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Monday, January 20, 2003 -- 06:27 p.m.

Can't write. Brain hurts. Read this. More later.

-Nate

Sunday, January 19, 2003 -- 01:00 p.m.

Well it's about time I got a referral I can be frightened by.

-Nate

Thursday, January 16, 2003 -- 06:42 p.m.

Yay, SSCB's superfab bootleg issue is finally up. I hope this is the beginning of some New Theme Every Issue trend, actually.

-Nate

Wednesday, January 15, 2003 -- 06:22 p.m.

Well, that didn't last long. The whole "write about a song every day" thing, that is, though I should note that I did spend Monday writing something that'll show up on southsidecallbox.com later tonight (hopefully). I've also been coping with work, trying to get some freelance pitches going and blah blah etcetera. Not much else to say, except for this:

Get Prince Paul's Politics of the Business NOW -- any way you can, legal and RIAA-approved or otherwise. If you can not or will not buy, download, borrow or steal the entire album, I highly recommend at least singling out "People Places and Things" featuring Chubb Rock, Wordsworth and MF Doom. You'll recoil at the brazenness of Paul recycling his own "Pease Porridge" beat for about as long as you are able to ignore the head-crushing dopeness of the lyrics, which will be about five seconds or so. Word of warning: Wordsworth's spot is so sick you might need to snort powdered Sucrets through a rolled-up Vicks Vapo-Rub pad and guzzle more Robitussin than a Stormtrooper clone army of Three 6 Mafias just to avoid catching a cold. A cold of LYRICAL FURY. Word booty.

-Nate

Sunday, January 12, 2003 -- 08:54 p.m.

He can not be serious. (But if he is, and he pulls it off, well, what the hell.)

-Nate

Sunday, January 12, 2003 -- 08:31 p.m.

New Wet Kojak, "This is the USA"
Do Things, 2000 (Beggars Banquet)
JSBX trapped in a vodka-fueled robotic sleaze filter with no sign of gawking hiccuppy yawping to save them. No, instead it's Scott McCloud doing his death-by-swank boho growl over silver velvet future blues shaking from the DTs of the American Dream(tm). This is the United States of Texas now, like he says, only this was recorded months before the Supreme Court made it that way. This is the era where the fifties and the seventies stumble drunkenly into each other and fumble for the big red button, where the cool and the sheen and the polymer gleam of popkultur are affectations, the only alternative to going completely paranoid. Salute the flag.

-Nate

Saturday, January 11, 2003 -- 11:21 p.m.

Majesticons, "Majestic West Party"
Beauty Party, 2003 (Big Dada)
Oh boy is this mean. For those of you who're unfamiliar with the -esticon canon of one Mr. Mike Ladd, I'll bring you up to speed: Back in 2000 (man I like typing that phrase) he released a hip-hop concept record entitled Gun Hill Road under the "Infesticons" moniker, story being that the Infesticons are the last line of defense against evil jiggy glam-glitter robots and their evil creator, "Poof Na Na", who all fall under the evil catchall name of the "Majesticons". And while most of the CD was played as straight-faced underground, one track -- "Shampoo Theme" -- was allotted to let the Majesticons spit. It proved to be one of the most hilariously vicious hip-hop satires ever concocted, with intentionally cornball plinky keyboards backed a far-too-laidback, vaguely effeminate MC who spat phrases about being "jiggy like a sex jam packed with guns... like PM Dawn in sequined thongs/like singin' songs by Celine Dion".

Now imagine a whole album filled with that sort of satire -- albeit a bit more subtle -- and you've got Beauty Party. Ladd claims that there will be a trilogy of "Infesticons vs. Majesticons" albums, and that Beauty Party will be sort of an "Empire Strikes Back" thing where the jiggy types reign triumphant for a while. Therefore, you have the irony of an anti-bling underground act releasing an entire album of jiggy-rap that, being "commercial" and all, winds up bumping like a bastard and leaves listeners wondering if these Majesticons are all that bad after all. "Majestic West Party" is one of the catchiest tracks on the album, a mock-up of the Dre style with the telltale high-pitched synth whine in the chorus and a disco guitar to drive things forward. You could probably stick it on a mixtape with a ton of other g-funk tracks and not arouse much suspicion.

At least at first. Now I have to confess that I don't recognize the MCs on this track; the first one sounds like a more thugged-out Del but that's the only point of reference I have (damn MP3 ID3 tags tell me nothin'). But the verses they spit on this track are tight, smart and hilariously cruel:

Just moved to L.A. a few years ago
Got you fascinated with that gang-related flavor, now I'm makin' major paper
Tellin' stories about my neighbors who do real things
You say it's not real, I talk about what I see
Even though I don't do it, my niggas been through it
And I'll rep through my 'hood through my pen and my music
Never been to the pen but been close to it
Write my niggas every week to get new material
To spit upon these beats, their stories, my glory
And my niggas stay paid so of course they vouch for me
You backpack niggas be tryin' to ignore me
You can keep it underground and I'm'a keep it Top 40

