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Saturday, November 2, 2002 -- 12:03 p.m.

Stupid J.R. Taylor quote of the week:

"What would the Sex Pistols mean to a young girl today? The losers who spend their adolescence caring about music made before they were born only grow up to become rock critics."

Yeah, like all those Woody Guthrie and Robert Johnson fetishists that started popping up in the early 1960s, hacking away at "roots" music instead of rewriting Little Richard hits. Or the '80s punk rockers who were naive enough to actually think there was some merit in '50s rockabilly when there was the lockstep rigidity of hardcore to turn to instead. Or the 20-something hip-hop producers who own a garage full of Baby Huey and Mandrill albums and are wasting their time and everyone else's by actually using them for breaks instead of hiring a bunch of goateed white boys to lay down some live gronk-metal action down. Then again, said guitarist was probably born after 1971, by which time most of the British stoner-rock icons he worships had already been well established, so to hell with him, too. And those fresh-faced super-hot producers who rocket all those bouncy, head-thumping club hits to the top of the charts? Rumor has it they like German electronica from the 1970s. Were they even around then? If they were, they were probably listening to Sesame Street Fever anyways, so how would they know? Losers! All of them!

Not to mention dozens of kids I went to high school with, who - like me - thought that '60s pop and '70s acid rock fit in pretty well with their daily Nirvana-Pearl Jam-Metallica listening regimen. Yeah, we could have been normal kids who cared nothing about music released before the Carter administration, but being pathetic, we thought it would be a good idea to see where all this music stuff came from and hey did you hear that one song the Chili Peppers did, "Higher Ground", that's actually a cover and it's by that blind dude in the cornrows and I gotta hear it, 'cause I bet it's even better when he does it. Of course, this means that a lot of us stumbled across music that was not only made before our time, but made by people who weren't even our own ethnicity or nationality! Fucked up, man!

So some of us actually did wind up rock critics. Me, I was already on that path before I was old enough to get into R-rated movies by myself (though I managed for Pulp Fiction - and man, did I play the hell out of that soundtrack), so my loserdom was pretty much set in stone. Some of them, though, became musicians. Or they just settled into the working world and didn't become sad music obsessives but did turn on the "classic rock" station on the drive home, turning the volume knob up when "Won't Get Fooled Again" or "Iron Man" came on.

So Taylor can whinge all he wants, acting startled that some people actually give a shit about history instead of consigning it to the dustbin and kicking aside anything that doesn't sound completely new and fresh and underivative. But I have only one thing to say to him: J.R., you're losing your edge.

-Nate

Thursday, October 31, 2002 -- 07:48 p.m.

Er... yeah.

-Nate

Wednesday, October 30, 2002 -- 10:22 p.m.

Somewhere between Grandmaster Flash and Terminator X, he was there, helming the wheels of steel on some of the most important hip-hop records in the history of the genre. "Sucker MCs" changed the sound, "Walk This Way" brought the crossover audience and "Peter Piper" turned a corny Bob James ditty into one of the most memorable breaks ever. Yeah, RUN-D.M.C. claimed they weren't the Beatles on "King of Rock", but that was before, through their enormous impact, they wound up becoming them anyways -- they were the first rap act to have a gold album, then platinum, then triple platinum; the first to have three platinum albums in a row; the first to have a rap video on MTV; the first rap act on American Bandstand; first on the cover of Rolling Stone; first to perform at the Grammy awards.
What they weren't, though, were the first to lose a DJ. At about the same time Jam Master Jay was cutting Aerosmith records as Steven Tyler bashed his bescarfed mic stand through that wall and joined Hollis' finest in a mass national mind-blow of kids everywhere, Boogie Down Productions' Scott La Rock -- who, with the sick beats on "South Bronx" and "The Bridge Is Over", drew from the influence of the Queensbridge superstars' thump even as MC KRS-One derided RUN-D.M.C.'s borough -- was shot and killed during an argument he had nothing to do with. La Rock was the first hip-hop star of renown to be cut down before his time, and now Jam Master Jay himself is the latest. There hasn't been any mention of a motive, but I know some creaky old pundit -- Stanley Crouch, maybe -- will scoff about "gangsta rap violence". Meanwhile, the papers will stick the obit somewhere near the back of the main section next to some piece about Alan Greenspan's economic forecast or a Turkish disco explosion, and Rolling Stone might have to reduce the type size of the "HOT NEW SEXY FASHIONS FOR '03" blurb a few points on their next cover to make a bit of room for a banner proclaiming "RIP" and throwing a pall of morbid sadness over a photo of Avril Lavigne in a tiny bit of not much at all with anarchy symbols stenciled over her prominently perky nips. And what of the 20th-anniversary album RUN-D.M.C. were working on? Who are they going to bring in to replace him? Primo? The Neps? Timbaland? Fucking Kid Rock? I'm not even going to think about this any further.
So their comeback album was a huge disappointment and outside of a pretty funny sketch on The Beavis and Butt-Head Experience album they haven't done anything I've bothered to notice since the Reagan administration. But on the behalf of all the kids who found out that there was life after rock when those 808s blasted the doors down for the first time back in the pastel neon halcyon comedown of the 1980s, I just want to tip my hat and give a moment of silence.
Nah, on second thought... a moment of noise might be more appropriate.

