Hey all, sorry I'm behind schedule again. I went to Monday Night Raw last night. By the way, if you've never been, go.
It's amazing.
OK, for no particular reason, I'm going to dedicate this edition of Old Shit Monday to Latino Rapper of the 1990s.
1) Mellow Man Ace - "Mentirosa" (1990)
This isn't super well-known, but Mellow Man Ace is the brother of Cypress Hill's Sen Dog, and was originally in an early incarnation of Cypress. In '88, Mellow went solo, and when he had huge chart success with "Mentirosa" in 1990, it seemed like he made the right decision.
Perhaps looking back now, Mellow wishes he had stayed in the group.
None the less, "Mentirosa" was the first Top-40 hip-hop song to feature Spanish lyrics, making Mellow Man Ace a bit of a trailblazer.
This video has a little bit of everything: hot dancing girls; a courtroom scene; weird Catholic imagery; sheepskin coats; hats. They need to make more videos like this one.
2) The Beatnuts - "Reign of the Tec" (1993)
I'm not 100% sure what pre-Giuliani New York looked like, but I have a feeling it was probably not unlike this video; a lot of heavily armed sociopaths running around and selling dope.
The Beatnuts are definitely on my list for the greatest rap group of all-time, and are probably number one on my list when it comes to most underrated. This song comes off their debut, Intoxicated Demons, and is interesting because it features The Nuts old three-man line-up, featuring Al-Tariq, then known as Kool Fashion, who found Allah and quit the group in 1995.
Another interesting thing about "Reign of the Tec" is that it would be literally impossible to make this song today. It features a sample from both Brand Nubian and Black Sabbath. There are songs on Demons that sample from five different songs. There is no way a modern rapper could afford the clearance on that many samples, which is sad, because Demons is a super bad-ass album.
3) Lighter Shade of Brown - "Hey DJ" (1994)
OK, first off, you could play that World's Famous Supreme Team sample and attach it to anything, and I'd love it.
Also, the women in this video are stellar. They really could teach a thing or two to the gross, plastic, video hos of today.
And finally, did anyone else notice that this clip is directed by X-Men 2's Brett Ratner? Weird.
I tend to forget how much I like Fat Joe. He's a technically above-average MC, with what I would call a classic, battle-influenced New York flow, heavy with wordplay, metaphors, and punchlines, and when he wants to, he can make some bloodcurdlingly credible threats.
The reason I forget how much I love Joe is that while he's a great MC, he makes a lot of shit. His biggest commercial hit of all-time is still the absolutely terrible "What's Luv?", a duet with that breathy-voiced waste of skin Ashanti and the shirtless wonder, Ja Rule. Every time he makes some incredible, awesome piece of Goodfellas-on-wax type of gangster shit, he seems to have this inexplicable need to balance it out with a rap-ballad or an inane party jam.
"Hey Joe" features Señor Cartagena at his absolute best, and flips a Jimi Hendrix sample to make the chorus. The song has been making the rounds on the web for a couple months, but the video just came out this week.
Oh, and by the way, if MuchMusic showed videos like this one, I would still watch it as religiously as I did when I was 13. Just saying.
OK, while "The Message" is sort of a novelty tune, it does prove my point that "bassline house" and "UK funky house," are basically just re-warmed two-step garage.
It's also a lot of fun.
For those of you who don't quite get what's going on here, UK-based producer/MC Smasher has gathered together some of the better known names of the old UK garage/two-step scene and put them together on one massive reunion track.
(I'm sure he didn't have too hard a time. I can't imagine these guys are very busy these days.)
Is it a collection of old two-step clichés? Yes. Is the video unbelievably budget? Yes.
Do I really like it? Is it, is it wicked? Yes. In fact, I would go so far as to say I'm lovin' it, lovin' it, lovin' it, lovin' it like this.
People tend to think of me as a hip-hop guy, with touches of electro thrown in for balance. While I can't say I'm surprised, anyone who knows me really well knows that this is a little inaccurate. In fact, my rock-fan cred is pretty deep.
I was a full-blown punk rocker for much of high school. I almost peed myself when I went to see Iron Maiden live. I count The Smiths among my favourite bands. I've rediscovered The Stranglers lately. I own a Discharge album, for fuck sake. I have Youth of Today on vinyl.
I just don't like much new rock. There's some stuff in the last decade or so that's caught my attention. I like pretty much anything that could be dubbed dance-rock or disco-punk -- think DFA Records, The Faint, CSS. I enjoy a lot of the blues-inspired stuff, like Soledad Brothers and The Black Keys. I really like all that British angular stuff, like Art Brut and Bloc Party. I think Fucked Up may be the greatest thing to come out of Toronto in years.
I just think that nine-tenths of modern indie-rock sounds like it was made by pussies, for pussies. I don't care if it makes me a bad white, Torontonian 20-something, Broken Social Scene make me throw up in my mouth. Honestly, it's all so soft. It's fine if you're a weepy, anemic bitch, but that's about it.
