot! I’ll be interviewing loads of fantastic musicians every weekend, so when I recover in July, there will be a tsunami of great stories to upload.

Drop me a line if you’ll be at any of these festivals. Perhaps we can combine our super powers on some project! Keep checking the music player for fresh tunes every week and get ready for the wave of great posts that will be uploaded at the end of this month. BIG TINGS A GWA’AN!!
Bless Up!

Hello fabulous music fans! Despite the pause in posts lately, I have been moving and shaking some exciting things in the “real” world around me. I am sooooooOOO sorry that I haven’t posted anything in the last week. I have been *INSANEly* busy - with my FT job at MOG, weekly phone interviews (in my “free time”) and updating wordpress to keep this site running safely and smoothly for all. I’ve actually been quite dedicated to this site since the last post, you just can’t see the results yet. (Unless you are a code monkey/wp user and you actually do see the tiny differences!)

BIG TINGS -

• I interviewed Elephant Man last week and Richie Spice today. I’m in the middle of transcribing them both and hope to have both articles finished soon. I’m pretty excited about their responses and it was loads of fun talking to both of them! In addition to discussing their new albums, both singers also opened up to me about what they think of ragga-jungle music, their messages to the street soldiers and everyone struggling with the pressures of modern living, and oh-so-much-more!
• I am almost finished with a concert review of the wonderful Mad Professor show in SF last month. He made me DUB CRAZY!!! and it’s taking awhile to recover enuff to talk about it…
• we had a mad mad mad mad show inna di underground last weekend - DJ Donna Summer killlled the dancefloor and got to hang out with his biggest fans in the world. needless to say, he charmed everyone socially and musically and some kids left with the biggest perma-grins on their face!
• Grand Theft Auto IV is almost out and it looks amazing! I promised we would celebrate the 10th anniversary of the GTA series with a special mini-series and we will! I’ll post up the other 3 trailers ASAP.
• and lots more too. i totally need an assistant to help document half of what i’d like to be publishing here. so thanks for being so patient and totally rad!

If you want to stay up-to-the-minute with fresh music news Monday thru Friday, then subscribe to my MOG page:

MOG.com/MolliFire

My job there changes regularly, but news is always at the foundation. Since I post there daily during the week, it is always fresh and breaking news. This site (MusicNewsCulture.com) is more of an artistic journal with magazine stylings and feature articles. Therefore, I can’t always keep up with the latest news here. But, if you were to combine the 2 sites, you’d be very well informed!

Thank you for every word you’ve read and every comment you’ve made on HearingTest!!!
Thanks also for every email you sent me! These 3 things keep me going during life’s darker hours!

Anyone who visits the HearingTest website this weekend will probably notice that some things look weird, some things act broken and so forth. Sorry about the construction zone vibe over here! I’m doing some major remodeling on the website this weekend, and since it won’t hurt anyone, I’ll be breaking things and trying to fix them proper. I apologize for the lag in fresh content while I’ve been a code-monkey. I hope you enjoy the new toys and features that are appearing (and disappearing) this week. The most noticeable changes are with the audio player: I’ve already made a few different playlists to help sort the audio into like piles. This feature is going to stay and get much cooler as I insert new tracks into the system. I also tidied up the code (a LOT) and fixed some things that just looked stupid (like the footer). I’ll be adding things and playing around with other things all week until I get everything just right. Then I’m going snowboarding for a week without my computer! Hopefully I will finish lots of fun stuff for you to explore while I’m gone….

If you find things that don’t work or look messed up - Please let me know! You can leave comments about it or email me. I’ll do my best to fix anything broken if I know about it!

Have a great weekend and don’t forget to Spring Ahead for daylight savings (if you practice that in your region)!
~Enjoy your web quests~
Mo FIRE!

New year = New TUNES!! I updated the music player in the left sidebar with all new tunes for 2008. There’s an absolutely trippy new Erykah Badu song, a great grime remix with Mumdance and Jammer, some Bassline yumminess and more. I’ll be adding more very soon. It’s been a chaotic few weeks at the ([HT]) HQ as far as internet technology goes. First we lost our DSL for 2 weeks, then the server was half-way down. Luckily, the website worked ok for most of it, but I haven’t been able to upload audio and video all this time, so things really slowed down. It seems we are back in action now, so expect onslaughts of multimedia in the coming weeks.

I’m also putting the finishing touches on a new concert review for the Eek-A-Mouse and Pato Banton concert in SF this month. That will definitely be published this week, so check back or subscribe to the RSS feed.

Also, you might notice that the menu at the top of the page has changed slightly to squeeze in a link for concert reviews. Now there is a channel dedicated to multimedia concert reviews and the link is at the top of every page.

Thanks for reading!!
What are you listening to this month?