And, right after this classic dis of the studio gangsta, comes the GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD DAMN IT chorus, which will suck out all memory of other catchy songs like some sort of pop music tapeworm. And doesn't it just feel good/lovin' us/and doesn't it just sound good/lovin' us/and doesn't it just feel good/lovin' me/and doesn't the shit just sound/love-a-ly: memorize it, because you will have it creep up on you at inopportune times. The funny thing is, the second verse is a lot more straightfaced, and between the Reebok namedrops and the "I don't mean to brag but I have so much and so much more to come" arrogance, it's almost hard to tell that it's satire. Matos once asked me what the point of Har Mar Superstar is if R&B is already known for parodying itself; the Majesticons' material might come across as the same way, too. But I gotta side with Dante from Clerks: this "Empire" is the best of the trilogy (assuming the follow-up to this has a bunch of Muppets).

-Nate

Friday, January 10, 2003 -- 07:29 p.m.

Agallah, "Crookie Monster"
single, 1999 (Game Recordings)
Holy shit. You ever run across a song that's definitely brilliant, but you're not sure whether it's a calculated immaculately-worked brilliant or a retarded, unintentional brilliant? I have, and it features a (probably undeservedly) obscure MC imitating the world's coolest Muppet that isn't a drummer and pinpointing Sesame Street somewhere in the South Bronx. It opens up with a sample of the legit article flossin' on wax ("time to rhyme with Cookie!") before Agallah jumps in with his own take on the gravel-voiced blue felt baked goods enthusiast; he's not as eerily accurate as your typical death metal lead vocalist at capturing the true spirit of he of the googly eyes, but he's close enough -- if only he'd remembered the bad grammar aspect and used "me" instead of "I". Then again, I guess the real Cookie Monster's vocab wouldn't make for a tight flow, so what the hell. As expected, the lyrics are all about taking yr beloved childrens' show Muppet icons and revealing their tawdry sides, which isn't anything new (*cough cough*), but between depictions Snuffleupagus as a crack dealer and Maria as Mr. Rogers' secret skeezer, there's some sublime goofiness here -- a shoutout "to all my fuzzy niggas", a boast that he beat up Kermit (which, let's face it, is one of the funniest mental pictures ever) -- that keep it above the level of other novelty rap singles like "Rappin' Duke". Well, that and the production, provided by none other than the Alchemist (as heard on tracks by Dilated Peoples, Big Pun, Ghostface, et al). The jaungly bounce of the Sesame Street theme is good enough a base for a sick hook, but the breaks to propel it along are perfect for head-bobbing.

It should be noted that Game Records also put out Lord Digga's "My Flows Is Tight", which samples "The Price is Right"'s theme to weeded-out perfection, and a pre-superstar Eminem teaming with Royce Da 5'9" as "Bad Meets Evil" (b-b-but which is which?). Shit, their roster's already better than J-Records'.

-Nate

Friday, January 10, 2003 -- 06:20 p.m.

The Confederate Mack and me don't always see eye to eye on music (at least I can only assume given all the "fuck the Strokes" posts that show up sporadically on his messageboard), but this poll/tournament is something I plan on following for a long while. Sadistic bastard pitted Flavor Flav against Busta-Bus in the first round, too.

-Nate

Thursday, January 9, 2003 -- 07:10 p.m.

No, it's not out yet. Yes, I downloaded it. Yes, I plan on buying the CD itself when it is officially released.

Massive Attack, "Future Proof"
100th Window, 2003 (Virgin)
The worst thing in the world for a diehard music junkie is the utter dread and unease at pressing "play" on the first song of an album you've been waiting over four years for. No, scratch that: the worst thing is when the album is a follow-up to a CD that has been known to take week-long permanent residence in your portable CD player and has stayed there through at least one battery change. Mezzanine... damn. As a record that doesn't feel quite right unless it's hours past sunset (or, in my recent state of work commute, before sunrise), it's without peer, and now I know how all those people felt when they tore the cellophane off Sandinista! or Band of Gypsys.

"Future Proof" is the lead track on this new one, and if first impressions are anything to be trusted, then I think the phrase here is "toned down". While Mezzanine's "Angel" was a suspenseful opener concocted with a build that Hitchcock would've admired -- introducing itself via Hell's bassbin, breaking through Bonham's levee and cresting over the horizon with a cacophony of electric hell blues guitar to the climactic-slash-monomaniacally desperate cries of an androgynous Horace Andy -- this track is driven by a palpitating para-Squarepusher water-drip staccato beat, with the willowy warbles of Boards of Canada unwarped and straightened out into a fine-tuned melodic riff for the raspy, weary-sounding buzz of 3D's freon-cool growl to wrap around. The Cobain thud of "Angel"'s guitars has been replaced, too, by a slick metal wail; the big grinding exclamation point of a solo sounds like Slash from three blocks away competing for space with a robot factory next door.

