Updates: Procussions re-group / Pigeon John's Relevant Mag Party Performance

UPDATES:

A while back I told you that The Procussions had disbanded. Guess they're back at it again.

Here's the update from Mr. J's MySpace bulletin earlier this week:

The Procussions bout to do another album, Just a tiny note, pass it around! for a ton of reasons we had to split, for a ton more reasons we wana do another album Mr.J.Medeiros (me) and Stro the 89th Key got our solo albums coming out this summer! If you pick these up, they will help to fund the new album!

As of right now we plan on doing this straight, straight, independent, not a c.d. goes out without us signing it and personally putting it in the mail box, this means no stores, no mp3s, just hard raw material for the people who support music they enjoy.no advertising, just word of mouth, and every dime comes out of our own pocket,once we got enough money to eat, then we record the next album!

this will be 100% fan supported music!no more middle man at any level! tired of answering to those fools anyway.i mean really? how do the people who dont even listen to music, control it?shout out to the album burners! music rippers! keep that for the majors, dont screw the family, the personal, the independent one on one musician just trying to live out their career with dignity! we got no room for those people this time around.if you dont have a hard copy, (or if we decide a download) then you aint really in the movement, nah mean?

for the people who never played the bench, THANK YOU for supporting life! we got so much love for you!!!! we would not be able to survive!The Procussions, Mr.J.Medeiros, and Stro the 89th Key, nuff of this hip, quick, culture vulture, take and leave..only concrete movements here.

And remember the "Best Live Show Ever?!?" now we've got video. Check it out below.



Other performances:

• "Life Goes On"
• "Hello Everybody"
• "Welcome to the Show"
• "Identity Crisis"

R.I.P. – The Procussions & CCM Mag

The latest victims of the Internet Revolution – M.B.U. (Music Business Unit) include hip hop band The Procussions and the print version of CCM Magazine.

Thursday afternoon brought the sad news (via MySpace and message boards) that the mighty, mighty Pros were giving up the ghost.

Mr. J pronounced the death with these words in an electronic bulletin to fans and Friends:

with everything we could say about the industry, the point is, piracy will destroy an independent's career.

we want to thank everyone who actually invested in this group and helped it to its last breath! we owe you so much! That’s why Stro and I will do our best to carry on our solo careers and work together when possible.

but.

The procussions have been inevitably shipwrecked, blows taken in the lower deck from the most fierce of all pirates.

love you guys and gals!

Mr. J continued the convo on the Sphere of Hip Hop message boards where he vented and transparently shared his frustrations with the (s)Industry.

Late in ’07 it was announced that Rez had left the band to pursue other interests, so all of this isn’t a complete surprise.

Nonetheless, one of the most talented and musically developed faith-based MC collectives have said they are no more. Please keep their individual members in your prayers.



And on Friday we heard that CCM (Christian Contemporary Music) Magazine's parent company, Salem Publications, decided to stop production on the print version of the Nashville-based rag to focus on the development of its web-based incarnation.

The official statement can be found here.

What’s shocking for those of us in the holy hip hop community is that this isn’t just another gospel rap mag calling it quits (and we’ve seen our share of those come and go).

CCM covered it all from Tooth & Nail hard rock to Jeremy Camp pop to Third Day worship. I mean – they had Micheal W. Smith money! And they still couldn’t make it?!?

This was/is also disturbing because the mag was finally starting to cover more HHH artists and news. (See the cover above that was all about gospel rap and featured GRITS' Bonafied as the guest editor).

Hopefully they'll continue to do that via their website (http://www.ccmmagazine.com/) as we've seen recently with their reprints of info from Rapzilla.com.

In light of these two stories and the USA Today clips from earlier in the month that detailed 2007’s rapid decline of physical album sales, I wonder if there could possibly be anyone left that doesn’t believe this InterWeb thing is changing the music biz.

I guess that's why cats like Listener are resorting to infomercials to ask that you help "Save the CD."