Photo via waitwhat
If you haven’t heard of wait what yet, your playlist is due for an update. Wait what, (aka Columbia alum Charlie Kubal, CC ’08) released his first album last Thursday called The Notorious xx (click for free download), a mash up of Biggie and The xx. It’s caught on: NYMag, Prefix Mag, and the general worldwidewebz have given the mashup their kudos. Charlie, who currently lives in San Fransisco, started out DJing in high school and was once in a band called Jubala. He’s played sets at bars and house parties, but recently has been more into creating new tracks. Here’s what has to say about his music and his time at Columbia.
Columbia’s influence
Columbia played a pretty substantial role for me — I did shows on WBAR for a couple semesters, recorded tracks in my room in McBain, and got to take classes from two of the most awesome music professors you could imagine: Brad Garton and Terry Pender at the Computer Music Center on 125th. ADP and Postcrypt were both really cool venues to check out new music, too.
The Columbia music scene was definitely getting better during my time — there were some awesome artists there: Vampire Weekend obviously leading the pack, but also Supraliminal, The Stolen Cars, Live+Direct, Kane, Reni Laine, Anton Glamb, Farm to Market — lots of people doing really cool stuff.
One thing that’s tough about Columbia is the tendency, that I found, for Columbia kids’ baseline attitude to be to dislike something — there’s a unique brand of hate that Columbia kids tend to have for new things, as if an implicitly negative attitude makes your opinion more compelling. I was guilty of this too, and when the Varsity Show touched on it (my Senior year, so ’08), and it really resonated.
Read more…
The Brooklyn Book Festival is today from 10am ’til 6pm. Many famous literary types will be participating in free events and certainly in attendance, including Columbia prof and poet Tim Donnelly, and Pulitzer Prize winner Jennifer Egan. If you are interested in this blast from the soon to be past, hit up the link above for event listings and directions.
Barnard girls just 
on 