God, make something that sounds painful, or intimidating, or something. Just don't make music that sounds like it was made by a bunch of weepy, anemic art students.
If you're not sure where to start, listen to this song by The Raveonettes. It's about being in love with a heroin addict, and it sounds like old Jesus and Mary Chain.
OK, I'm re-starting this bitch... updates are now Thursday and Monday.
So, I was at a rather excellent party last night, hosted by my fam, The FAM, and there was a DJ who was playing a lot of shit with analog synths, which I really enjoyed. So, to show my love for analog synths, and to show my appreciation to The FAM, here's the best of early rave, as presented by Dart on the Bus.
1) The Prodigy - "Charly" (1991)
What happens when you combine four wasted lads from Essex, an absolutely terrifying PSA aimed at children, and 120 beats per minute? You get "Charly," The Prodigy's first British hit. For those of you who are innocent, or thick, Charly refers to cocaine. It's also the name of the manic, wild-eyed cat from the ads.
I have no proof of this, but it's probably no coincidence that the song is about blow, and the cat looks pretty high.
This is one of those songs that makes me dance to my iPod on the streetcar. I blame this song for making me look like an idiot on many occasions.
2) The Shamen - "Move Any Mountain" (1991)
When "Move Any Mountain" came out, I wasn't old enough to go out, get pilled up and dance all night. I was ten, and I was in day camp.
One day during lunch, all the counselors started freaking out to a song that someone had on a mixtape. Most of my fellow campers were either indifferent to it, or thought it was crap, due to it's total failure to sound anything like either New Kids on the Block or Warrant. I was transfixed. I made them play it again. And again. And again. Then, the weekend, I made my dad drive me to the mall so I could buy the cassette single.
That song, as you've figured out by now, was "Move Any Mountain." I heard it for the first time in YEARS a few weeks ago. It's funny, because ten years ago, this song would have sounded super dated, but since "Nu Rave" has put analog synths back in fashion, it actually sounds pretty fresh.
3) Moby - "Go" (1991)
Before Moby was a weird, bald, famous, Vegan electronic music producer, he was a weird, unknown, Vegan electronic music producer with hair.
This is my absolute favourite Moby track ever. That's it.
1) "Awesome" - The Bloody Beetroots feat. The Cool Kids, from OK in Art
The Bloody Beetroots are awesome. They have a name that sounds like it belongs to either some arty indie band or some sort of early '80s comedy-punk outfit, but they're actually an Italian house duo. They wear Venom masks when they perform, and they're doing work with The Cool Kids, who, as everyone knows, can do very little wrong by me.
"Awesome" is a great mix of creepy horror movie distortions, glammy glittering synths and laid back rhymes. I feel like a cooler person for having heard this song.
2) "Don't Trust Me" - 3Oh!3 (Acid Girls Erotic Braille Dub), from Discodust
There was a time not too long ago where I actively shunned all things Top 40. I was that guy, where if a band that I already like suddenly "had a hit," I would stop listening to them.
Thankfully, I've mellowed with age, and every so often, I let a little stupid, Kiss FM-type pop in my life. Right now, that stupid pop is taking the form of 3Oh!3, a charming but not-overly-talented synthpop outfit from Denver. You've probably heard their moderately misogynistic hit "Don't Trust Me" coming playing over the loud speakers at Urban Behaviour. I can't help but like this song. It's really catchy.
When re-imagined by LA-based bloggers-turned-producers Acid Girls, though, "Don't Trust Me" mutates. It stops being cheery throwaway pop and turns into the bastard child of Giorgio Moroder and The Prodigy circa "Out of Space."
Forget summer picnics and beers on the beach, this version of the song makes me want to go somewhere dark and sweaty to take drugs and dance.
3) "Smart Niggas" - Big Twins feat. Krondon, from Nah Right
Sweet mother of shit this song is heavy.
Straight '90s-style New York shit, complete with beats by Alchemist. The main MC on this song sounds like he spent the day swallowing razor blades. I actually got a little nervous while listening to this.
If you wanted something that would make hip-hop a threat again, or something that would make M.O.P look like Soulja Boy, this is for you.
So, my pal and former partner in DJ-crime Vivian -- aka DJ Aunt Viv -- has been asking for song suggestions for an old-school hip-hop night she's doing in Busan, South Korea. (That's right, my homegirl's gone global.)
This inspired me to do a post of some of my favourite classic hip-hop tracks. Now, I realize that these songs aren't "old-school" hip-hop. In fact, they are part of hip-hop's "Golden Era," and were referred to as "new-school" hip-hop at the time. I'd also like to point out that if you're getting all uptight about the use of the term "old-school" to refer to hop-hop of the post Def Jam-era, you need to learn to relax.
1) "Spellbound" - K-Solo (1990)
K-Solo came to prominence as part of The Hit Squad, the crew of EPMD protegés that included Keith Murray, Das EFX, and most notably, Redman.
