This past weekend we were able to go out and attend the Sweetlife Festival being held at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD on May 10, 2014.

The 4th annual music festival and healthy lifestyle event has grown quite a bit from it's beginnings in the Georgetown area of D.C.  And with that exponential growth, there was a mixture of good and not so good with a few things during the day's happenings.


Good/Great Things:

  • The Diversity of Acts on Deck: From Dance and EDM sonics to Rock grooves to Hip-Hop beats on the indie and major label ends, each of the 3 stages had enough going on to find something folks were interested in hearing.

    And (happily) damn near everyone did a decent to stand up as hell job in performing (well, at least at the "dance in some way, shape or form" Treehouse Stage where I camped out from 2 pm until closing).
  • Ease of Transportation Getting To The Location: The private Rock & Bus service,  various shuttles, the MARC train and Howard County Transit ran relatively smoothly that Saturday, so it wasn't too bad getting to the concert venue at all via public transportation.

    Even folks who drove in weren't complaining too much about getting parking and directions to the action, which is a rarity.
  • Food Trucks & Samples of Eats Galore: Thank the Higher Power for those being out there along with Merriweather Post Pavilion's regular food selections to keep things pretty straight price & selection wise, from vegan treats to delicious health wrecking amazing monstrosities (Astro Donuts' Chicken BLT - great for everything except a waistline unless you exercise).

    Also, there were enough companies giving out decent snack samples to keep folks from starving throughout the 10+  hour day if you felt like being tight with your wallet.


Not So Good/Oh NO Things:
  • Some of the Audience: Perhaps I only dealt with relatively decent festival audiences throughout the years at events such as CMJ, North by Northeast and such, but I never ran into the stereotypical "we f***ing HATE jackass music festival hipster" types en masse until I went to this event.
    There were entirely too many people at Sweetlife trying to preen for a future VICE Magazine "Yes/No" fashion column, extremely rude young women (shoving like a blind herd of buffalo isn't going to get you up to the front row but a short person's elbow to the kidney), beer boozy dudebros galore and I'm sure so many poor flower families mourning their children's fate of being placed upon the heads of pseudo hippies.   

    While the acts were diverse, the crowd definitely WASN'T, which is a shame especially since the tickets for the event weren't too crazy.  There was enough Billboard Top 100 & up and coming musicians that deserved more of a balanced non-monochrome audience to perform to.
  • Too many folks in said majority monochrome crowd being a tad TOO happy chanting 2 Chainz "REAL N****A ALERT" line during his performance: ...yeah. Not too beat for that.
  • $6 Lemonade, $8 French Fries: WHUT.  I like Boardwalk Fries like everyone else but seriously...No.
  • Random A** Rain: Granted, this was nothing anyone had control over, but it was not awesome around the last end of the festival when the skies opened up and hit folks with heavy showers, getting people good and soaked on the way out of the event.

Overall, I mostly had a pretty good time at the Sweetlife Festival. 

Besides learning about some quality musicians I wasn't familiar with (the really talented EDM/House/Dance crews of ASTRCapital Cities where folks could actually sing, dance crazy hard and play instruments while bringing the fun), it was easy to get into the groove with others I listened to briefly beforehand (St. Lucia, who I definitely now see why they're damn near at every summer festival in 2014 thus far with their lively brand of Dance Rock), peep new age vets who did OK (rapper 2 Chainz, who came as a duo with his DJ and inadvertently made me feel old for asking "Who knows about Playaz Circle?" and the mostly below 23 crowd being silent as hell) and discovering folks who I already liked also have an  AWESOME stage how (Chromeo, who, Holy Crap, pulled out all the stops).

Hopefully, the event will keep on going and growing while promoting a solid lineup of acts to a  more diverse audience of music listeners that transcends the boundaries of mainstream radio station advertising/marketing demographics.

Hope that everyone dug the mini-review and enjoy all of the pictures of the performers, scenery and crowd on display from the Sweetlife Festival below! :) - DJ Fusion (FuseBox Radio Broadcast) 

 ** All pictures taken by Mary Nichols (DJ Fusion/FuseBox Radio Broadcast) under a "Creative Commons Attribution - No Derivatives" license. Please feel free to use & share them if you wish with attribution/credit to the photographer (besides these pictures, more our at the official FuseBox Radio Broadcast's Flickr Page and Behance/Prosite Page) ... thank you! **


Sweetlife Festival Audience:







ASTR:




St. Lucia:






Capital Cities:








2 Chainz:






Chromeo:












Player (via Podomatic feed):


Direct mp3 Download (right click and "save as")

This is the latest episode of the syndicated FuseBox Radio Broadcast with DJ Fusion & Jon Judah (aka Ausar Ra Black Hawk) for the week of May 7, 2014 (originally broadcast for weeks of Nov. 7 & 14, 2013) with some new and classic music from the international Black Diaspora, news and commentary.



Our commentary for this week's show focused on a recent study talking about the U.S. federal prison population exploding mainly due to drug offenses, Toronto mayor Rob Ford finally confessing to smoking crack, the Grandmaster Jay controversy amongst DJs & the Hip-Hop music community, our view on this year's "Black Girls Rock" awards show on BET, Blockbuster Video on it's last legs, VH1's movie on 1990s R&B/Pop Group TLC, "CrazySexyCool" and some other things here & there.

There is a brand new Black Agenda Report news mini-segment on this week's episode.