And while nothing could be more clear than "you are my angel/come from way above/to bring me love" as a lyrical message, I have yet to discern what (if a few scattered lyrical transcriptions and/or my ears do not deceive me) "borderline kiss/reinforced glass" is supposed to hint at -- forced separation? One thing is clear, though: one phrase that reoccurs -- "up we ghost" -- is going to stick with me as an example of subtle linguistic cleverness (for its own sake, possibly, but so what?).

-Nate

Wednesday, January 8, 2003 -- 06:45 p.m.

This is another short entry, but hopefully it will serve its purpose of inspiring you to seek this song out immediately.

Parliament, "Little Old Country Boy"
Osmium, 1970 [Invictus]; First Thangs, 1998 (HDH Records)
This is Parliament's attempt at doing country music.

Perhaps that should be in boldface: This is Parliament's attempt at doing country music. With a fiddle and a jew's harp, even.

And it's brilliant.

Country and funk really need to cross paths more often if the results are like this. You've probably heard a few seconds of this via the goofy yodelling bit from De La's "Potholes in My Lawn", but knowing this song just by that is as insubstantial as sussing out Sweet's "Ballroom Blitz" from the "she thinks she's the passionate one" snippet from the Beasties' "Hey Ladies". Here's the story: man gets rebuffed from his girlfriend of twelve months, becomes suspicious, gets caught spying on her going out with another guy, receives a terrific ass-beating, goes to jail, oh hell. But mama warned him about her, and he knows he's right, damn it. Not an uncommon theme in country music, but they way it's laid out makes it feel like a Deputy Dawg episode animated by Ralph Bakshi. George Clinton vicariously dredges up his North Cackalacky roots in somewhat self-deprecating fashion via Fuzzy Haskins; his caricature of how a "country boy" talks sounds like a black man imitating a white man imitating a black man imitating a white man doing the voice of Amos and/or Andy, though the dialogue could easily be put in the mouth of David Cross' shirtless brawling redneck reality-cop-show icon Ronnie Dobbs ("Here I am ridin' along in this ambulance to the city jail, goin' to jail accused of bein' a peeping tom. Dammit man, I'm sayin', any man would try to find out if his girl was doin'... doin'im wrong! That's all I was doin' there outside her home!"). And it would almost seem like a parody of the whole "white trash" country aesthetic if Eddie Hazel -- Eddie "like Hendrix but even freakier" Hazel -- didn't play a slide steel guitar that rivals anything laid down on a Hank the First session.

So it's not quite "straight" country. The beat prevents that, bouncing around with classic funk elasticity, and this isn't really much more than Parliament getting a bit sidetracked and goofing around all cartoonishly. But having a hoe-down in leopard-print platforms is always worth a shot.

-Nate

Tuesday, January 7, 2003 -- 06:30 p.m.

The Hives, "Untutored Youth"
A.K.A. I-D-I-O-T, 1998 (Burning Heart)
This song is 94 seconds and if it were any longer it would provoke people to break things. Not in a disgusted reaction to the music or a testosterone-poisoned Bizkitty pissfest macho pose, but just because it is the sort of music that can only soundtrack throwing stuff around and watching it smash against the wall or the floor or (hopefully) the ceiling, to shatter and splinter and spill out its inner workings. The Bluesbreakers on 78, all yelly and spastic, two years before the album devotees will probably resort to calling V3 and thus a bit wilder and less polished and more unaware of the fact that stardom is around the corner -- hence the freedom to be disturbing (as in raucous, not unsettling).

The lyrics are alternately rote and great. For the most part, Pelle yawps suchandsoforth about not fitting in and not letting "them" win and various other Yoof Rebellin' things that need to be yelped by a Swedish sugar-high Jagger to be interesting. Then the band stops playing and he mutters breathlessly:

"And if I really wanted to learn something I'd listen to more records and I do, we do, you do so... c'mon!

May I take this opportunity to say "oh hell yes"? OK, good.

There is another interlude where he yells "And when people tell me what is ok and what is not it should not be an unexpected scene seeing I extend my middle right hand digit and say: "Ayyy, would you like lemon or lime with that piece of advice mister?" This is the single most awkwardly-worded and comical way of saying "fuck you I won't do what you tell me" I have heard in a song this past year, which pushes this song up into the highest echelons of ridiculous fun.

I'd write more, but again, this song is 94 seconds. Still, those 94 seconds really wore me out. It's like being punched in the lungs by awesome for a minute and a half.

-Nate

Monday, January 6, 2003 -- 07:50 p.m.

Well damn. The version of the Hellacopters' "The Crimson Ballroom" that shows up on Cream of the Crap actually doesn't fade out, unlike the way it appears on Runnin' On Fumes!. What a tragic waste of a perfectly good brain-explosion scenario.

-Nate

Monday, January 6, 2003 -- 07:25 p.m.

Why is Sea Change still under my 2002 favorites? Urgh. Ignore it. ("Paper Tiger" & "Little One" are grebt tho)

-Nate

Monday, January 6, 2003 -- 07:04 p.m.

