MAY 22 / 8:00PM
All Ages / Bar w/ID / $12 Advance

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Nectar & Obese Productions Present:

The Grouch
of Living Legends

• Special Guests

THE GROUCH

The Grouch was a founding member of the Living Legends crew, a loose collective of MCs and DJs from the Bay Area, Japan, and Europe. The Living Legends eschewed the gangsta posing that dominated the hip-hop community, especially on the West Coast, in favor of clear-eyed raps about real-life issues. They coupled this with a grassroots approach to the music business, choosing to self-release and market their prodigious output. After forming the Legends crew with Oakland's Mystik Journeymen, Grouch released Don't Talk to Me, his first album, on the Living Legends' label. It would mark the beginning of an incredibly prolific recording schedule that would also find the Grouch doing his own production work. In 1996, he released Nothing Changes on cassette only; it was later remastered and issued on CD. Success Is Destiny and Fuck the Dumb appeared in 1997 and 1998; various singles and EP releases rounded out the decade. It was also around this time that the Legends crew moved its base of operations from Oakland to Los Angeles, where a portion of its membership -- Murs, Scarub, and Eligh -- had originally resided before moving to the Bay Area. In 2000, the Grouch and Eligh issued G & E Music; that same year They Don't Have This arrived, which was widely regarded as the best work of the Grouch's career. Crusader for Justice followed in 2002. It featured instrumental contributions from the Grouch's father, Stu Blank, who played organ and guitar. (Blank, a renowned Bay Area musician, passed away soon after the recording sessions after a battle with skin cancer.) In February of 2003, the Servin' Justice DVD was released, featuring music videos, live footage, and interviews with the Grouch and members of the Living Legends crew.

LIVING LEGENDS

It all started with Sunspot Jonz and Luckyiam.PSC (LuckyIam), who claimed to the name of Mystik Journeymen in the early 1990s. By '94 they already had a huge following from throwing Underground Survivors shows, house party style at their loft - 4001 San Leandro Street in East Oakland. That's where the Grouch hooked up with the Journeymen in 1995, just before they took off on their first European tour. Around the same time in Los Angeles the Log Cabin Crew consisted of several rappers including the 3 Melancholy Gypsys (Scarub, MURS and Eligh.) The Log Cabin Crew later broke up and the Gypsys formed of the three remaining members, who then crossed paths with the Mystik Journeymen to form Living Legends. Aesop Fables came to Oakland from Fresno, Arata and Bicasso is an SLO/Humbolt Co. native. In 1999 the Legends shifted their center of gravity to Los Angeles, but their presence has remained strong in Oakland and throughout the Bay Area. Over the years, the Journeymen and the Legends have rocked Europe, Japan, Australia, Canada, and the USA numerous times. In the years since the Legends have continued releasing solo and crew projects and now have a catalog of over 50 full-length albums and numerous singles. All in all, this crew of motivated diyers has sold over 300,000 albums collectively. New releases keep coming out from this super-group of underground emcees. More and more recognition has been established with the more recent releases of "Legendary Music", and before that "Classic".

LINKS

• The Grouch on MySpace
• Living Legends on MySpace

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