Feel free to check out some recent episodes of the syndicated FuseBox Radio Broadcast over at our official blog, BlackRadioIsBack.com - all of the shows are clean/radio friendly. 

FuseBox Radio Playlist for the Week of May 7, 2014 (originally broadcast for weeks of Nov. 7 & 14, 2013)

Top Adds (New Joints Played Live On This Week's Broadcast) [listed by artist/song title/label(s)]

1. Robert Glasper Experiment feat. Dwele/No Worries/Blue Note 
2. Action Bronson/It's Me/ActionBronson.com 
3. Asheru/Funky DC/Guerrilla Arts Ink 
4. Currensy & Smoke DZA/First Light/CurrensySpitta.com 
5. Big Sant feat. Nickelus F., Michael Millions & Francois/Champion/BigSant.com 
6. Baloji & L'Orchestre De La Katuba feat. Kuku/Buy Africa/Knitting Factory & Red Hot 
7. Termanology feat. N.O.R.E./Judo/ST. & Brick Records 
8. Latryx feat. Zion-I/It's Time/Latrymid

Top Spins (Music Still Lasting in Rotation/Music Played Live on Air Each Week/As Well As Music Requested By The Listeners) [listed by artist/song title/label(s)]

1. Deep Cotton/We're Far Enough from Heaven/Wondaland Arts Society (Played Live) 
2. Black Milk feat. Black Thought/Codes & Cab Fare/Fat Beats & Computer Ugly Records (Played Live) 
3. Dom Kennedy/The 5 Year Theory (Real Last Shit)/ The Other Peoples Money Company (Played Live) 
4. Morcheeba/Face of Danger/PIAS (Played Live) 
5. Boog Brown/Window's Open/Soulspazm Records (Played Live) 
6. The Immortals Project feat. El Da Sensei/Affirmative Action/Shining Shadow (Played Live) 
7. Janelle Monae/Ghetto Woman/Atlantic (Top Song Requested) 
8. Amerigo Gazaway/Chomeo x Joe Bataan x BoLabtekwon/Soul Dance/Ankhba.com (Top Song Requested) 
9. Phil Ade feat. Raheem DeVaughn & Dee Boy/Simply Beautiful/368 Music Group (Top Song Requested) 
10. tUnE-yArDs, ?estlove, Angelique Kidjo & Akua Naru/Lady/Knitting Factory & Red Hot (Top Song Requested) 
11. Deltron 3030 feat. Zack De La Rocha/Melding of the Minds/Bulk Recordings (Top Song Requested) 
12. Kev Brown/Bela Musica/Low Budget & Redefinition Records (Top Song Requested) 
13. Boldy James/Bold/Def Jam (Top Song Requested) 
14. Ghetto Concept/EZ On a Motion/Groove A Lot Records (Top Song Requested) 
15. Constant Deviants/Eventually/Six2Six Records (Top Song Requested) 
16. Tableek (of Maspyke)/Game Over (inst.)/Burnt Berry Music (Top Song Requested) 
17. Mayer Hawthorne/Wine Glass Woman/Republic Records (Top Song Requested) 
18. Gil Scott-Heron/A Place For You (Doctor L RMX)EnmemeTemps.com (Top Song Requested) 
19. The Stepkids/Moving Pictures/Stones Throw (Top Song Requested) 
20. Dan-e-o/Immortal/URBNET (Top Song Requested) 
21. Little Boots/Satellite (Urulu RMX)/On Repeat Records (Top Song Requested) 
22. Stalley/Feel The Bass/MMG (Top Song Requested) 
23. The Underachievers/Melody of the Free/ElevatedNations.com (Top Song Requested) 
24. Theo Parrish/Jupiter/Snow Dog Records (Top Song Requested) 
25. Buju Banton/Monday Morning/Penthouse Records (Top Song Requested)

DJ Fusion Flashback Tracks:

GZA feat. Method Man/Shadowboxin'/Geffen & MCA

PLUS Some Extra Special Hidden Tracks in the Ausar Ra Black Hawk Master Mix w/ Old School Black Music Classics and Independent Music Finds

PLUS Some Extra Special Hidden Tracks in the Jon Judah (aka Ausar Ra Black Hawk) Master Mix w/ Old School Black Music Classics and Independent Music Finds

Current FuseBox Radio Broadcast Radio & Internet Affiliates


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The FuseBox Radio Broadcast and BlackRadioIsBack.com family had the pleasure of covering some great professional mixed martial arts (MMA) matches at Bellator 118 on Friday, May 2, 2014 at Revel Casino & Hotel in Atlantic City, NJ.

Here are some pictures taken during all of the powerful sports action (from punches to grappling to throwdowns and more - there were long fights to literal knockouts in SECONDS that evening in preliminary and main cards) throughout the various bouts by Mary Nichols (DJ Fusion) of the syndicated FuseBox Radio Broadcast. 

Hope that you enjoy all of the great athletic talents on display in these photos! :)
 - DJ Fusion (FuseBox Radio Broadcast) 

 ** All pictures taken by Mary Nichols (DJ Fusion/FuseBox Radio Broadcast) under a "Creative Commons Attribution - No Derivatives" license. Please feel free to use & share them if you wish with attribution to the photographer...thank you! **











































Bonus Video: Bjorn Rebney Bellator 118 Post Fight Scrum (via The MMA Report)