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.
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.
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.