-Nate

Wednesday, October 30, 2002 -- 09:01 a.m.

"I felt that people took our attitude and ran with it and distorted it. It's like you say one thing and it comes back to you as a completely different belief. A lot of people would come up to us and be like, "Yeah, I hate Jay-Z, too." I don't hate Jay-Z, I think he's dope. I was listening to Jay-Z before you even knew who Jay-Z was, when he was with Jaz and the originators back in '88."
-El-P interviewed by Pitchfork. Maybe this should shut up at least some of the annoying underground-vs-mainstream bickering.

-Nate

Tuesday, October 29, 2002 -- 09:14 p.m.

Wait, wait, wait - since when did Scandihoovians learn how to rock the hell out? I had my doubts that the Hives were a fluke, especially since I'd been turned onto countrymen the Hellacopters over a year prior (which reminds me: DOWNLOAD "THE CRIMSON BALLROOM" NOW). But when I heard about Sahara Hotnights I started to become a bit curious, and now that the above-linked Village Voice article has given me at least two other bands to check out, I say viva fuzz-rock and on beyond ABBA! (Not that there's anything especially wrong with ABBA, but I digress.)

-Nate

Tuesday, October 29, 2002 -- 02:02 p.m.

Most of my best thoughts have wound up on ILXor.com instead of here as of late. To keep up appearances, though, I'll reprint some of them here:

Boy oh boy do I love it when writers use the title/refrain of one of the most virulent anti-rock-journo songs ever written to smarmily give backhands to bands lots of people like. The next time I see some alt-press drone sneer "don't believe the hype" when talking about the Str***s (them of NYC or Birmingham, take yer pick) I'll yell "all the critics you can hang 'em, I'll hold the rope" at the top of my lungs.
Some local writer quoted a Spoon song that went "I don't dig the Stripes but I dig Har Mar". I only read that once, and I already think it's overquoted. (Such poor taste on Spoon's part has actually kept me from buying what I'm sure is an ace record, too. Liking HAR MAR SUPERSTAR more than the White Stripes? I respectfully disagree, and also respectfully vomit into the nearest trash can.)

I want to see more MCs rhyming about '60s muscle cars, lucha libre wrestling, Italian caper films, Space Ghost, Vanilla Stoli, Muppets, fat people, Super Punch-Out!, medium-large Midwestern cities such as Minneapolis and Milwaukee, robot sex, Jim Kelly and Bullitt. This is mostly because most other topics are already well-represented and I just want to see how all the goofy crap I just mentioned would fit into hip-hop.

A joke at Momus' expense:

Also, someone did this to me:

-Nate

Monday, October 28, 2002 -- 05:28 p.m.

I am a sick, sick man.

-Nate

Thursday, October 24, 2002 -- 10:38 p.m.

Been feeling too stupid to write lately, but since my cable was shut off today I suppose the last of my excuses is gone. (Then again, this shoots my 'watch VH1 Classic for a few hours and comment on the aesthetics of early music videos and/or 1980s pop' idea all to hell. No more Dio vids to mock... damn.) Anyhow, three things:
-I have a messageboard set up by the fine folks (well, the one guy) at stupidhappy because I'm sort of his gateway to music geekdom or whathaveyou. There are three minor problems with this board: You have to register, it's filled with people I've never even heard of and who have never heard of me, and it sports a very prominent Voltron logo, even though my anime fandom is limited strictly to Cowboy Bebop and I can't be arsed to care about '80s cartoons unless they involve robots that transform into Alitalia-livery Lancia Stratos rally cars. But hey, it's somewhere to put feedback. Word.
-Latest CD purchase: MC Paul Barman's Paulellujah!. This is what happens when linguistic genius white nerdy intellectual types decide to branch out into sex rhymes and b-boy stances. If you can get past the fact that he's really an acquired taste as an MC with a voice that makes Eminem sound like Method Man, you'll get to hear him bust some of the funniest, most clever rhymes you'll ever hear. It's almost a mere bonus that the production makes you nod your head like a ceramic dashboard chihuahua; Prince Paul and MF Doom bring the dopeness but there's also a lot of reassembled live instrumentation a'la Yesterday's New Quintet (only not boring). Download "Cock Mobster" first and if you don't laugh at least once then well uh sorry man but I can't do nothin' for ya.
-Latest CD download: Boards of Canada's Geogaddi. This has a sort of "if today's music technology and a couple decades of Brian Eno experiments were around in 1974" vibe to it, as if it should score some sort of eponymous faded-Technicolor educational movies about outer space or insects. There is an odd problem I get listening to this; it's too laconic for intent listening, but too ear-catching for mere background music, and when it hits its peaks -- the warped-filmstrip Spector soul of "Dawn Chorus" and the underwater pimp-strut of "1969" -- it either subtly insinuates itself or holds my ears for ransom, depending on the amount of attention I'm paying to it. And I haven't heard an album with so many great sub-two-minute songs on it since the Ramones anthology.

-Nate

Monday, October 21, 2002 -- 02:52 p.m.

Fabtastical ILx threads of the week:
Band Logos!
Backmasked Missy!
Hair!
The Vice Magazine Thread of Evil!

-Nate