Sunday, November 25, 2007

Motherfucker couldn't be Muslim...















...because the wife makes him eat pork

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Since popular music's success rate typically sits beneath even Eli Manning's completion percentage, I've spent the better part of my life scouring ultra-nerdy periodicals in search of the next great musical plateau. 14 year old Anthony broke the seal discovering Pavement via a Rolling Stone record guide , but there's been hundreds of musically promiscuous endeavors since that have hinged on poring over the hyperbolic musings of some other nerd on the other end of the world. A particularly strong phase was my Freshman year of college, when my homepage was the NME. In hindsight, 2001 (especially to those Limey fucks) will always be thought of as the year of the "The" bands. The Strokes, The Hives, The White Stripes, and a myriad of also-rans[1] that decided rock music should be frozen in an era where you could trace the veins on your cock through your leather pants. At the time, though, their coverage was equally devoted to another obsession: UK Garage.

After innumerable evenings spent waging war with my cruel mistress Icehouse, I'd fire up Audiogalaxy[2] and gorge my hard drive with every skittishly-drum programmed ode to gun violence I could get my hand on. Dizzee Rascal and Ms. Dynamite were in constant rotation (fuck it, I'll link a second single to that Ms. Dynamite album. She had tracks for days), and I'm pretty confident that I could name at least five members of So Solid Crew. Then, inevitably, came "The Elvis Moment": Original Pirate Material. Mike Skinner, under the guise of "The Streets", released one of the best albums of 2002, a concept album about being young and intoxicated in Britain. It had the signature slang and rhythms of Garage, but there was an element of the class consciousness and humor prevalent in prior waves of British Youth music (The Specials, The Kinks, Blur). Needless to say, it blew the fuck up there, and sold enough records here to be namedropped by pretentious quasi-intellectuals that obsessively follow that sort of thing.

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Six years later, and Garage is more or less a historical footnote. So Solid Crew disintegrated, the second Ms. Dynamite album blew, and with the exception of Dizzee Rascal and Wiley, most of the core artists fizzled out (the last Kano record was fucking abysmal). Skinner, however, transcended the genre, dropping two more stellar records, and fleshing out his sound beyond the scene that birthed him. Thus, when news leaked of a new Streets single in advance of album four, my curiosity was piqued. Since post-production and mastering was slated to take the project up until early '08, it made sense for the man to keep product in the pipeline by putting out a one-off single. What didn't make sense was making that single a cover of "Your Song", by Elton John.



The Streets - "Your Song"


Part of the pretty disasterous Radio One Covers record (Klaxons covering "No Diggity", anyone???), I'd really like to dismiss this, particularly since Elton John sort of blows. However, I find myself strangely compelled to it. There's definitely a melodramatic element to it that a moody fuck like me would be drawn to, but that seemed too basic to be the draw. And while the ballads he had written in the past also tended to linger in one's head ("Dry Your Eyes" and "Never Went to Church" come to mind), those focused more on the poetic and narrative elements than his wavering, trebly voice. Then it fucking hit me.



THE SHIT SOUNDS LIKE "RAINBOW CONNECTION"!!!!!!!

I played the fuck out of the Muppet Movie when I was a kid. The whole "I sing not because I'm skilled at it, but because my soul demands it of me" shit that Kermit has done for the better part of 40 years. Fozzie Bear, ever the sad clown. And Statler and Waldorf clearly bear some sort of profound emotional damage. Those Muppets are profound, complicated souls and I identify with this. Man, I goddamn love the fucking Muppets. A fuckload of classic Muppetry after the jump.

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Bonus Beats



Johnny Cash and Miss Piggy - "Jackson"



Kermit the Frog - "Once in a Lifetime" (Talking Heads cover)



The Muppets - "Why Can't We Be Friends" (War cover/TRIBUTE TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION!!)



Johnny Cash (featuring the Muppets) - "Ghostriders in the Sky"



The Muppets - "In the Navy" (Village People cover)



Floyd (from Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem) - "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" (Beatles cover)



Gonzo - "Act Naturally" (Beatles cover/Buck Owens cover)



Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem - "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" (Paul Simon cover)



R.E.M. (featuring the Muppets) - "Furry Happy Monsters"



Animal and Buddy Rich having a Drum Competition



Gonzo (featuring the Chickens)- "Workin at the Car Wash Blues" (Jim Croce cover)



Dizzy Gillespie and the Muppets - St. Louis Blues

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[1]The Datsuns anyone?
[2]Audiogalaxy went hard as fuck. Using Limewire was like wearing a tech vest to a house party. Why don't you just carve the word "toolbox" into your forehead.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

...we tend to do that

[1]

Once every so often, the constant hyperbole I spew ends up actually being vindicated by an event so phenomenal that my peers forget about the rather shoddy reliability of my opinion. Not that my taste is bad, in fact, quite the contrary. However, I tend to get excited about things so far onto the fringes of acceptable society, that when people finally take the plunge, there's sort of a vacuum of enthusiasm leaving the room, along with my wavering credibility (Dan Deacon, anyone?). Sunday, however, was one such day where the heavens smiled upon those daring enough to listen, and they heard the voice of God, projected through pennywhistles and ten dollar organs.

Man Man rocked everyone in a manner I didn't think could happen to me at this jaded point in my existence. I would say it was the greatest thing I've ever seen. Better than when Mudhoney played for 75 people in Green Bay, better than that time I was walking with Sarah and saw that guy fall out of a tree, better than when I saw "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" the day it came out in theatres at Andy Reiff's first grade birthday party. Furthermore, it was a uniter, not a divider. Modest Mouse (the headliner) brought a pretty diverse crowd (in the good, and bad ways), and to thoroughly astound that many people is a feat for the ages. Their supreme dominance is pretty much summed up by the following exchange with Ted, immediately following the set, right outside of the bathroom.