Multi-part disclaimer regarding the "chart rap" entry from a few days ago:
-I don't really hate Jay-Z, but I do have an inborn distrust of anyone who traipses around on a yacht in his videos, no matter how awesome he is. I do like how his Unplugged show apparently lit a fire under the Roots' asses and taught them how to bump harder. I also like that song he did where he sampled the Talking Heads.
-I am unsure of whether or not 50 Cent is a good MC. I just think the beat to "Wanksta" is like aural chlamydia. There's good goofy bouncy g-funk (see: "Multiply"), and there is not-good goofy bouncy g-funk.
-Pretty much everyone mentioned in the Puffy song besides Puffy is awesome.
-Nas is also awesome.
-I don't really hate Will Smith even if he butchered a Clash sample. I just wanted to make that "Jiggy Pop" pun and get it over with.
-Would I hate Nelly if he hadn't gotten into a lame-ass beef with KRS-One? Probably not. (Proof that the St. Lunatic is not shit-hot at battling: if you really want to tear down the Blastmaster, try bringing up that terrible shit hell awful song he did with REM.)
-J-Lo was cool in "Out of Sight".
-Come on, no matter how much you like Eminem (and when I listen to "Any Man" or "White America" it's a ton), the Robert Smigel confrontation made him look schoopid.
-I like maybe two Jurassic 5 songs. At most.

-Nate

Monday, January 6, 2003 -- 06:47 p.m.

The Roots, "Thought @ Work"
Phrenology, 2002 (MCA)
Seven music video ideas:

1) Oh no! Malik B and Black Thought are being pursued by ninjas! The ninjas are stylishly attired in red silk pajamas and they wield diamond-studded shurikens. Malik and Black Thought do not realize that they are being followed, since ninjas are quiet and stealthy, but these ninjas also have unlucky timing since every time the ninjas try to throw knives at them or cut down a rope holding a bundle of logs hanging over the MCs' heads, they get out of the way just in time. After a couple minutes they realize that ninjas are trying to kill them so they hop in a dune buggy with Rahzel and ?uestlove and speed off in ultra-sped-up motion a'la Benny Hill and/or the Monkees. The ninjas give chase in a black custom van with a roof spoiler and the word "NINJAS" written on the side in a pseudo-Oriental font. The ninjas shoot flaming darts at the dune buggy and it catches fire, and the Roots bail just before it rolls over and explodes in a gigantic fireball. Just as it seems that all is lost, a masked samurai leaps out of nowhere and slices up all the ninjas with a big katana. Then he takes off the mask and it's Michael Viner of the Incredible Bongo Band! (NOTE: A stunt double may be needed if Viner is dead and/or unavailable.)

2) Make it animated like the White Stripes' "Fell In Love With A Girl" video, only use an 8x8 stack of Lite-Brites.

3) Create shaky digital handicam footage of the Roots cavorting at Jay-Z's palatial estate and causing a ruckus: doing donuts in his Jaguar, jumping up and down on his bed, filling his Jacuzzi with cranberry Jell-O and inviting Bahamadia over to drink Moet from the Stanley Cup (which they have stolen, though it is not explained how). Hova walks in right in the midst of a toilet paper and Reddi-Wip fight on his lawn at 3 AM, and he just stands there with his hands on his hips shaking his head and frowning disapprovingly. Then he gets hit in the temple with a glob of whipped cream and he gets into it, throwing eggs at everyone and laughing like a little kid. Special guest cameo by Bill Cosby.

4) Everyone is dressed like Van Halen and riding dirt bikes through a school.

5) Black Thought finds a magical medallion that can slow down time. He uses it in the studio to help him rap really fast and give him immaculate flow. Then he wins the Daytona 500 with a '68 Dodge Dart Swinger.

6) This will be like a normal rap video with dancing and sexy women and wild arm-flailing and so forth, only instead of it being in a nightclub or a convenience store parking lot it will take place at the Mall Of America's "General Mills Cereal Adventure" theme park. Everyone will be eating Cocoa Puffs from cognac glasses. Kamal punches out the Trix rabbit. (NOTE: as per MTV policy, logos will have to be blurred out. This may complicate things. We may have to avert possible copyright infringement by making Trix's spokescharacter a marmot.)

7) See #3, but with Muppets.

-Nate

Sunday, January 5, 2003 -- 09:22 p.m.

The Hellacopters, "Crimson Ballroom"
Runnin' On Fumes! The Gearhead Magazine Singles Compilation, 1999; Cream of the Crap, Vol. 1, 2002 (Gearhead Records)
These guys may just be the original postmodern Swedish Garage Thugs; their earliest material predates the Hives' intial 2000 breakthrough by a good half-decade. Shame that they're pretty uneven. I mean, when you do a cover of the Stooges' "I Got A Right" and make it sound unexciting, then no sir I am not going to purchase your admittedly awesome t-shirts and smack your retro-hot-rod decals onto newspaper boxes. And while I like both mid '60s garage rock and early '70s sleaze-trash violence blues, Payin' the Dues gets tiring a lot quicker than, oh, say, Veni Vidi Vicious. But for every misstep there's a huge Keep On Truckin' foot kicking the door down; their apocalyptic burndown of Radio Birdman's "455 SD" has 'em clicking on all cylinders, and "You Are Nothin'" is stupidly Neanderthal enough to brush perfection.

