Author: nikkie

From an early age, music has been an influential force in Nikkiesha’s life. From the time they discovered Michael Jackson and wanted to sing and break dance like the King of Pop, to being so consumed that Nikkiesha and their siblings performed talent shows in their living room while their parents were both audience and judges, they knew the importance of music. Nikkiesha (Nikkie) grew up with music around them! In addition to countless talent shows, their home was literally seconds away from a panyard - Panosonic Connection Steel band Orchestra’s panyard. On many late nights, when they should have been asleep, Nikkie’s parents would find the seven year old perched at their bedroom’s window listening to the orchestra practice for the largest steelpan competition in the world: Panorama. Nikkie’s older brother played the tenor pan for the orchestra. It was witnessing their brother practice which ignited their mesmerized obsession with the instrument. Nikkie took any opportunity to try and play the song their brother was practicing. They didn't care how much noise they made, or how many times they got into trouble for beating their brother’s tenor pan. Nikkie couldn't resist the pan’s allure. Their love and passion for the steel-pan never died after the age of seven, as twelve year old Nikkie, determined to be a part of the steel-pan culture, began running away to the panyard, and giving the rehearsal director hell - picking up the orchestra’s panists’ sticks and beating any of the unattended steel-pans. At the time, they were unaware of the difference between beating and playing the pan or any other percussive instrument. The rehearsal director started them off on the Gurndig - better known as the Double Guitar. The Gurndig is similar to the rhythm guitar in a rock band. He told Nikkie if they can learn and master how to play the Gurndig well, they could then move onto their desired pan: the shiny chrome tenor, the soprano, the lead pan in the orchestra. Knowing they weren’t going to stop running away to Panosonic's panyard, Nikkie’s dad decided to become the orchestra's manager. As Nikkie got older, they began listening to R&B, Blues, Jazz, Rap/Hip-Hop and Rock music. To their great enthusiasm to hear and experience different forms of music, after migrating to the US, Nikkie was exposed to sub-genres and even more diverse sounds. Inspired they began to play different instruments: acoustic guitar, the congas, and the drum-kit. Eventually spending more time behind the drum-kit, Nikkie began playing with various rock and punk groups. Most notable, the woman fronted rock trio Telenovela Star whose single, "Car Song" was the theme music for The N Channel’s Beyond The Break. After many years of playing behind the drum-kit, Nikkiesha is bringing all that they have learned to create and produce their first album, which is a tribute to their late mother and brother.

Drifted Far from my Constitution

There’s a mad woman yelling in front of this town hall
without any windows left, she’s been yelling about
how much she loves her lover. Driven by the memory
of her 17 years of laughter, she works harder to plea to the tourist.

Some of us aspire to greater endeavors, but most of us just
want to come home to the one that we love, building words
like tetris, too slow down the time shoot, trap hole.

There’s a mad woman yelling in front of the financial district
she’s been yelling about how her lover left her with nine children
I wonder why, or where is the Seven Day Adventist to save her
they weren’t at this location,  and there wasn’t anything left
after 17 years of her marriage, there wasn’t anything left…

Juniper Tree

I needed more than a juniper tree
the sky above as you picture it
beautiful with a temperament of your eyes
a light gasping poor renditions of blue
hazy, and trapped in a pixel-ness of time
we wonder in circles, why a juniper?
You never needed me, as I sit drunken
singing a tune I already know, never gonna love you
breeze through the curtains as a new sardonicism
I’m singing your seduction, lighting up after each one
of your words, syllables that I’m addicted too
when the sky is bluer than the color of your eyes
when you say to me why you can’t love me
vulgar than the ocean’s occasional fucked-up clouding
better than, further than the obstacles you present.

Gypsy Sting

Nothing makes you ready for failure
not even a parachute you prepared
all the trial runs of how it would turn out
doesn’t really get you ready for the shock
of your body slamming against the concrete
your heart beating broken again and again
but all you have left is your intuition for
for when the even breaks, when the downpour
swallows you whole, and you think you’re drowning.

Form

Tonight I rein, and I sing
I sing everything:

but of course I can’t rain a remembrance 
remind you of the causality of feeling

preposterous happening
with its porcupine fingertips

pricking you up the spine so you can’t walk
or brood over the thick…

I sang today, just for you
because I felt the night’s reign

I felt the night pouring on me
beating on my face with its torment

when all you can be blinded by
a tragic composition of seeing

deceptive form, running wild
with euphemistic murder

Synthesis

Another month has gone
wondering how much it would add to exile
banishment from this world
that I’ve created myself around…

As I nakedly dance with the birds’ merriment
on certain days, when I feel like it
when I don’t remember the cost of my translation.