"Dude, that was the greatest fucking thing I've ever seen. I think you blew my mind."
"yeah... we tend to do that."

The craziest thing is, the entirety of their skillset seems to be the aforementioned mindblowing. Their MySpace is a series of pencil drawings and random clip art, their website is a mere list of tourdates, and their Wikipedia entry is rather useless. Aside of forced exposure from a quasi-hipster douchebag like myself, I can't even imagine a scenario where someone would run into this. In a way, it's almost better that way. There's an old Iggy Pop interview where he discusses how he's trying to make himself obsolete. Like, if people take his lead, and put enough emotion and expressiveness into their own art, then he could stop slicing himself open, and rubbing peanut butter on his naked ass, and become a fucking plumber. But they won't, so he can't. It's like, rather than preach to the converted, Man Man just go out and wreck house, trying to bash skulls towards epiphany, night after night. It's rather staggering.




[1] Apparently, there's this acid headed Korean showwith a paragraph long title, two words of which are "Man Man", and it's posted all over YouTube. It's sort of like "Figure It Out", but instead of waiting for Lori Beth Denberg to have a mixed ethnicity child with the cokehead from Nick Arcade, you see Korean celebrities make sexual innuendo laden comments back and forth under the pretense of ripping off Family Feud. I chose this particular clip, not only because it's about man boobs, but also because you can faintly hear "Little Green Bag" by George Baker in the background, and that song is fucking amazing.

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Below, an assortment for fans new and old. First up, a cover of the old folk song "Little Boxes", performed by Man Man, and aired this season on "Weeds" (which is bomb, obviously). Pretty much the entire lineup of performers from seasons two and three were amazing (Decemberists and Devendra Banhart fucking nailed it), but it's doubly pleasing to hear the old lyrics damning suburbia coming from a band that would probably scare the shit out of your parents. Donovan? Not so much. After that, is a cover of an old Etta James song that the Faces used to play all the time. Finally, a live rendition of their single from the last album. It's not exactly representative of what's happening at their shows right now (which is being used as an opportunity to show off new material), but it's still dope nonetheless.



Man Man - Little Boxes (Weeds Theme/Malvina Reynolds Cover)



Man Man - I Would Rather Go Blind (Etta James Cover)



Man Man - Van Helsing Jukebox (live)

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Hut One, Hut Two, Hut Three, HUT!!!!!
















I've got about three partial posts going (one of which is devoted to the staggeringly dope weekend/religious experience from Madison and Milwaukee), but I would be remiss if I were to let the 13th of November pass without a brief post about Russell Jones, better known as the Ol' Dirty Bastard.

As a late arrival to hip-hop, most of my musical memories from childhood involve either long-haired vulgarity (Guns N Roses, Metallica), designed to complement the ever-widening holes in my elementary school jeans; or bong-water soaked cassette tapes I stole from my dad and later played until I'd memorized each and every nuance.

Black music came to me eventually (the floodgates obviously exploded, as anyone unfortunate enough to witness a drunken tirade of mine about "The Payback" can tell you), but early exposure came more insidiously. I remember seeing Ghostface brushing roaches out the cereal box[1], learning from Left Eye what a rubber looked like, and finding out that the raw shit is always on public access[2]. Most importantly, though, I remember every O.D.B. publicity stunt.

I had seen "Da Mystery of Chessboxin" on public access before, but Wu-Tang hype was hard as fuck to figure out as an 11-year old white kid. I knew there was definitely some shit going on, but without any prior exploration in that direction, it would take another 7 years before I could really (w)rap my head around East-Coast hip hop. What I could figure out instantly, though, was O.D.B.'s insatiable thirst for attention. I didn't know shit about how welfare worked, or why most white people bitched about it all the time, but I knew damn well that Dirty cashing a welfare check in a limo was funny as fuck, as proven by the relative worthlessness of people angered by the stunt. It was like, everything that dude did was put into such a perfect set of surroundings that you got to observe how a cornucopia of people responded, and then pick your allegiances accordingly. I didn't know if Wu-Tang deserved "Best Rap Artist" at the Grammy's,but I knew that if anyone was boring enough to deserve their acceptance speech crashed, it was Shawn Colvin. Furthermore, when I finally appreciated rap enough to delve into his catalog, you could tell that he left everything he had out there, with verses as reckless as he was. Motherfucker was like the black Iggy Pop.

I had about a year and a half of being a full-fledged Wu-Tang Stan under my belt before dude passed away (on my sister's 20th birthday, actually, which turned the party into a bizarre wake/celebration that unsettled more than a few). I thought about the great records he had made, and the energy he brought to the clan, and what a shame that he couldn't pull it around after he got out of jail. The main thing I thought of, though, was that I would have been just as impacted ten years prior, when I was sitting on the couch, seeing Dirty wild the fuck out in public. Musicians die all the time, often from circumstances that don't affect your average member of the private sector. While we miss the art, and empathize with the families, none of us really think "boy, it's a shame I never got a chance to be flipped off by Kurt Cobain", at least beyond some sort of People Magazine impulse. Dirty didn't have that, though. He was like that friend everyone has, that your mom hates. She's always thought he was the reason you smoked dope, or blew off your homework, or talked back in high school; and often she was right. But he was also the guy that was part of all your favorite stories, or would offer you the last beer in his fridge. Use today not just to remember Dirty; his records, his stories. Use it to contemplate just how willing you are to act like the man every now and again. It's a sad fate to slide through life looking like Shawn Colvin.


[1]The first musical moment ever to make me cry
[2]Shouts to "Video Mix"

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Ol' Dirty Bastard - Shimmy Shimmy Ya



Wu Tang Clan - Da Mystery of Chessboxin'