June 7th, 2006
Out of the 700 or so CD’s that I own, there are only a handful that have ever really mattered to me. Bob Dylan’s “Bringing It All Back Home,” “Highway 61 Revisited” and “Blonde On Blonde,” The Smith’s “The Queen is Dead,” The White Stripes “White Blood Cells,” The Doors first album, Love’s “Forever Changes,” Aesop Rock’s “Labor Days,” Outkast’s “ATLiens,” and Neil Young’s “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere.”
This is not to say that there aren’t other albums that I don’t cherish and love. Nor is this a way of saying that these are the best albums of all time. But in my little world, these albums have meant more to me than anything I’ve ever learned at school or at work. These are the albums that if I were trapped on a televised desert island soap opera, I would need to have by my side.
In the last few weeks, I’ve been listening to an album worthy of being added to that list: Sunset Rubdown’s “Shut Up I Am Dreaming” These are big words and I actually didn’t want to write about it on Trying Not to Be Evil Week because this album is so good that writing about it seems like an exercise in futility. I could spend a lifetime trying to the capture the brilliance of the deranged symphony that Krug has created. A dense maze of beautiful symbolist poems, haunting organ licks and raw visceral emotion that explodes in every note.
I knew that I sure as well didn’t want to sound like the Pitchfork review of the album, spewing its typical smart rock critic gibberish. I get it dude, you’re a fan of post-modernism. Do you want a ribbon?
“In his more fleshed-out, metaphysically epic form, Krug consistently finds ways to yoke disparate parts; there’s so much inventive stitching, in fact, it makes it tempting to offer a play-by-play with color commentary for every song. Beyond writing catchy tunes and packing them with whispers, mallets, harpsichord, and patches of cheapskate drum machines, he’s an intriguing presence. Instead of bubbling along at one level, he roller coasters and raves, mixing nonsense with sharp observations and sadness with puns
Needless to say, there’s nothing I enjoy more than a cheapskate drum machine.
The description that made the most sense about the album came from Skeet On Mischa:
I’d love to say something about Sunset Rubdown, but I can’t get past the fourth song on the album; it’s just too good. Very haunting and reminds me of that song on that Air album, “10,000 Hz legend” with Buffalo Daughter on it.”
It’s one of those CDs that you put in your car and immediately have to turn off because it’s way way too much to handle when you’re sitting on traffic on a freeway. Too intense. It certain doesn’t bear well to casual listening.
That was exactly how I felt about the album until last week, when I was finally able got past the fourth song. And what I heard is pure unfiltered genius.
Like any great album, it ends perfectly. The last song of the album, “Shut Up I Am Dreaming of Places Where Loves Have Wings,” is a seven and a half minute symphony, a song almost too powerful to want to listen to. It forces you to stop everything you’re doing and just listen.
This album isn’t for everyone. It’s strange unique and weird. As though it would be the perfect soundtrack for a Tim Burton film. The first four or five times I heard it, it didn’t sink. But now it has. I like Arcade Fire and Sufjan Steven’s as much as the next guy, but while I admire the brilliance of those two musicians, nothing they’ve done can match the blistering and savage emotion, pain and beauty wrapped up in “Shut Up I Am Dreaming.” I can’t recommend an album more.
Posted in Album Reviews | 6 Comments »
June 6th, 2006
Over the six-plus months or so that I’ve been blogging, I’ve been a tough critic of the fashion trends that constantly sweep through Los Angeles. Sure, I haven’t been as comprehensively excellent as others, but from time to time, I’ve been known to rant about such pertinent issues as derby cap-wearing females and guys in cowboy hats.
There have been other fashion trends that have been spared (I’m looking at you striped-shirt wearing girls. Seriously, I wanted to see the Hamburgler, I’d just go to McDonald’s), but for the most part I try to ignore the fashion world, as it seems to me that a whole lot of people in this town seem to take their fashion cues from two places: Eastsiders ape American Apparel ads, while Westsiders seem to pray exclusively to the holy trinity of Barney’s, Fred Segal and Kitson (though if this means anything perhaps the end is near)
However, one trend has recently returned this summer this brings joy to the frigid tundra of my heart. Some call them shorty shorts. Some call them Daisy Dukes (and if you don’t think I’m doing an entire blog about Duice’s Dazzey Duks song soon, you’re crazy). But once upon a time, a very wise man once perfectly described them as “Look At My Ass Shorts.”