Add it to my displacement tab please
as I yell and scream for something better
my friends are now acquaintances
since they know not how to measure time spent versus time left.

My potential has been broken
over-worked and wasted
I am too old for change or malleability
now fear surrounds my eyelids
giving them a terrible embarkment upon age
premature wrinkles cloud my synthesis.

Broad Strokes

Last month I did my radio show, Broad Strokes, on Washington Heights Free Radio (WHFR), and it was a blast!  I was so relaxed, and perhaps even funny. 

I really enjoyed the playlist I came up with.  I think it’s probably one of my best. 

Anyway, this show is dedicated to Paul Squires, an amazing poet and friend who passed away recently.  Miss you Paul, you were the lantern in the darkness. 

Read his blog, it’s amazing.  

You can listen to the me, Dj Calypso Sally, here: Broad Strokes.

Bringing you stories, live events, and much more, WHFR tries and remains independent of any corporate sponsorship.  So, if you like what WHFR is doing, you can donate by contacting us at info@whfr.org.  DIY forever baby! 

Here’s the Playlist:

Love Me Girl by Yeasayer
Turn It Up Prod. Supa Koopa by Epsilon Project
Ni Una Sol Vez by Spouse
Chase the Tear by Portishead
D.A.N.C.E by Justice
Living in America by Dom
Before Your Birthday Ends by Suckers
Let Love by Res
It Is Not Meant to Be by Tame Impala
Subterfuge by Magnetic Island
Tin Man by Future Islands
Cloudy Shoes by Damien Jurado
Reminiscences by Ariel Pink Haunted Graffiti
Never Gonna Give You Up by The Black Keys
Infatuation by The Rapture

I will be on the air again this coming Wednesday, August 25 at 8:00 p.m. with the band, The Boy With the Ice-Cream Face.  The name of this band reminds me of a William Carlos Williams poem: The Red Wheelbarrow

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

 

 

 

Boy with the Ice-Cream Face will be playing a live acoustic set, so check it out.

Also, if you’re in a band or know someone who is, and would like to be on the show, please email me at roarplanet@gmail.com.

Shadow Box

With your, I think about every scenerio
my mind is big, and therefore I think…
Do you have a shadow box? Even as
when the morning is bright?
And what do you do with it ?
Have you ever wondered what if you
were asked to dance naked in front of
well… friends, would you ever try to be yourself
in front of a narrow mirror?

Victim D

I needed the darkness
through these lamp pool nights

a dark, an a eclipse
chasing silhouettes goodnight
through this sprawling surface of limbed shadows

like my plant on my windowsill, courageously it will survive
too much light cooking its green leaves brown, it screams a wonder
what if my existence depended not on the sun, a star, nor the light from the moon?

Keeping owl hours, like a demon of the bats battering in the night
I need the darkness from this artificial light. 

.

Hidden Place

hide me, most vulnerable self
so no one can see, including you
my tinyest of cocksure that tries to mend into you

remarkable it says
tells me how I should be
because I’m invisible to the everyday taunts.

A Friend I Wanted to Know

Even as I post a shitty poem, you were still there to support me. I wondered why you cared so much, but I realized it was your love of words that made you so apt to the nonsensical. I miss you Paul. I miss your fantabulous way of expressing the mundane, making it seem electric and so vivid. I miss your counsel, and your rebelliousness. Paul, you left too soon because there is so much to still learn from you.

The Nurse

I turn my head slowly over my shoulder, just so I can catch her doing something else: unbuttoning her white clean uniform, maybe.  Because she is kind of hot, or maybe I’ve spent so much time in here that anyone becomes hot.  And she is there, sitting in white clean clothes, in this fluorescent white padded room with no windows.  In freshly pressed clothes, with clear stockings on, and clean white shoes, she has a clipboard that she keeps a record.  Jotting down every time I look back from my corner.  Where I’m sitting, I’m dressed in red and black plaid and dark blue jeans.  Barefoot, I tap to an unknown beat as the room only gathers her, just her scribbles.  Buying time, I’m sitting at a desk with stab wounds for graffiti, typing to a ghost.

Inside my Terrane

You couldn’t possibly know how much you mean to me
you couldn’t possibly know, even as I try to tell you
limited by the expression of a syntax, I’m left with a lisp
trying to pronounce joy.  I’m only a jester with failing hands
a useless mime, forever maimed by the unforgiving allusion 
the imagination of life without you.

This Condition

Back to nought, an empty barrel for a frame
an additive identity for a familar existence
drifting aimlessly in the maddening sea
on a shore that waves lonely a dance back and forth
with a disparaging sequestration, a stumbling knot of nobody
if only zero plus something equaled an upheaval  from the
nothing not, a step from annihilation, a small remedy for the forlorn past.