He had two moderate hit albums between 1990 and '92, then largely dropped off the face of the Earth for about six years. In 1998, DMX inadvertently forced him out of retirement.
At some point in the late '80s, the Darkman and K-Solo did time together. While in jail, they both battled each other and rhymed together. According to DMX, he gave K-Solo the idea of putting spelling into his rhymes while they were doing time together. Solo got out first, and recorded "Spellbound." Four years later, X released a song of the same title. In 1998, X had his first hit, "Get at Me Dog," where he told K-Solo to "suck [his] dick" for biting his idea. Solo responded with an mixtape track called "The Answer Back," DMX's big-label backing meant that Darkman effectively had the last word.
2) "Come Clean" - Jeru the Damaja (1994)
Jeru the Damaja is one of my favourite rappers of the Golden Era. His first two albums are sheer genius. If you haven't heard The Sun Rises in the East or Wrath of the Math, do yourself a favour and get a hold of both of those albums now.
Like K-Solo, Jeru came up by riding the coattails of an established hip-hop act, in this case Gang Starr. Gang Starr's DJ Premier did most of the production work on his first two albums, including "Come Clean," where Primo sampled the sound of a leaking faucet, then distorted it to make the sound you hear in the song.
At his best, Jeru managed to seamlessly blend anti-gangsta conscious-rap, Five Percenter theology -- although Jeru identifies himself not as a Five Percenter, but as a member of the Ausar Auset Society -- and straight stream of consciousness.
Later in his career, Jeru would part ways with Gang Starr, and the quality of his work would diminish as a result. (2003's Divine Design was straight-up mediocre.) But his first two albums have stood the test of time, and his performance at 2004's Toronto Hip-Hop Peace and Unity Festival was one of the best live hip-hop shows I've ever seen.
3) "Passin' Me By" - The Pharcyde (1992)
This song stands on its own. I'm just going to shut up.
So, I skipped Old Shit Sunday this week because I was in London -- the dull one, not the good one -- interacting with the in-laws. Sorry about that.
1) "Kiss of Life" - Friendly Fires, from Bigstereo
If I ever meet DJ A-Trak, I'll have to thank him for introducing me to half of the new music I've gotten into over the last six months. DiskJokke, who was in this blog last week, DJ Gant-Man and The Friendly Fires were all introduced to me through the two mix CDs A-Trak released earlier this year, Infinity + 1 and Fabriclive .45. If you haven't heard either mix, I suggest you make changing that a priority.
I was aware of The Fires before, but wrote them off as some sort of wanky hipster band without ever really listening to them. That was a huge mistake. It goes to show that you shouldn't pre-judge music, because you could wind up missing some really great stuff.
The Friendly Fires are like the dance-rock band that irony forgot, which is great. As much as I like all that DFA disco-punk stuff, it occasionally felt like some of the bands in that scene were too interested in being cool, rather than filling dance floors. The Fires, on the other hand, are all about getting on the floor and going hard. "Kiss of Life" is the first single on their as-of-yet unreleased second album,
2) "URgencia" - Manusa and Prince Abraham for CIAfrica, from Dutty Artz
CIAfrica is a new French-based label that specializes in urban music from Cote D'Ivoire. I don't know much about Manusa and Prince Abraham, but "URgencia" is a terrifying, anxiety-inducing chunk of Africanized post-grime. It's the sort of song that, as a some-time DJ, I'd love to play in a club, but at the same time, I'd be terrified to play it in front of a crowd of any size for fear people would start punching each other in the face.
Take Lethal B's famous 2004 fight-starting anthem "Pow," then feed it a metric tonne of meth. "URgencia" is that crazy.
2Horsemen are Brazilian, which is almost enough for me. I can't think of a Brazilian band that I don't like: CSS, Bonde do Role, Ratos de Porão, Black Alien and Speed, all excellent outfits. If Brazil is good at one thing, it's making music. That and soccer.
"Momen7um" is a tight electro-house number, with oddly Black-era APop EBM overtones. It's funky enough to pack dancefloors, but dark enough to keep things interesting. A guaranteed winner.
DiskJokke is the alter-ego of Norwegian producer Joachim Dyrdahl. To be totally honest, I don't know that much about him, except that he did an amazing remix of Metronomy's "Heartbreaker" last year, he makes songs with titles like "Cearadactylus," "Tungvekter" and "I Was Go to Morocco and I Don't See You," and he shares a country with Röyksopp, which almost counts as an endorsement in my books.
"Cearadactylus" is a good dance tune, but it's not a full-fledged freak-out stomper. Instead, it chugs along at a medium pace, with some nifty conga-type percussion thrown in for good measure. If I was DJing a party, this would definitely be something I'd play at the beginning of the evening to start lifting people's spirits.
If there's one thing that's remarkable about Kid Sister, it's how she's managed to be so successful with so little recorded material. It's that it's been almost three years since she first became indie-famous, two years since she released her first single, a year since she received mainstream recognition thanks to collaboration with Kanye on the single "Pro Nails," and she still has yet to release an album.