Indeed, I thought the trend of girls wearing Look At My Ass Shorts had ended when I left the cozy confines of Occidental College, where every Spring brought an onslaught of attractive sorority girls walking around in obscenely short shorts. Needless to say, this produced the invention of what was known as a quad-sit, in which my friends and I would look longingly at the conga-train of Look At My Ass Shorts girls strutting across campus. Needless to say, college was fun. And of course, there was no guilt involved in starting at them. After all, the beauty of “look at my ass shorts” is that there’s always some sort of insignia or lettering on the girls ass, which gives you the perfect excuse of explaining how that just wanted to read what the shorts said. But having to explain why you’re staring is something that rarely happens with Look At My Ass Shorts. After all, why else would a girl wear them? Wearing these types of shorts says one thing: I have a nice ass. Would you care to look at it? More often than not, the answer is yes.
But the days of Look At My Ass Shorts seemed to have gone the way of the dinosaur in recent years, as girls had jettisoned shorts for tights and other more hipster-friendly pastures. You hardly even saw a mini-skirt around (the less slutty older cousin of Look At My Ass Shorts). But over the last two months, there has been a divine re-arrangement in the fashion cosmos. The gods have prophesized the return of Look at My Ass Shorts and I think I speak for all males in the city of Los Angeles when I say: welcome back, Look At My Ass Shorts. Your presence was sorely missed.
Yes, it seems that eastsiders and westsiders alike can agree on something this summer: they like short shorts. And you know who else likes short shorts? This blogger. Sure, short shorts aren’t necessarily attractive on every girl, yet when worn properly, they do nothing but enhance the beauty of any girl that happens to be wearing them.
So girls of Los Angeles, for once all I can say to you is: nice work and a job well done. Nothing says summer like a bunch of scantily clad females running around in impossibly short shorts. Nothing. So the next time, you’re out about town in a pair of shorts that you probably could’ve worn when you were five years old, and a guy comes up to you and tells you that he finds you attractive, do me a favor, don’t thank him. Thank the Look Ass Shorts. Because if Big Daddy Kane were still making albums, he wouldn’t have invoked spandex in his rhymes, but rather, he would’ve boasted that his “rhymes are like look at my ass shorts, they make any ass seem good.”
Posted in It Got Weird, Didn't It? | 2 Comments »
June 5th, 2006
A recent conversation between me and one of my best friends:
Me: Oh, funny, you mention that…I wrote about that on the blog last week.
Friend: (obviously lying): Yeah…yeah…hmm…I remember reading that.
Me: Look, it’s cool. You don’t have to read my blog. Most of our friends don’t read the blog.
Friend: No, it’s not that I don’t wanna’ read blogs.
Me: Okay….what’s wrong with my blog? Do you disagree or something?
Friend: No, it’s just that I really like you a lot. Well…and yeah…when I read it, it makes me not like you.
Me: How so?
Friend: You hate everything.
It goes without saying that most of my friends are much nicer than me. They don’t write blogs filled with vitriol and hate nor do they hand out awards to people who screwed up the most that week (f.y.i. Last week’s Award For Excellence in the Field of Excellence Went to the Hop Li Chinese Restaurant on Pico Blvd., in West Los Angeles. Not only did they serve me water in a glass covered with pink lipstick, which of course I didn’t notice until I was almost finished, but they also managed to have a white table cloth covered with a dead ant. Nice work, Hop Li. It’s Fu’s Palace for me from now on, bitches)
Accordingly, most of my friends don’t actually read my blog. One could chalk this up to typical Los Angeles apathy. But I think it’s more than that. Being relatively optimistic they typically don’t care to read my poison-tipped manifestos against the world (and when I’m talking about Poison, I’m not talking DDT, I’m talking BBD). So in honor of my friends and in order to prove to myself that I don’t actually hate everything, just 99.9 percent, I declare this week, officiallyis officially “Trying Not to Be Evil Week,” in which I will devote each day to writing about some aspect about life that doesn’t suck. In fact, this week is dedicated to highlighting the things that I actually love in life (no Dipset).