Ghost

It’s terrible being alone when what you want, the one you want, doesn’t want you.
It’s terrible being alone when all you’re stuck on is the last time you saw her dance
dreamy, she makes you laugh when nothing does anymore, and your shoulders are relaxed. 
It’s terrible being alone when you have to wait in line for the one thing that makes you forget.
It’s terrible being alone as you write about your ghost, as hope with its glory pines away.

Reach

I’m not quite sure of how I ended up at the latter end of the stick
maybe it’s in my genes to seek out pain, because what I reach for is far beyond my fingertips.
Isn’t that what it’s all about: living beyond the mean existence: towards infinity?
Isn’t it there, in those preposterous parallel lines reaching for something better than this point of survival
isn’t it there that we meet? Doesn’t settling for the first thing that is within your touch a mute of your mind?

Broad Strokes with Calypso Sally on WHFR

Last month, my radio show, Broad Strokes, streamed live off the web on  Washington Heights Free Radio (WHFR).  Despite my obvious nervousness,  the show went well.

For those of you that don’t know,  I have a radio show and it’s called Broad Strokes, and it streams live off the web every last Wednesday of the month at a new time 8:00pm.

I, Calypso Sally, that’s me, try to play a broad range of genres, stretching from indie rock, pop, alternative, noise rock, hip hop, reggae, dance hall, metal, calypso, funk etc.  It’s sort of a mixed bag.  I also have live acoustic performances.

Speaking of live performances, the indie rock trio Coyote Eyes will be playing a live set on Broad Strokes next Wednesday, June 30, at 8:00pm.  Check it out.

Last month’s Playlist, and listen here:

They Built a City In My Country Mind by Pet Ghost Project
I Don’t Love You No More by Kings Go Forth
Tigallo For Dolo by Little Brother
Promises by The Morning Benders
Tales of Stage Fright by Pet Ghost Project
Forced to Love by Broken Social Scene
Do it Again by Galactic
Electric Car, Gas Guitar by Dinowalrus
Chrome Depot Freestyle Blade Mix by Apathy
Medula Oblongata by Buke & Gass
Yellow Red by Coyote Eyes
The Greatest Light is the Greatest Shade  by The Joy Formidable
Cataract by White Hinterland
Anyone’s Ghost by The National
See it All by Fink
Peripatetic by Pet Ghost Project

Bringing you stories, live events, and much more, WHFR tries and remains independent of any corporate sponsorship.  So, if you like what WHFR is doing, you can donate by contacting them at info@whfr.org.  DIY forever baby!

If you’re in a band or you know a band and or singer/song writer that would like to do a show, contact me at: roarplanet@gmail.com.

Subterfuge

I’ve been working with Magnetic Island, an exprimental, indie rock band based in NYC, on the single Subterfuge.  

This past week the single premiered on Gimme Tinnitus.  You can check it out here: Subterfuge. 

Not only did I play the drums, and the steelpan on the single, I also sang!

It was so great being back in the recording studio, and playing in general.  Even though at times it was a challenge, I learned so much from the experience.  

Working with Magnetic Island was really refreshing as the sound is completely different from my band Telenovela Star. 

I think the difference is that I was more focused on percision rather than power.  Less concerned with trying to prove how fast I can play or how much agility I have, but more concerned with how to bring out the song, make it tell the story that it’s dying to say. 

Working with these guys also gave me the opportunity to break out my steelpan, which has been sitting in my closet for sometime now, and as well as to sing.  Being brought back to my first instruments, my voice and the steelpan, reminded me of why I desired to be a musician.  I was blown away.  I didn’t realize that I was capable of expressing myself through these other mediums, especially singing.  I realized that I can do more than carry a tune.  I have a voice.  I can sing. 

All in all this was an eye opening experience for me, and I’m thankful to have had the chance to work with such talented, and genuinely remarkable musicians.  They brought out a side of me that was starving to be explored.

Here are some shots of us in The Fort recording studio:

 

Las Vegas

Las Vegas says she’s too afraid, too afraid
my dangerous touch on her delicate skin

made up with precaution, made up of rules to bend
because I ain’t got nothin to lose but the end

Las Vegas says she’s needing someone stable
yet she’s at my ramshackle table with those hungry eyes

with those sweet lips that I brush so, so gently 
tellin me I’m not the one oh Las Vegas

tellin me there’s no wedding moans
behind doors that only just groans   

she’ll leave me, leave me suddenly
my bed early in the dawn will howl for her trace

my danger, my dangerous love
recking reckless will grieve over her midnight kiss.