And their best song of all was the b-side of a freebie 7" (backing Rocket From the Crypt, suckas!) inserted into a musclecar mag for swingin' hipsters. "Crimson Ballroom" appeared on 8,500 of these singles and sold out almost immediately, and while the fact that it was the magazine's last single might have something to do with it, the fact that it's a murderous tune probably doesn't hurt things (if by "things" we exclude eardrums). For a mere moment there's nothing but a solitary guitar riff, then WHOMP, everything jumps in at once -- drums, bass, piano, electric soldering machine, model Mikita chainsaw, incendiary devices of varying sizes, '70s vintage pinball machine, Spiro Agnew's brain exploding. The rattling bones of Fred "Sonic" Smith are probably the most prominent, however, this being an MC5 cop of the highest caliber (referring to quality or bullets, take yr pick). "Shakin' Street" and "Thunder Express" are referred to in the lyrics, for starters, and what with the whole song being drowned in a sea of murk with a ceiling of thud keeping it from surfacing for air, it's not immaculately technical enough for comparisons to any proto-metal past Led Zeppelin's eponymous. Sure, the song sounds kind of like the "enough dirgy gronk, let's go kapow" segments of songs like "Dazed and Confused" and "Iron Man", but it's greasy leather jackets and oil-stained t-shirts rather than velvet shirts and hairless bony torsos, stuff that sounds calculated to overpower the roar of the Boss 351 competing for aural supremacy with the tinny speakers installed in the doors.

The song has lyrics, too, but who cares? They're delivered with aplomb and gusto and not much else, and some of them are pretty headscratch-inducing; one line suggests that they want to go "to the place where they don't measure the beat", but I can't tell if that's a dig at BPM-clocking club DJs or just an endorsement of sloppy drumming. The words feel like garnish amongst all the maelstrom of ROKK FURY and for it to be any more than that they'd have to bring in Andrew WK with a megaphone and a book full of mushroom-inspired 11th grade poetry about Bruce Lee leading an army of undead bikers to do battle against the Robot Police.

And then, the big huge mistake: they fade the song out. No! Damn it! I can just barely hear the big wheedle-de-weaaarararh-WHOMP that should rightfully close this exercise in cartoon fuzzpunk excess, and it's wafting off into the distance where it should be rushing the camera and smashing the lens. You do not let things like this end by fading into the ether. My only idea for why they would justify this is that if they had kept it at a normal volume level then BOOM POW Scanners-type head explosions would occur in faux-wood-paneled basements across North America, and brain is hard to get out of shag carpeting. Such is rock.

-Nate

Sunday, January 5, 2003 -- 10:39 a.m.

Bliss! Bliss and rapture! Also "shit yeah". Thank you for the heads up, Senor Inskeep. (I think now would be a good time to finally add a link to his blog ferchrissakes.)

-Nate

Saturday, January 4, 2003 -- 11:04 p.m.

Climax Blues Band, "Couldn't Get It Right"
Gold Plated, 1976 (Sire)
As much as I love the rare groove superbad roof-tearing-down and dirty-ass jams, I have to admit that sometimes I feel like sitting down with a bit of White People Funk. It's not a hugely rich genre; the fact that record companies and radio stations couldn't or wouldn't go the well-trod path of attempting to hijack a black genre in the case of funk has rendered almost all WPF acts one-hit wonders or footnotes compared to the likes of Kool and the Gang or Earth, Wind and Fire. The Bee Gees had a pretty decent hit with "Jive Talkin'", and Gary "Dream Weaver" Wright's minor masterpiece of synthofunk "Love Is Alive" was a notable hit, but credibility and crossover R&B success was lacking; not everyone could've been an Average White Band. By the time '77 rolled around, most of the White People Funk acts ratcheted up their tempo a bit and grabbed for that not-very-elusive disco crossover hit (see aforementioned Bee Gees), and the torch was passed to assorted post-punk types like Gang of Four and Liquid Liquid, who were notably less "accessible" and therefore untrue to the WPF spirit.

The peak of WPF is this blockbuster hit from the Climax Blues Band, an atypical late-career offering that just so happens to be a classic-pop radio staple to this day on stations that are otherwise d'Voidoffunk. I know little about this band other than they are British and that lead singer Colin Cooper used to play in a band called "The Hipster Image" (see previous post?). I'm not sure how familiar these guys were with your typical funk-pop stylings, though there's an interesting sort of anomaly about this song. It's bouncy, yes, but listen to the bass: doonk, doonk, doonk, doonk. Damn, that's basic. Bootsy probably learned how to play that when he was three. The beat is slightly more complex, but it keeps slipping away from my ears whenever I try to get a grasp on it, and there's a good reason for it: almost all the burden of getting some life into the song's rhythm is laid on the guitar, and it chunka-chunks along with a wobbly balance between erratic and metronomic, a bit hiccupy, and letting the keyboard pick up the slack on the chorus. It wakes up on the second verse, as if the guitarist remembered that it's 1976, the name of his band has the word "blues" in it and that his instrument should maybe make a few "rockin' hot licks" or whatever they called them back then. The requisite solo follows shortly thereafter, and it's pretty admirable how it manages to keep the rhythm propelled even as it does a little bit of minor rock noodling.