And on Day 1, I can’t think of a better way to kick off this not-so-historic week by celebrating the Colbert Report, perhaps the finest show on television.
Now I don’t exactly watch a lot of television. In fact, in the last three years I have maybe only consistently watched 10-15 shows. In fact, I can proudly state that I don’t even own a working television (of course, this is technicality, as I seemingly purchased the only new television in the history of television to break for no apparent reason after just three months. Naturally, I opted not to get a warranty.)
The reason why I don’t watch much television is simple: most of it is pretty bad. And there’s nothing that gets me angrier than wasting my time, watching something I inevitably know that I could’ve done better (except for my brief infatuation with the ill-fated Heather Graham vehicle, “Emily’s Reasons Why Not”… Wait..infatuation wasn’t the word I was looking for).
But The Colbert Report is truly something of genius. First and foremost, Stephen Colbert, the actor/comedian, has one of the best deliveries and some of the best mannerisms that I’ve ever seen in a comedian. When some comics deliver dead-pan lines, you get the sense that they know how funny their material is, which sort of makes it a little less funny, because it’s corny when comedians laugh at their own jokes. Not Colbert. The man never breaks character. No matter how ridiculous what he’s saying is, he sells you that he actually believes it.
I’ll never forget a sketch he did on the Daily Show last year in which he interviewed a man who proclaimed himself to have had the most impoverished upbringing ever.
Colbert: I bet I was poorer.
Man: I don’t know about that. We were pretty poor.
Colbert: Did you have floors? I was so poor, we didn’t have floors.
Man: We had floors, but underneath them we had chicken cages where we raised chickens. It was loud. All day long, you couldn’t hear anything but chickens clucking under the floor.
Colbert: Uhh…lucky. I would’ve killed to have chickens under my floor.
Second, Stephen Colbert’s character is brilliantly conceived. Playing a fake ideological blowhard allows Colbert, the actor, a perfect vehicle to use for satire. Rather than tell you why something is funny, the character makes all sorts of absurd comments that are obviously hilarious and political, yet they never come across as political screeds.
Take for instance a conversation he had earlier this year (watch it here) with Brown University scientist, Ken Miller, who he introduces as “a professor at Brown University and a major critic of intelligent design. I’m gonna’ ask him where he gets off.”
His first question:
“Okay, look, now I want you to explain evolution to me, from the primordial soup to how I got here today in my limo…in say…30 seconds.”
Then Miller starts talking about flue shots. Colbert immediately cuts him off.
“I don’t do flu shots. It’s too sciencey.”
Then Miller starts explaining how flue shots prove evolution because they evolve every year to a different strain.
Colbert: Couldn’t that just be intelligent design too. That God is changing it every year to keep us on our toes, and not make us think that we’re so high and mighty.”
Miller: Well, that’s exactly one of the problems with intelligent…design…
Colbert: “Uh…problems…or do you mean strengths!…I don’t understand why all the evolution people don’t just understand how intelligent design just seems so much easier. And plus, intelligent design is the perfect argument because of the fact that God made me.”
Colbert manages to never once explicitly condemn intelligent design and yet clearly picks out its flaws without ranting and raving about how stupid people can be (a la the no-longer funny Bill Maher). Point Colbert.
Which leads to me the third and final reason why The Colbert Report is the best show on television.
Third: It manages to make brilliant political points on a regular basis.
Political satire is one of the most difficult forms of humor to be successful at. A lot of people consider themselves political satirists: Al Franken, Ann Coulter, Dennis Miller, Maher. These four and their ilk have a lot of differing political viewpoints, but one thing in common. They aren’t funny. And once upon a time, SNL used to be effective at doing political satire, but last time I checked the rulebook, any show that has employed Horatio Sanz for sixth straight seasons has a 0 percent chance of not sucking.
