Now would be a good time to think about doing some yard work. Or maybe cleaning out the basement. Or doing anything except reading. ’Cause there’s no other way to say this: This pickings are slimmer than Ariana Grande next week. See for yourself:
DVS Mindz: The Twenty-Year Saga of the Greatest Rap Group to Almost Make It Outta Kansas
By Geoffrey Victor Harkness
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “99.9% of aspiring rappers never make it in the music industry. So why do we only hear the stories of the ones who do? DVS Mindz might be the greatest rap group you’ve never heard of. Formed in Topeka, Kansas, in the mid-1990s, they developed a reputation for ferocious rhyming and frenetic live performances. In their heyday, DVS Mindz released a critically acclaimed CD, received nominations for prestigious awards, and opened for legends such as Wu-Tang Clan, Run-DMC and De La Soul as well as KC icon Tech N9ne. But the group struggled with creative differences, substance abuse, ego battles, and money issues, and they split up in 2003. Geoff Harkness takes readers on a unique two-decade journey alongside the members of DVS Mindz, chronicling their childhoods, their brush with success, and what became of them in the years that followed. Based on more than 100 hours of video and audio recordings from 1999 to 2022, this fly-on-the-wall account offers a backstage pass into the recording studios and radio stations, video shoots and house parties, nightclubs and concert halls of the Kansas City-Lawrence-Topeka music scene circa 2000. DVS Mindz is at once a compulsively readable group biography of four talented MCs, a vibrant voyage through the forgotten history of local hip hop, and a breathtakingly real story of struggling to achieve big dreams.”
On Record – Vol. 1: 1978 / Vol. 2: 1984 / Vol. 3: 1991 | Images, Interviews & Insights From the Year in Music
By G. Brown
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The On Record series is an year-by-year, comprehensive look at the evolution of popular music from 1978 to 1998. Colorado Music Experience founding director and author G. Brown covered popular music at The Denver Post for 26 years, interviewing well over 3,200 musicians, including Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger and Kurt Cobain, all of whom recounted their escapades and reminisced about what their time on the charts meant to them personally and musically. Over the decades, G. also amassed an archive of close to 15,000 rare promotional photos. Each volume of the On Record series presents nearly 200 rare archival images and 100 interviews with an array of performers, from the late Jerry Garcia and Dave Matthews to Bono and Santana. Beautifully crafted, these books belong in the library of every music fan and music institute. Vol. 1 captures classic rockers from Journey to Bruce Springsteen to The Cars, nascent new wavers such as The Police, Talking Heads and The Clash, as well as the year’s greatest releases from rock, R&B, country and jazz stars. Vol. 2 reflects on the biggest artists of the MTV era — Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Huey Lewis, and even “Weird Al” Yankovic — in addition to acts from Van Halen to Prince and the year’s top R&B, alternative, country and jazz releases. Vol. 3 mines the grunge phenomenon from Nirvana to Pearl Jam, the explosion of rap (Public Enemy, Ice Cube), superstars from Garth Brooks to Paula Abdul to Metallica, and a full complement of one-hit wonders and underground sensations.”