"Right Hand Hi" is the fourth single off her still-unreleased debut album Ultraviolet, which is now set to come out in October on Fool's Gold. If you expected Kid to come out with another song about drinking, fucking and destroying, you guessed right. While "Right Hand Hi" doesn't have the same level of lyricism as some of her other work, it makes up for it with an anthemic chorus, bouncy beats, and synth-riffs that get stuck in your head for days.
Guy J's trippy brand of electro-house has lead me to two conclusions.
One, I was born either ten years too early or ten years too late. Generation X had acid house, which I love. Even though I was entirely too young to be part of the dawn of the rave scene, "Move Any Mountain" is still one of my favourite songs ever. Generation Y, meanwhile, has all that Justice/Simian Mobile Disco blog house stuff, which I love, but I distinctly feel old any time I'm in a venue where they play it.
Two, Israelis are awesome. Far too many people only associate Israel with the country's ongoing political trouble, which is unfair. If I lived in a country that dispossessed hundreds of thousands of people of their land, denied them full citizenship rights, and stuck them in squalid, remote camps, I wouldn't want to be judged by my government's actions.
Wait, never mind.
But all political humour aside, pretty much every Israeli I've known has partied like it's their job, and only held a job to subsidize their party habit. These people know how to have a good time. They think nothing of not going out until 2 a.m., and not coming home until 7. On a Tuesday. I'm not saying the entire nation of Israel is like this, just that there's a significant contingent. It's no surprise, then, that when they make party music, it's well above average.
So, this blog's favourite fighter, Rampage Jackson, seems to have landed himself in the press again.
Thankfully, he managed not to hit anyone with his car this time.
It seems as if 'Page has beef with up-and-coming MMA star Muhammed "King Mo" Lawal. For those of you who don't know, Lawal is a young, flamboyant, America MMA light-heavyweight from Tennessee, with an amateur wrestling background, who's decided to kickstart his career by fighting in Japan, rather than suffering the slings and of smaller American promotions and UFC undercards. Stop me if this sounds at all familiar.
So, apparently Rampage and Mo were in a van a couple weeks ago, on their way to a Nevada Wal-Mart to do a signing for Cage Fighter, their mutual clothing sponsor. Then this happened.
Over the weekend, Rampage commented on the tiff in his blog, which can be read here. (My favourite part is the bit where he calls Mo "butthurt." I'm not even 100 per cent sure what that means, but I'm pretty sure it's a gay joke.)
Not one to back down from a fight, especially with someone who's way, way more famous -- and therefore press-worthy -- than him, Mo has snapped back, saying that Rampage started it, and that 'Page needs to stop picking out-of-octagon fights with youngsters like him and worry about his upcoming bout with former light-heavyweight champ Rashad Evans. He also questioned 'Page's tendency to take pot shots at other African-American fighters.
"He's playing himself. He keeps playing himself by talking down on other black fighters, and saying 'black-on-black crime.' It isn't funny. Black-on-black crime is so serious. He can joke about it to make a commercial, but it isn't funny. Vernon Forrest was shot to death this weekend. Black people are killing each other, and he's joking about that?"
(You can read the whole thing here. If this whole "black-on-black crime" thing has you confused, refer to my earlier post, here.)
My question is this, do Rampage and Mo not realize that they're basically the same dude? Right down to the shaved head and little beard? Of course they do, that's why they're beefing so hard. They occupy the exact same market space, and that's probably scarier than any rear naked choke.
Oh, that and Mo has his first fight on North American soil versus the 187 year-old Don Frye at the end of next month. I'm sure this little blowout has nothing to do with his desire to create a buzz around that.
Don't feel bad if you're not familiar with "Uptown Top Ranking." Like so many great reggae singles of the 1970s and '80s, it was a huge hit in Jamaica, obviously, and the UK, but was ignored in North America by everyone apart from Jamaican immigrants and record nerds.
The song is based around Alton Ellis' "Still in Love" riddim, which is such a classic in and of itself that modern reggae artists still trot it out occasionally. (See Sean Paul and Sasha's 2004 hit, also called "Still in Love.") Apparently it's meant as a ladies' response to Trinity's mack daddy anthem "Three Piece Suit," which uses the same riddim.
What's really remarkable about this song is how it's stood the test of time. Not only does it still sound pretty fresh today, but it's been covered by scores of artists, ranging from indie rockers Black Box Recorder, to Simon Cowell produced girl group Tight'n Up, to Sisters of Mercy. (No, seriously, here's evidence.)
I read a review that accused it of being the "Hit Me Baby One More Time" of '70s roots reggae, and maybe that's true. (In addition to being one hit wonders, Althea and Donna were thoroughly middle class by Jamaican standards, resulting in a severe lack of street cred in the reggae community.)
That said, when a song pops up in not one but two TV shows thirty years after it's original release -- it was played in both a 2008 episode of Skins and a 2007 episode of Entourage -- that says something.