Of course, The Daily Show is still outstanding, but though I have the utmost respect for Jon Stewart and their team of writers, the show seems stale of late. Perhaps the day-in, day-out grind year after-year has just made it no longer as fresh as it once seemed. However, I think one of the major reasons why I’m not as big of a fan of it as I used to be concerns its devolution from a show that once skewered both sides equally, into almost exclusively making fun of the Republicans. And while, I’m no fan of George Bush and Co., I think the Democrats are almost as equally deserving of being the targets of satire. I’ll start for you. Two words: Joseph Lieberman. Go….Plus, there’s always the fact that Colbert himself left the show, after being Jon Stewart’s most consistently effective correspondent.
Without overtly picking a side, The Colbert Report manages to lampoon our society brilliantly. I urge everyone to check it out, if they haven’t already. It’s absolutely brilliant. And if you haven’t seen Colbert’s performance at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, you should definitely search for that on You Tube. Stephen Colbert is genius. So is his show.
So that’s one down and Four to Go. Being “not-evil” is difficult. I definitely can’t watch the MTV Movie Awards. That could ruin everything.
Posted in It Got Weird, Didn't It? | 6 Comments »
June 1st, 2006
Clouds of marijuana smoke ripped high into the heavy air inside the House of Blues, on the Sunset Strip, packed thick on this Saturday night with a wild mix of people all there for one reason, a lack of common sense that allowed them to pay $45 a ticket to go see Mobb Deep in the year 2006. Sure, I could rattle off a whole list of the personality types that showed up, but why bother when one word can describe the crowd with such simple poetry. A word that I don’t use all that often. Simply put, if you’re showing up to a Mobb Deep show, there is a high probability that you are gully.
I am not gully. What I am is a non-practicing Jew. And by virtue of being a non-practicing Jew, there are certain tenets non-practicing Jews are obligated to follow: talking a lot, enjoying delicatessans, never paying for valet parking, and most of all, having an intense love of all things that are free. So when my editor-in-chief at Rap-Up magazine, e-mailed me to ask if I wanted Mobb Deep concert tickets, I informed my girlfriend that rather than the quiet evening at home that she had tentatively hoped for, we needed to go to the Mobb Deep concert. Quite frankly, to a female, there is no sweeter sentence in the English language than, “baby…go with me to a Mobb Deep concert. It will be awesome…oh yeah…and don’t wear anything too revealing.”
I added the too-revealing part because of several near-incidents that once occured with an ex-girlfriend at a Wu-Tang concert a very long time ago. She was a very nice girl but lacked the common sense to realize the quite simple mathematical equation: pretty girl+see-through shirt+3/4s gully Wu-Tang audience=Bad Times Had By All. (Don’t worry, I have been assured by top-flight mathematicians that this theory is true).
Which brought me to the current moment, where the smell of blunt smoke taunted my sobriety, but surprisingly the music did not. The DJ seemed to have read my guide to DJ-ing , playing classic tracks from Camp Lo, Biggie and Tribe Called Quest. Perhaps, the night would exceed expectations. Perhaps Mobb Deep would stick to hits from their old catalogue, perhaps I might avoid seeing Curtis “Million Dollar Budget” Jackson
A new record came on. Common’s “I Used To Love H.E.R.,” off of his epic “Resurrection” album, the track where he used his love of a woman for a metaphor for hip-hop, that he felt had strayed from its conscious and light-hearted beginnings into a morass of studio gangsterism, violence and drug stories. As if on cue, a vicious fight broke out to the left of me. Arms swung in complete abandon, bodies leapt over railings to join in. Finally, the Security Guards finally barelled out and broke it up And as if he was watching over the proceedings, Common’s voice rang out:
“And on some dumb shit when she comes to the city/ Talking About Poppin Glocks Servin Rocks And Hittin Switches/ Now she’s a gangsta rollin’ with gangsta bitches/
The absurdity of the situation became even more real and I thought about the song for a moment (because god knows Mobb Deep were running well past their supposed 12:30 start time). When Common wrote that song, it was the year 1994, and rap was at the beginning of an unprecendented five-year run of greatness .Common may have lamented the rise of gangster rap that began with N.W.A. in the early 90’s, but his jeremiah against the state of mid-90s hip-hop was unwarranted.