Ah, it would be so simple if this was an instrumental, but it's not. There are vocals, too, and words. Obvious reference point #1 is a hint of The Brothers Gibb in the chorus; the "i-hi-hight"s are so BGs it's not funny (but this song predates "Stayin' Alive" -- who bit who?). The rest of the vocals are intriguing in that Cooper sounds like he could go into full-on Americanisms or slip into a Brit voice with equal ease, an uneasy teetering between two idioms. And the harmonies kick in at unusual times; they're prominent in the chorus, but they also sneak in near the beginning or end of a verse here and there ("left me stranded, took away my pride/just another no-account fatality"). I should probably mention here now that I have quoted one that the lyrics are ridiculously pessimistic for a #3 single. The chorus is basically about searching for some way to snap out of a faulty mindset and realizing that you can't; no matter where you go -- Los Angeles, New York, points in between -- there will always be some hang-up eating away at you. Not much of a party jam.

So, is it healthy for me to be listening to this so much? (Answer: yes. That guitar is therapeutic.)

-Nate

Friday, January 3, 2003 -- 08:10 p.m.

Oh no!

-Nate

Friday, January 3, 2003 -- 07:26 p.m.

I'll just get a negative blurb out of the way as soon as possible. Why I chose to write about this song instead of any of the 14 very very good songs on this album (which I listened to on the way to work), I don't know. Maybe it's Be A Bastard Day. At least it's another short one.

Sonic Youth, "Youth Against Fascism"
Dirty, 1992 (Geffen)
This song is stupid. I need to say that right off the bat, just to set the tone and all. Nothing against Sonic Youth, who, with the album this song appears on, led my high-schooler ears towards a wondermous vista of dissonance and squalling feedback and the things you're not supposed to do to an electric guitar but are done anyways. Nothing against lefty politics, especially the most righteous sentiments expressed here (racism is shitty; the KKK is stupid). And nothing at all against the music, which gets its deep-down-n-dirty Bassline of Doom chocolate in my mellifluous industrial construction equimpent guitar approximation peanut butter and gets me on some crazed junkie E.T. Reese's Pieces binge.

No, it's the lyrics. I may be missing the point here, but: is this a parody of a protest song? The title is blunt and unclever enough to actually go back around to being smart satire, and some of the rhymes are so laughably clumsy that they seem torn from a Rush Limbaugh sketch ("Yeah the President sucks/he's a war pig fuck/his shit is outta luck!"). Thurston's voice, meanwhile, seems to drip with the faux-cool of someone who thinks he's awesome on toast and way totally profound for saying all this stuff in such a cartoonish and unsubtle way. If it hadn't predated their debut by about four months, this could almost be construed as a piss-take of Rage Against the Machine.

But most confusing of all is the refrain: "it's the song I hate". What is? "Sweet Home Alabama"? "One In A Million"? "From A Distance"? "Youth Against Fascism" itself?

-Nate

Thursday, January 2, 2003 -- 06:16 p.m.

Don't get used to seeing huge things like that last bit on the Chemical Brothers every single day. Don't expect these short, semi-tossed-off things to be the norm, either.

Olde Scottish, "Wildstyle (the Krush Handshake)"
Headz, 1994 (MoWax)
DJ Krush, I know of. I first heard him on a 12" split single -- his aptly-titled "Kemuri" (Japanese for "smoke", and I think we all know just what kind) -- sometime in early '96. Since it was backed by DJ Shadow's "Lost and Found", it probably ranks as one of the best singles of whatever year it was released (1994, I think). BUT I DIGRESS. Krush does some scratching and possibly some remix work on this track (my copy of Headz has no liner notes to speak of), but he's not the story here. The story is whoever the hell Olde Scottish is, and how they turn the Grandmaster Caz/Chris Stein b-boy/post-punk crossover classic into a Beastie instrumental on PCP. The former issue seems to be resolved with the revelation that the band is actually sometime-funky trip-stuff auteur Howie B., along with two guys named Kudo and Nakanishi -- so basically it's a Scots-Japan collab attempt to capture South Bronx New York 1983, an idea that has "wacky adventure" written all over it. The differences between the original and the cover seem pretty basic at first -- no lyrics, rare groove funk licks instead of bleepity plinks and fuzz punk, subtler scratching -- but the further you go into each song and the more you think about the historical context the more Olde Scottish's take on it seems sort of perverse. The seventiesisms of the wah-wah and the heavy slap bass render it unrecognizeable as a rap artifact, simultaneously dragging the nascent days of hip-hop back to the primordial state of funk and disco it drew from and pushing it up to the mid '90s boom-thwap ambient live beat scene (see also aforementioned Beasties, and probably the Roots while we're at it). The hilarity of it all, now, is this: Olde Scottish's whockachickeries and slapbassisms were probably too dated to rhyme over in '83, while the primitive synthesizer chirps and pre-Piklz scratching of the original sounded dated in '94. Now, in 2003, you'd get the most shit-hot sound possible if you combined them. I'd try and extrapolate how this is but I'm not sure I know. It probably has to do with the Neptunes somehow.