2. "Ring the Alarm" - Tenor Saw (1985)
Despite dying in a traffic accident at the tender age of 22, Tenor Saw is, in my humble, white, Canadian, no-nothing opinion, one of the more influential reggae artists of the 1980s.
He was one of the artists who helped usher in the digital/dancehall era of reggae music, and while it's hard to prove this on a chart, one would have to assume that his half-sung vocal style made the transition from the singers of the 1970s to the hard rhymers of the late '80s and beyond a little smoother.
Those of you who are old enough may remember a period in the early '90s where dancehall reggae started getting some significant burn on American "urban" radio stations. Shabba Ranks and Chaka Demus and Pliers had chart hits and suddenly every rapper wanted a reggae singer, or barring that, some idiot with a faux-Jamaican accent, to rock a verse on their single.
Into this fray cam Super Cat, already a legend in Jamaica, Cat took the rap-reggae crossover bull by the horns at wrestled it into submission. In two years, he managed to collaborate with everyone from Kris Kross to Mary J. Blige to a then-unknown Notorious BIG. He started making multiple remixes of his songs, creating one version with a more traditional dancehall sound, intended for Jamaican audiences, and another over a hip-hop beat, meant for export.
Sadly, Super Cat is best known in North America for his pathetic attempt to re-capture the spotlight in 1997 with a guest appearance on Sugar Ray's fly, but we shouldn't let that bit of bad judgment overshadow the fact that, between 1990 and 1995, Super Cat made some of the hardest rudeboy anthems of all time.
Full confession, I'm starting this edition of "Get Fresh Tuesday" a little early, because my work schedule is going to be a little fucked up this week, so I don't know how much writing I'm going to be able to do on Tuesday.
1) Big Face Mike - "N da Hood wit It," from MySpace
I didn't go looking for this one, it came searching for me.
Big Face Mike, or his PR team, inexplicably sent an e-mail promoting his new single to my work inbox. I'm not sure why they thought it would be of interest to me, being as I work at a sports station and have had one rapper -- one-hit wonder Pittsburgh Slim -- on any of my shows in my two year tenure as a producer there.
Luckily for both me and Mike, I clicked on the link and dug what I heard, in spite of myself.
Memphis-based Big Face Mike is dedicated to proving that, to paraphrase The Exploited, crunk's not dead. He's out to serve all those people who loved the skittering drums and tales of brutal violence that were so popular in the first half of this decade, who now find themselves adrift in a hip-hop universe filled with skinny-jean wearing blipsters and adolescent half-wits like Soulja Boy.
If you're a big Crime Mob fan, and I am, Big Face Mike will pretty much make you pee your pants with joy.
I'd also like to congratulate Big Face for the best use of a Nextel/Boost/Telus-style push-to-talk sample since Maceo's 2005 hit "Nextel Chirp."
2) New Boyz - "You're a Jerk" (DJ Webstar Remix), from First Up!
Speaking of skinny jean wearing blipsters...
As a fashion icons -- which they aren't yet, but by God I bet they will be -- the New Boyz take that Cool Kids/Lupe Fiasco skatewear-meets-urban look, feed it a good sheet of acid and let it walk around the city tripping. It's as if someone took this LATFH classic and made a band about it.(The original caption on this said "Wait. Shit. Who's co-opting whom?")
All jokes aside, "You're a Jerk" may be most stupidly enjoyable song I've heard all summer. It's the nice weather party anthem we've been waiting for. It also acknowledges that one of the great things about having sex with a girl you're not emotionally attached to is that you can be a dick knowing that there's not a whole lot she can do about it.
(I only know this from what I've been told. I treat all my female partners, the few that I've had, with nothing but the utmost respect. Come to think of it, maybe the whole "respect" thing is reason I haven't been with too many women. I'm rambling. Never mind.)
The DJ Webstar remix takes the original and takes two notches higher on the danceability scale. (Yes, this is the same DJ Webstar who was responsible for "Chicken Noodle Soup" a few years back.)
Afrikan Boy is the stage name of Nigeria-born, UK-raised grime MC Olushola Ajose. If you're not familiar with AB, here's some background. He first started to get some press-burn in England about two years ago when he appeared on a remix MIA's "Paper Planes" along with the now-rapidly-blowing-up American wunderkind Rye Rye.
Since then, he's been toured with MIA, played a lot of medium-sized venues in the UK -- I understand he's a hot draw on the British Campus bar circuit -- and done the European festival loop a couple times. He has a few mixtapes under his belt, but no official, label-sanctioned releases. (Then again, I'm having a harder and harder time telling mixtapes from albums. Why was that new Cool Kids album considered a mixtape? Because there was a DJ yelling between songs? Because there was some rudimentary mixing? It sounded like an album to me.)
Somewhat surprisingly, AB is still at the stage where he fits his music in around his school schedule. He's currently an undergrad at Brunel University, majoring in sociology and psychology.