The period between 1993-1998 was the rap analogue to the period between 1964-1969 in rock music, a five year stretch when many of the genre’s classic albums were spawned (this is a different post for a different time). I’m not a believer in direct comparisons between different genres of music and readily acknowledge that rap music has never produced anything worthy of “Bringing It All Back Home,” “Forever Changes,” “Are You Experienced” et. al. But bear with me for a second and think about the hip-hop albums that dropped during that stretch in the mid-1990s.
Just check out the years 1994, 1995 and 1996 alone.
1994 marked the release of the aforementioned “Resurrection,” Wu-Tang’s “Enter the 36 Chambers” Digable Planet’s “Blowout Comb,” Bone Thug’s “Creepin’ On Ah Come Up EP,” Notorious BIG’s “Ready to Die,” Organized Konfusion’s “Stress: The Extinction Agenda,” Outkast’s “Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik” Warren G’s “Regulate…The G Funk Era.”
1995 had Genius’ “Liquid Swords,” Goodie Mobb’s “Soul Food,” ODB’s “Return to the 36 Chamber’s,” Raekwon’s “Only Built For Cuban Linx,” Redman’s Dare Iz a Darkside,” The Roots’ “Do You Want More,” and Jay-Z’s “Reasonable Doubt.”
Then in 1996, we saw 2Pac’s “All Eyez On Me” (for my money the only truly great album he ever made), “Tribe’s “Beats, Rhymes and Life,” DJ Shadow’s “Endtroducing,” Dr. Octagon’s “Dr. Octagonecologyst,” The Fugees’ “The Score,” Ghostface’s “Ironman,” Nas’, “It Was Written,” Outkast’ “ATLien’s”(my favorite rap album of all time). Redman’s “Muddy Waters,” The Roots’ “Illadelph Halflife,” and Xzibit’s “At The Speed Of Life.”
I list all of these albums not to let everyone in on the content of my iTunes library, but rather as a way of proving to myself that hip-hop did not actually suck in 1996. Sorry DJ Shadow, you were wrong too. But at times, it’s easy to engage in moral relativism and become convinced that I’m just one of those old people prone to shouting, “in my day…we had the best of everything…yadda…yadda…etc.”
But perhaps the most interesting thing about those albums was that they were all major label releases. In the decade thus far, the only two major label rap albums that can hold a candle to the one’s I’ve previously listed are Jay-Z’s “The Blueprint,” and Ghostface’s “Fishscale” album. And these are rappers that have been around now for almost 15 years.
Which brings me back to Mobb Deep, the reason for my post, the reason why I ventured the gully-infested waters of the House of Blues, in my hopes to catch a train that had long since passed. But first, a little backstory for those not in the know.
In 1995, Mobb Deep dropped an album everyone with any knowledge of hip-hop would certify as a stone-cold classic: “The Infamous.” Essentially, an hour long trip through the infamous Queensbridge projects in New York, the album is rife with cinematic detail of a life of crime, violence, and drugs, interspersed with occasional bouts of serious introspection that help to balance the bleak perspective offered by the extremely young members of Mobb Deep. If you listened to hip-hop growing up, it was impossible not to be blown away by not just the rhymes, but the stark and gorgeous piano loops and thudding breakbeats which contributed to its place as one of the most well-produced albums ever.
The next year, Mobb Deep followed up The Infamous, with a worthy successor, “Hell On Earth.” “Hell” might not be as brilliant as The Infamous, but it still holds up as a very good album even a decade later. But after “Hell on Earth,” Mobb Deep’s career seemed to mirror the rest of the mainstream rap world, a decent album in Murda Muzik….and then around 2001…the plummet.
Suddenly, this past year Mobb Deep surprised everyone by signing to 50 Cent’s G-Unit label and proceeded to appear on a bunch of mix-tapes, bragging about how rich 50 was and how much money he was going to spend on their album, and how basically they had entered a new Candyshop filled with well…you can judge from the photos below.