-Nate

Wednesday, January 1, 2003 -- 10:04 p.m.

In the spirit of stupid shit, here's my Top Ten Chart Rap Singles of 2002. (Strictly in the interest of fairness, mind you.)

10: Will Smith, "Lust 4 Lyfe (Jiggy Pop)"
9: 50 Cent, "Sodding Twat MCs" (Joe Raposo Remix)
8: J-Lo, "Musical Massacre Did I Tell You I'm From The Bronx?"
7: Irv Gotti, "It's A Rental"
6: LL Cool J, "Rock The What Now?"
5: Ja Rule, "EARARAUHGERGH"
4: Jay-Z, "Biggie Pimpin'"
3: Nelly, "Ain't No Acne On My Dick, Girl"
2: P. Diddy feat. Busta Rhymes, Method Man, Redman, Ghostface Killah, Snoop Dogg, Keith Murray, Mary J, Blige, 2Pac, Curtis Mayfield, Jim 'Black Belt Jones' Kelly and James Brown, "How Else You Buy It?"
1: Eminem, "VD Funhouse"

-Nate

Wednesday, January 1, 2003 -- 07:35 p.m.

I am not quite mentally prepared to start this whole "write about one song a day" thing, but I'll do it anyways. I think I picked a good kick-off point, too.

Chemical Brothers, "Music: Response"
Surrender, 1999 (Astralwerks)
Never underestimate the power of a shirt-collar-grabbing leadoff track. If there's one area where Tom 'n' Ed have always excelled (and I hope it's not too impetuous of me to say that there's definitely more than one), it's kicking things off proper on their albums. Exit Planet Dust had the respiratory Kraftwerk sample that would spiral out into "Leave Home"; Dig Your Own Hole had an electronically-flanged temple entrance gong that would ebb and oscillate until it stepped aside for the Bootsy/Bullitt bass of "Block Rockin' Beats"; Surrender... well, people in 1973 probably imagined that in 1999 computers would sound like this when they booted up. An introductory hum manifests itself; grows in volume like a spaceship descending over a stadium, then trills like a mechanical sparrow imitating Slaughterhouse Five's bombs flying upwards and back into their airplanes, until boo-doop, the power-on is complete and this thing, this... this beat comes in, this Krautrocky tapping that sounds barely restrained from going all Animal style on the drumkit, tailgated by something that could recognizably be the epochal '70s wah-wah if it didn't sound so artificially non-guitarish. Throw in a George Lucas droid beatboxing over the top, and you've got yourself a good way to use the first thirty seconds of your record to attract the attention of any number of uncynical beat-fiends worth their fist-sized silver plastic Sony Triple-Bass ear-cans.

I say "uncynical" because, well, this is the Chemical Brothers. Two years prior to this bombshell they released one of the most mainstream-friendly dance albums ever -- oh no! A Gallagher brother! -- and purists (in this case 'purists' is a euphemism for 'assholes') decided that they didn't well like this whole "big beat" thing. "Keep your crate-digging Ultimate Breaks and Beats Apache-isms out of our pristine 808 happyland, and death to all who sample guitars!" sayeth they, and verily lots of other stupid bullshit, too. So when these people heard the opening of this song -- inadvertently, most likely, or for the sole purpose of reviewing -- they probably held hopes that the entirety of this song would be simple, minimalist "elektrodink" that they can alienate their populist friends with. Yes, finally, the Chemical Brothers have ditched that silly rock-star nonsense and embraced the --

Then, in a deadpan robot-voice understatement of comedic simplicity, the words "Music. Response." are repeated, very Ralf Hutter-like, and the drums start losing their delicacy. And, right when the dance snobs start looking a bit uneasy and the b-boys begin to get that "aw yeah" feeling building in their feet, the voice mono-intones that "music could trigger some kind of response". And the real beat kicks in.

Some kind of response indeed. All it is, really, is a ratcheting up of that Can-type beat, pushing it to the forefront and cranking up the volume and giving it a bit of a push with a helpful tinny pretend snare taptaptaptaptaptap. But the way it's built makes it sound like a 48-point boldface Chankfont exclamation point, and as it rolls through with the simplest of beats, the piece de resistance is unveiled: the heavily-filtered voice of Nicole Ray, whirring out "I got what you want/I got what you need", and it's official: Ladies and gentlemen, we have a Timbaland homage.