Unfortunately for AB, and more unfortunately for me, there's almost no chance of him becoming popular in North America. If cats like Dizzee Rascal and Kano can only manage cult followings on these shores, I can't imagine Afrikan Boy's version of grime, which has an even thicker accent and blends in a lot of afrobeat elements, making much sense to Americans.
"Lidl" is a song about shoplifting, and like Jane's Addiction's "Been Caught Stealing," it's so much fun that raiding your local mall starts to sound like a really good idea after repeated listenings. (Lidl is the name of a German Wal-Mart equivalent.)
OK, so this is the flip side of Get Fresh Tuesdays. Instead of searching for something new, I'm going to highlight some old favourites that have recently recaptured my attention.
1) Del the Funky Homosapien and El-P - "Offspring" (2000)
When I was about 19, I sort of "retired" from the punk rock scene. After five or so years of going to all ages shows, sewing band patches on my hoodies, and protesting something every weekend -- and getting blind-drunk afterward, I burned out. I was sick of being part of a subculture that claimed to be about "rebellion," but actually placed incredibly tight restrictions on what you could listen to, wear, and be interested in. Being a basketball fan was massively uncool, the only acceptable sport to watch was English soccer. If you listened to anything other than punk -- and no pop punk, you dirty sellout -- classic ska, and certain types of pre-dancehall reggae, people looked at you like you were insane.
Most of my friends in the scene were moving on to even more restrictive subsects of punk: skinhead, psychobilly, d-beat. Instead, I left.
I started listening to a bunch of different thing, particularly the Rawkus Records-style alt rap that was coming out at the time. (Truth be told, I'd been listening to that sort of stuff for a while and hiding it from my punk friends.)
I bought Del's Both Sides of the Brain in summer between my last year of high school and my first year of universtiy. This collabo between Del and El-P was my favourite song on the album. I would listen to it over and over again on the way to class. I'd sit in my res room and scream along with the lyrics.
This is song is like a time machine for me. It instantly makes me 19 again, and if there's one thing my life needs, it's more 19.
2) "Raspberry Beret" - Prince (as Prince and the Revolution) (1985)
So, I don't want to get to serious and maudlin on a blog dedicated to quality tunes and idiocy, but my Uncle Giles died about six weeks ago. He was my mum's younger brother, one of eight children, born in the UK and raised in Canada. He was both an athlete (rowing, rugby and football) and a musician (guitar, keyboard, bass, and vocals.) He had a few songs receive airplay on local alt-rock station CFNY in the late '80s and early '90s. He also struggled with substance abuse issues, which may have contributed to his death.
My inheritance from Uncle Giles consisted of about a dozen CDs, which have turned out to be a massive windfall of enjoyment. One of them was Prince's The Hits/The B-Sides compilation.
I've always liked Prince, but I never thought of myself as a full-fledged Prince fan until I got a hold of this album. The man is a genius, and some of his early material -- and The Hits/The B-Sides features only early-to-mid career material -- may be some of the best pop music of the last fifty years.
I feel like my words can't do justice to the greatness that is young Prince, so instead I'll just say thanks to Uncle Giles.
3) X - "Los Angeles" (1980)
I don't actually have a really in depth explanation as to why I chose this song. It's just one of my all-time favourite songs.
It's also the song that's gotten X accused of some rather unpleasant shit.
The first verse of the song features the line "She started to hate every nigger and Jew/ every Mexican that gave her a lot of shit/ every homosexual and the idol rich."
Rock critic Greil Marcus wrote about the song in 1981, as part of a bigger article on racism in the Los Angeles punk scene.
"The opening lines of X's searing 'Los Angeles' ('She had started to hate/ Every nigger and Jew/ Every Mexican that gave her lotta shit/ Every homosexual and the idle rich') tell us not that the subject of the song has her hangups but that the objects of her rage are types, not like us, deserving of the contempt they get: crimes against nature. The song has enough musical bite to make any nigger, Jew, Mexican, homosexual or idle rich want to hear the tune again, and then think 'That's not me, I'm not like that,' and that is the true black hole of the number, and of L.A. punk: attacked, one may side with one's attacker, and accept the terms of the attack."
Unfortunately for Greil, who's actually one of my bigger inspirations, he got it wrong. In We've Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of LA Punk, the members of X explain that the song was, more or less, about a girl who had a lot of hang-ups, and how her hang-ups were eating her alive.
The song was written about one of Exene's best friends, who was her road buddy in her move from Florida to LA. Unfortunately, the friend didn't take to LA nearly as well as Exene, and suffered a sort of breakdown. Part of that breakdown involved an ugly slide into racism.
This sort of shit is why X is one of the best bands of all time. They're able to write beautifully crafted, poetic lyrics about deep, complex shit, and then throw it over top of a rip-roaring rockabilly-punk hybrid.
Have I mentioned how I'm a total, unapologetic Anglophile yet? Well, here's yet another reason why I should just get my work visa in order and emigrate to the UK now. If Dave Jolicoeur from De La Soul and Sade had a daughter and raised her on a steady diet of early '80s British synthpop, she'd probably wind up sounding a lot like thecocknbullkid.