I don’t want to speculate what the “G” in G-Unit stands for. But let’s just say that between all of G-Unit and all of Dipset, they probably have more knowledge about this , then they probably let on.
At any rate, the demise of Mobb Deep has been well-catalogued by both Ian and Joey, here and here, but there was always something that made Mobb Deep a little bit different from the litany of rappers that boasted about their prowess with guns and drugs. Besides, with their latest album debuting in the top 5, perhaps Prodigy might regain some of the spark that he lost when Jay-Z humiliated him several years back on “that Summerjam screen.”
Finally at 1:15 a.m. Mobb Deep stumble on-stage, By this point I’m exhausted, after having seen weed carrier after weed carrier perform lackluster set after lackluster set and watching people almost kill each other over smudged Pumas.
Then Havoc and Prodigy swagger out through a large over-sized door erected on stage. Behind it is a faux-brick wall and the words Mobb Deep blaring bright and large. To the left, just back-stage is a 10-man deep posse of weed carriers nearly spilling out on stage, but they stay contained, and I n0tice that Mobb Deep has no hype man. This bears well.
But the lack of the hype man was probably the only good thing about the show, as almost immediately Mobb starts performing cuts from “Blood Money.” And I use the word perform loosely. It was more like screaming. There was no rapping involved. And when there was rapping it was off-beat. How off-beat? Enough so that you could hear the album vocals in the background. Yes, just like every pop star you’ve ever seen, Mobb Deep plays with the album track. Hardcore. And the beats that were once spare and poignant in the mid-90s had been transformed into heavy clap-trap synth monstrosities, reeking of Scott Storch-esque shiny over-production.
20 minutes ran by, with Prodigy and Havoc seemingly more interested in the massive ice-flooded Jesus pieces around their neck, than any concept of performance or art or putting on a show. I’ve been to a lot of shows, but never before have I seem a performance so dis-interested, apathetic and flat-out lazy. The only non-Blood Money song, they played was “Survival of the Fittest,” (just the first verse). Not only did the concert suck, but it seemed to embody everything wrong with mainstream hip-hop in the year 2006. Who can scream the loudest, who can make the most club-ready bangers, who can brag about selling the most crack, seems to be the only litmus test to be considered good in these fallow times. Go look at Pitchfork and the rap artists they continually extol. T.I.? The Clipse? L’il Wayne? I can understand someone enjoying listening to them as guilty pleasures, but to critically acclaim them for spewing poison (derivitive poison at that)? That is just lazy journalism and they are just as complicit in the downfall of the genre as anyone because their positive reviews help to sell records. Period. There should be no such thing as musical relativism.
And as for Mobb Deep? After their 20 minutes on stage, they turned the set back over to their weed carriers. A pair of dudes who just started freestyling about something inane: guns, bitches, whatever. Who cared at this point? One of the dudes was creatively named, Nyce. I waited for several songs for Mobb to return, but at 1:55, it became apparent that they’d called it a night. Fitting. The audience had paid $45 to hear 5 songs yelled cacophonously at them. Without mincing words, it was the worst concert I’ve ever been to. Bar none.
As I filed out of the venue into the chilly early morning air, all I could think about was about hip-hop, a genre I had loved so much when I was younger. And I realized, that I hadn’t left hip-hop. Hip-hop left me. Oh, sure I still listen to new hip-hop, but it’ s mainly artists typically considered underground, Def Jux, Little Brother, Rhymesayers. At some point around 2001, a schism emerged in hip-hop music. Whereas, before you listened to rap, now you either listened to underground hip-hop or you listened to pop. Rap as I had known it was dead. Again, Common’s “I Used to Love H.E.R.” wormed it’s way back into my head and I thought about those lyrics:
I might’ve failed to mention that the shit was creative/
But once the man got you he altered the native/
told her if she got an energetic gimmick/
then she could get money and she did it like a dummy/
I was wrong. Common actually did get it right. Only he was 12 years too late. R.I.P.
Passion of the Weiss Rating: 0 crucifixes out of 10. (Worst. Concert. Ever.)
Posted in Beards, Blazers, & Glasses | 9 Comments »