"Make It Hot" doesn't sound much like "Music: Response", actually (or vice-versa, as the case may be). It's a slow loping sexy thing, not a pilled-up uprock twitchstravaganza. But the bleeps, the breaks, the Kraftwerkisms, the buildups and breakdowns of the Chemicals' '99 single sound very much in tune with hip-hop as it stands circa now, whether via direct influence or happy coincidence. It's not just this song, but the record on the whole -- I remember seeing Del rip up First Ave back in 2000 and, when his set was over and the man who would be a Gorilla shouted his thank-yous to the assembled Minneapolitans, the DJ dropped the needle on "Orange Wedge". And it sounded like funk. "The Sunshine Underground"'s Nihon-Gallic lope perfectly fits an era where Dungeon Family build a pimpmobile anthem around an Isao Tomita composition of a Debussy song, and I find it perfectly plausible to envision Pharrell pitch-tweaking a .wav file of "Hey Boy Hey Girl", slowing it down to 3/4 speed, streamlining it into his monstrous nu-funk blueprint and reincorporating the Rockmaster Scott-sampling acid-house v. oldskool anthem back into the hip-hop soil from which it grew (pls hold yr fertilizer jokes ok thx).

But back to "Music: Response" -- not only is it the simultaneous bastard child and unwitting catalyst for hip-hop, it's also a total rock-structure workout. You've got the slow-build opening, present in many a classic rock radio staple from "L.A. Woman" to "Black Dog". Then the verse (bee-doo-boop. boo-doot-doot-doot-doot-doot-doot. Music. Response.), chorus (Igotwhatchoowant), repeat, stick the bridge in at about the 2:20 mark, insert solo (squeaky semi-random electronic chirps), whip up the huge epic build back into the last verse, POW, there you have it. Total textbook -- but it just so happens that the Chemicals' copy of the textbook has some confounding and elaborate margin scribblings.

I'm trying to remember what else I listened to and loved in 1999, but this song is pushing it all out and hopping up and down yelling "MEMEMEMEMEMEME" until I have only vague scattered memories of Mos Def and Magnetic Fields to come back in fragments. Most critics back then went all nutty for Moby and such on their singles lists, and when they deigned to give the Chemicals a pat on the back they did so for the warmed-over resetting sun of "Let Forever Be" or the historic yet lyrically uneven New Order summit on "Out of Control" (yes, Bernie, your mustache is too much). But no matter -- there's plenty of room on the floor and when that break hits there's no grad-school pseudo-Greils, no over-serious mutterings about "scenes", no self-conscious worries about whether this is proper techno or some of that "unfashionable big beat rubbish". To answer the song's implied question: The response is movement. Lots of it.

-Nate

Wednesday, January 1, 2003 -- 06:01 p.m.

Radio Detritus is back on the air. Theme of the month: obscure funk for hipsters, swingers and people with ginormous Afros. Most of the music comes from the various Keb Darge Funk Spectrum and Legendary Deep Funk compilations, with a bit of Euroswank film and library music and a few stray scraps of disco here and there thrown in for variety. There's a bit of crossover from the first version of Radio Detritus -- including the "Becker and Fagen get dusted in the back of a velvet-lined '72 Continental" cover of "Do It Again" by Deep Heat -- but it's good stuff, so why not? Enjoy.

-Nate

Wednesday, January 1, 2003 -- 10:49 a.m.

Happy New Year. I'm depressed.

I probably shouldn't be, but after reading City Pages' excellent Artists of the Year issue and realizing that I probably could've contributed -- but didn't -- my spirits sort of sank. (I am jubilant about Melissa running with my suggestion to get David Cross to write something, though.) I'm not sure what I would've contributed -- maybe something bizarre and unwieldy about a Midwestern farm boy turned into a behemoth with the body of Jesse Ventura and the brutal drive of Big Van Vader and unleashed upon an unsuspecting wrestling fanbase as The Next Big Thing Brock Lesnar. That, or Part 317 in the Nathan Patrin El-P Jockriding Sweepstakes. Either way, I think I missed out.

But that was 2002. Back then I started a mediocre blog and had written screamfights with immature pop nerds (such as myself) on ILM and let my insecurity get the best of me more times than I probably should've. This is different. Resolution time: I'm going to write. Harder, better, faster, stronger. I'm going to blog every single damned day if I can. And not just the tired bitching about music articles I don't like, either -- I mean things people want to read about. I'm going to write about music, damn it, and I mean music I love. I'm out of practice, and if I want to impress the brass at the Village Voice (by the way this review of the Roots is what I want to be good enough to write someday) without provoking them to lose track of where they put my submission package then I'd better get going here, seriously. So after I take a shower and have breakfast and finish uploading a bunch of new MP3s to Radio Detritus (now to be updated on the first of every month), the Now Shit is going to commence.

I should also probably mention that I downloaded Acid XPress and a bunch of hip-hop accapellas and may eventually start tinkering with a side project as an amateur mash-up bootleg phenom but I have to test my boundaries first. If nothing comes of this, that's fine, but hey, just in case...

-Nate