Britain has sent scores of female vocalists across the pond over the past half-decade -- Adele, Estelle, Duffy, Amy Winehouse -- but thecocknbullkid takes that vocal style and weds it to MIA's dancefloor-ready weirdness to create something that's next-level fun.
Apparently her debut EP has been out in the UK for a couple months now, but is due for a North American release early next month. Keep an eye out.
I'm not really sure what genre this is, the good folks at The Guardian seem to think it's some weird variant on dubstep, and they generally know more than me, so I'll accept that definition. I'm also not sure what "Hyph Mngo" means.
I am sure that this song makes me want to go to some dingy basement club, get lit up on bad drugs, and dance with my head in the speaker. It is, as they say in my native Scarborough, a blood claat big tune.
A lot of people front like they hate hipsters. I don't. I'm jealous of them
Truth be told, I'm half way to hipster myself. I just don't have the body type/level of bravery required to pull off the outfits or the time and energy to dedicate to cool hunting. Or the necessary level of ironic detachment. If I could be a hipster, I would. I'm just too old, fat, and lazy.
LMFAO may be the ultimate hipster band. Forget Chromeo, forget ARE Weapons, this is it. The Alpha and Omega of hipstertronica. Their whole look and sound seems to be one giant, funny ironic pose. If you've ever made anti-Semitic wisecracks while chilling with a group of friends that's 90 per cent Jewish, or walked around acting like a tremendous jock douche as a send-up of tremendous jock douches, you understand what LMFAO are all about. It's like those jokes took on a life of their own and decided to start a band.
Not surprisingly, LMFAO are dope in small doses, but I'm not beating down doors to cop their full length debut Party Rock. I feel like if I had to listen to an entire album, I'd need to spend the next six hours listening to Fugazi or something equally earnest to restore balance.
Not sure how much I'm going to drink tonight, may have to put the post off by a day. Not a promising start, I know. Here's some more footage of Rampage being awesome to make it up to you.
So, I wanted to do a weekly new music post, but I felt a little awkward just walking around jacking other music blogs for material.
Then I realized that that's how 90 per cent of music blogs operate, and I decided that if it's good enough for The Guardian Online, it's good enough for me. So, with no further ado, I present the inaugural edition of Get Fresh Tuesday.
I've only really started to "get" techno in the last three or four years. Before that, it was the electronic genre that I had the most trouble wrapping my head around. When I first got into electronic music in my late teens, techno just wasn't didn't have the same kick-your-ass visceral rush as drum n' bass, my genre of choice.
Now that I'm a little older, I can appreciate techno's less aggressive, less muscular vibe and get behind it's robot-funk.
"Huesca" is the newest output from Juan Atkins, one of techno's founding fathers. It's all sharp kicks, moody keys and squelching basslines. It's honestly got me so jacked that I can't breathe.
So, I found out about a band from Hamilton, Ontario, about 90 minutes from my house, via a blog from the UK. I don't know how I feel about this.
On one hand, it's always good to find out about fresh Canadian talent. On the other hand, I feel like sort of a chump that I found out abouty Dark Mean from them, and not the other way around.
Dark Mean play the sort of danceable indie rock that gets hipster kids dancing, but it's less The Rapture and more Joy Division. Like the almighty Division, Dark Mean manage to successfully parlay dancey, ass-shaking high hats, swirling guitars, and an overarching feeling of loneliness. Good stuff.
3) "Comme à la Télévision" - Omnikrom, from YouTube
This is the only one I didn't jack from another blog. Exclaim gave me a review copy of Comme à la Télévision, and not only was it the first unabashedly positive review I've written for them, it was one of the best albums I've heard in a long-ass time.
Omnikrom are in kind of weird spot right now. As far as I can tell, they're verging on mainstream popularity in Quebec, but don't even show up on the radar in the rest of North America. That's not entirely surprising, being as they only rhyme in French, but if English-speaking audience can manage to get behind Spanish-language reggaeton tracks, there's no reason they shouldn't be able to get into Omnikrom. If and when they tour English Canada, everybody needs to go see them.
So, I feel like a bit of a loser writing about a TV show that's been on the air for two years and acting like it's some rad new discovery, but I feel like I can be excused because I didn't have BBC Canada until recently.
It's also a little embarrassing to admit that I'm a 28 year-old man and have an inexplicable love of teen dramas, but I'd like to leave that on the shelf for a minute, if I could.
So, I've spent the last week watching the entire first season of E4's teen drama Skins. I'm now well into season two, and I have to say, it may be the best TV show I've come across in a long while. Don't get it twisted, it's not The Wire good, but only The Wire is The Wire.
If you've read anything about Skins, you're probably aware that British and Australian TV critics have raved about how "realistic" the show is. That's actually a little bit bullshit. When the critics say "realistic," they actually mean that it acknowledges that most teenagers have sex for the first time around age 15, that they smoke pot, take pills, and drink, and that more often than not the kids turn out OK, in spite of all their debauchery.