For reasons beyond my control, I am forced to relive 1992 on the internet. That’s right, my high-speed DSL has transformed into a dial-up connection until the end of next week. I am barely suffering through the 8 hours per day that I spend online working for MOG, so by the time I “get home from work” I just don’t have any energy or patience left for “blogging.” But there is a silver lining to all of this! I have been trying to highlight the links to related content that exist in the footer of each page on HearingTest and this is a great week for them to shine!
I may not be uploading or posting much over the next week, but I will add links to that list daily. Basically, they are bookmarks to articles written on other websites that either relate to the articles published here, or are updates to stories that were reported here. Since I don’t have time to write up every news story or interesting thing that I come across, I bookmark the ones I don’t cover. And sometimes someone has already said it best and there is no reason to write something new, so I like to link to the original story instead. So definitely keep an eye on those links, especially anytime you are waiting for HT to be updated.

Just scroll down to the bottom of the page and look for the list titled “More Music News Links”. It’s a del.icio.us bookmark list called RobotArmy, so anyone can subscribe to the RSS for the list. Just click on the title above the list and it will take you the del.icio.us page with all the articles ever bookmarked by me and my Robot Army.

Sorry for the delay in feature articles and news updates here this week! No one is more anxious for them to return to normal than I am… Enjoy the bookmarks!

It’s winter! Even sunny California has been experiencing bitter cold temperatures, while the Sierra mountain range has been getting tons of fresh fluffy snow! I’m so excited I might explode. The slopes where I like to snowboard have gotten loads of early-season snow and it’s shaping up to be one of the best winters in years for riding.
Meanwhile, most of the world is celebrating some holiday or another. You can probably tell from the number of updates here that I’ve been on holiday, but I’ve been working hard on an end of the year list to share with you. I finally finished compiling multiple lists of the best tunes of 2007 and now I’m just polishing up the audio playlists. Tomorrow (December 27th) I will publish the Top Ranking Tunes of 2007 with audio just in time for you to put the finishing touches on your end-of-the-year shopping list. I hope everyone enjoyed a bountiful holiday with loved ones (even if you spent it alone! One must love thyself!) and I hope to see you out on the slopes soon!

Tune In Tomorrow for 2007’s Top Rankin Tunes!
Thanks for reading ([HearingTest])!

New this week at ([HearingTest]) - Artist Pages -
At the end of each article (from now on) you will find links for Artist Pages. These will take you to a page that lists all the articles, videos, audio etc. for the artist the page is about. I’ve just started the process, so only stories from the last 2 months are included right now. But if you jump down to the footer of an Artist Page, you will see a list of the last 9 or so articles published on ([HT]) about that artist.

It’s a work in progress, but I wanted you to know what those links are. Now you can follow everything written about any one band or artist. You can also use the search function, but I’ve noticed the results are less specific…

~Enjoy!~

Once again, there are new episodes of Dubplate Drama and The Boondocks up. Just click over to videos for the links…

There’s new episodes of Dubplate Drama and The Boondocks up now. Just jump over to the HearingTest video page for the links. Also, I spent some time this weekend fixing the layout and design of the site. So while there isn’t as much new content today, the content that is here is much more pleasant to view.
Enjoy!

Aaaaaahhhhh, nothing like a long weekend to reboot the ol’ relax-o-meter… I’m not big on celebrating the supper that kicked off 500 years of occupation and genocide, a.k.a. Thanksgiving holiday in amerika. However, I do celebrate extra long weekends any chance I get! Turkey Thursday was my first real day off since Mutant Fest in June, so I had some hardcore chillin to catch up on… I started with a few comic books, a Metalocalypse marathon, spinning records for hours and watching old music videos. Escaping into alternate realities eventually led to deeper explorations of my own world - messing with my live gear, pondering life/work/existence/snow conditions, making mixtapes, etc.
Ahhh, this is the amerikan dream in action right here - the 4 day weekend!

This is the reason why not much changed on HearingTest over the weekend. It also explains why I am about to post a few blast-from-the-past type rewinds in addition to the usual forwarding of fresh news content. Now get ready for something old, something new, something remixed and Mr. T’s modded warrior class is blue! Stay tuned for some delightful sounds to Test Yr Hearing on!

How was yr weekend? Did you celebrate Buy Nothing Day in style? Any crazy turducken stories? Gather round the comment campfire if you have a story to tell!

Iz been a minnit since I was able to publish anything on HearingTest. It’s been a crAzy week and all - my book just been published, the Vex’d show on Friday night was insane, over the weekend we had non-stop back2back performances from Aaron Spectre (aka Drumcorps) and Duran Duran Duran, not to mention just visiting with them and sittin round the fire… From Friday until Monday morning I was dancing in front of a different stack of speakers every night, so I might be half deaf now (but I DO wear earplugs and so should you!) It’s been a full week of the kind of moments I live for, totally blissful, I wish it never had to end. But here it is Wednesday and I’m just starting to wake up and get back to work. Sorry about the interruption, I’ll try to make it up with a flurry of new stuff and hopefully some pix from the parties. If all goes well, here’s wot’s comin up soon -

And who knows what else, we’ll see.

If all dun go right, I’ll be curled up in front of the tellie watching Dubplate Drama marathons. I’m positively addicted to that show!
Anyway, anyway, anyway, be back inna minnit with some fresh content. If nothing else, I’ll embed the DD episodes here so you can watch along with me…

Meanwhile, what were you for Halloween? Got any pix? I went as Ali G, but I forgot to snap a pic. Me being a gal and all, I totally fooled all my friends. It was hilarious and so much fun not being recognized!