So it doesn't turn teenage experimentation into an after school special like 90210, or paint the kids who like to party as inherently evil (think Chuck in Gossip Girl.) That doesn't make it realistic. In fact, if anything, Skins is the most surreal teen drama I've ever seen.
Think back to your high school days. Did you and your friends ever drive a Mercedes into a harbour? Get felt up by a BBW Polish exchange student? Lose three ounces of dope that you purchased on credit from a sociopath named the Mad Twatter? No? Didn't think so. This is just what goes down in the FIRST EPISODE of Skins.
In short, it's a great show. And in terms of how it deals with things like eating disorders, sexual orientation, drugs, religion, and identity crises, it's pretty damn realistic, but the plot devices owe more to John Hughes and Monty Python than they do to Larry Clark.
Oh, also, it has some OUTSTANDING music in it, but apparently if you watch it on BBC Canada/BBC America, you don't get to hear any of it due to rights issues, so watch it illegally on the Internet instead.
Now, I'm going to put aside the fact that I think Soulja Boy may be the worst rapper in the history of the genre, and that he's so awful he should probably be prosecuted for crimes against humanity, for just a second.
Who was asleep at the switch here?
We all know that Soulja Boy is about as street credible as Wonder Bread, and that he's just as artificial and manufactured as The Backstreet Boys were. It stands to reason, then, that he has some sort of massive legal team behind him. They're probably the one's who had to vet his shoe deal. So why didn't any of his lawyers stop and make sure that the phone number in the song wasn't an actual phone number?
If that number rang up some Americans, as opposed to Brits, Soulja Boy would be getting the oversized pants sued off him.
Don't get me wrong, if I wrote a song and it needed a phone number, I'd just stick any old shit in there to. But then again, I wouldn't expect it to be a major hit, let alone the ringtone of choice for every fifteen year-old girl on the planet. Fact of the matter is, it's not like it was for Tommy Tutone in '80s, where he just implied that some slut named Jenny could be reached at 867-5309 and everyone was cool with it. For better or worse, this is a litigious age we're living in, and if you're as famous as Mr. Boy is, you need to have your wits about you.
In the immortal words of Chris Jericho, "Do your fucking job!"
It's worth going back and reading some of the old entries, there was some pretty decent material on there, if I do say so myself.
So, expect this blog to be anywhere from 75 to 90 per cent music writing, with the remainder being anything else that pops in my head. It could sports, movies, politics, TV, fashion, monkeys, porn, books, whatever. Don't expect this to be one of those blogs with a lot of personal introspection, I'm not really interesting enough to merit that. And I promise it won't turn into on of those blogs with tons of photos of food. I never really understood that phenomenon.
If you're wondering, the title of the blog comes from an old Beastie Boys song called "Mark on the Bus" off of Check Your Head. I realize now that people will probably click on it thinking I write about public transit issues, but what are you going to do?
I was actually going to start this puppy up on Thursday or Friday, but I felt I'd be obliged to write extensively on Micheal Jackson. The thing is, I didn't really know what to say.
I mean, on one hand, he may well have been the most gifted entertainer of the last fifty or so years. He changed popular music, dance, and music videos for the better. The MJ topic came up when I was out at a bar on Saturday night, and I was able to name ten of his number one hits in fifteen seconds. I'm not sure there's another artist that I could do that for.
On the other hand, he was an immensely fucked up person. Even if you believe that he wasn't a child molester, it's almost impossible to deny that he had immensely poor judgment when it came to children, particularly when we talk about things like his famous "sleepovers." Add to that his reclusive nature, his self addiction to plastic surgery, his two failed marriages, and his battles with prescription drug abuse, and what you have is a picture of a man broken by a history of abuse and a life under an unrelentingly harsh spotlight.
So, how do you sum it all up? According to the mainstream media, you conveniently forget the ugly, messy , disturbing parts of the man, and focus only on his artistic brilliance. I realize no one wants to speak ill of the dead, but it all rings a little false to me. After all, weren't the mainstream media the ones who coined the loving nickname "Wacko Jacko" and covered his legal troubles more diligently than they cover most elections? And now they just want pretend none of that happened?
Personally, I call bullshit on all that. If we want to celebrate MJ's brilliance, then we also have to talk about everything that was wrong with him. Not just the sexual stuff, but the surgery, the drugs, and the massive psychological wounds that, according to those close to him, never really healed.
If you look at great artists throughout history, you'll see that a disproportionate number of them had some really dark shit going on. If you want to appreciate their work, you're going to have to force yourself to separate the art from the artist to a certain extent, but that doesn't mean you can't also talk about the madness that drove them.
I'm actually a little MJed out right now, so I'm going to end this inaugural post with a rather MJ-esque Justin Timberlake video instead.
Just remember kids, if there was no MJ, then there would be no JT, no Usher, no Chris Brown, no Kanye.
