Sunday, May 25, 2008

Bands That Were Destroyed by Mainstream Popularity: Death From Above 1979 vs. At the Drive-In

Before we even get started here, I want to make it perfectly clear that this is not an obnoxious "fuck commercial radio" type of post. I have listened to commercial radio in the past, will probably do so in the future, and if I was in a band, I would want Flow or Jack or 102.1 to play my song with every fibre of my being.

That said, sometimes mainstream success is a little too much for some bands. They may not have the personalities to stay level headed when getting money thrown at them, or they may just get to the top and realize they liked it better at the bottom.

Death from Above 1979 and At the Drive-In were two of my favourite bands in university. When they started to get mainstream airplay, I made a
conscious effort not to do the indie snob thing and abandon them because other people were listening to them. In retrospect, I probably should have, because both bands imploded within a year of getting popular.

The Main Event

In the red corner, from Toronto, with post break-up projects consisting of MSTRKRFT and Sebastien Grainger and Les Montagnes, DEATH FROM ABOVE 1979!

Jesse F. Keeler and Sebastien Grainger formed Death from Above in 2001. In 2003, they were sued by the DFA record label and were forced to change their name. They added the 1979 for Keeler and Granger's year of birth. In 2004, the release I'm a Woman, You're a Machine, their only full length album. After getting about six months of solid burn from Pitchfork et al. they started to solid play on MuchMusic and MTV. They spent 2005 touring almost non-stop. In August 2006, Keeler posted the following message on the band's website.

"I know its been forever since I wrote anything on here. I'm sure by now most of you assume the band isn't happening anymore since there are no shows, no work on a new album, etc. well. I wanted to let you know that your assumptions are correct. We decided to stop doing the band... Actually we decided that almost a year ago. We finished off our scheduled tour dates because there were good people working for us who relied on us to make a living and buy Christmas presents and pay rent etc. We couldn't just cancel everything and leave them out to dry... Plus I think we wanted to see if we would reconsider after being out on the road. Our label was really hoping that we would change our minds, so they asked us to keep quiet about the decision for at first. Well, it's been quite a while now and we are still very sure the band won't happen again, so I guess it's time to say something."

Shortly after the breakup, Status Ain't Hood's Tom Briehan, who I usually really enjoy, eulogized them as "a band based on being assholes."


I saw them live twice and met them once. They were two of the nicest, most down-to-Earth musicians I'd ever met. They were also one of the loudest, most active live acts I'd ever seen. That's including Rancid, Iron Maiden and Bad Brains. For two guys, they managed to produce an ungodly quantity of sound.

This is the video for "Pull Out." It's two minutes long, it makes me seasick and it's awesome.




The Opponent

In the blue corner, from El Paso, Texas, with post-break up projects consisting of Sparta and The Mars Volta, AT THE DRIIIIVE IN!

At the Drive-In were founded in 1993. They once lied and said they were a polka band to get on local TV. Much like Death from Above 1979, they built their reputation on an energetic live show and heavy touring.

After spending much of the 1990s toiling in the hardcore scene, the band achieved mainstream success in 2000 with the album Relationship of Command and the single "One Armed Scissor."

In 2001, the band started to fracture. Frontman Cedric Bixler-Zavala and guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez wound up getting the bulk of the newfound fame due to their exciting haircuts. Bixler-Zavala and Rodriguez-Lopez wanted to move the band in a more prog-rock direction, while the other three guys, lead by guitarist and co-founder Jim Ward, wanted to keep making Fugazi-esque post hardcore. Finally, Bixler-Zavala and Rodriguez-Lopez had developed massive crack and heroin habits, causing them to fuck up constantly, both on and off stage.

At the 2001 Big Day Out festival, Cedric shouted at the crowd and walked off stage 15 minutes into the band's set. The next month, the band went on "indefinite hiatus." Bixler-Zavala and Rodriguez-Lopez started The Mars Volta and made the sort of obnoxious wank rock they'd always dreamed of making, while Ward, bassist Paul Hinojos and drummer Tony Hajjar started Sparta.

This is the video for "One Armed Scissor." It's just a bunch of live clips, but God damn it's exciting.



OK, post to comment, votes close Friday at Midnight.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Runnin' With Their Shirts Off, Van Halen Wins

OK, so that was actually pretty close, but in the end Van Halen won the vote 4 - 3, although Warrant made a solid last minute run and their voters were definitely bringing up good points..
For a victory video, I'm putting up the video for "Runnin' With the Devil."

There's not a lot to this video, it's basically a straight up performance clip, but GOD, look at Diamond Dave. Now that's a look; leather pants, HUGE belt buckle, red satin shirt open exposing your hairy chest to the world. God, if I looked as good as Diamond Dave, I would rock that look all the time.

Also, this song was in the late-90s WCW adver-film Ready to Rumble, starring David Arquette, Oliver Platt, Scott Caan, Rose McGowan and WCW's stable of wrestlers circa 1999. Ready to Rumble is secretly one of my favourite movies ever.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Sexist But Hilarious Videos of the 1980s: Warrant vs. Van Halen

What's up all?

This post is brought to you by the Toronto Blue Jays and a grand slam by Rod Barajas.

Before we get started, I want to make it perfectly clear that this post is not meant to denigrate women in any way, shape or form. In spite of the fact that I used to sell porn and currently work at a sports talk radio station, I totally value women as equals and respect their contributions to society. Hell, my mother is a woman.

That said, there's no point in me pretending I don't appreciate the female form, and by the female form, I mean jiggling boobs.

I'm also a huge fan of silliness. I am by nature sort of a mopey bastard, so anything that can break my bad mood is appreciated. These two videos manage to combine jiggling boobs and idiocy in the best, or worst, possible way.

It's also worth noting that as horrifyingly sexist as these videos were considered at the time, they're almost charming now. There's sort of a Russ Meyer effect going on here. In a society where Jules Jordan is filming anal gangbangs and 50 Cent is rhyming about pimping whores, there's something kind of cute about movies about huge boobed girl gangs and songs that use baseball and pie as an awkward metaphor for sex.

The Main Event
In the (cherry) red corner, from Florida and Ohio by way of Hollywood, California, with a has-been factor of being a punchline WARRR-ANT!

Warrant were formed in 1984. After years of toiling in rock's minor leagues, Warrant finally got signed to a major label in 1988. In 1989, they released Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich. The album produced three Billboard singles; powerballads "Heaven" and "Sometimes She Cries" and the anthemic "Down Boys."

Wanting to strike while the iron was hot, Warrant started recording their second album, tentatively called Uncle Tom's Cabin, while Dirty Rotten was still on the charts. The execs at Sony Music felt that the album lacked a hit single, so with the album "finished" in their minds, the band members were shoved back into the studio and told to make something catchy. Within 15 minutes, the band had written "Cherry Pie." The lyrics were written on a pizza box. Sony quickly changed the name of the album to Cherry Pie and released the album and single in late summer 1990.

The album was an instant hit, mostly on the strength of the "Cherry Pie" single and the accompanying video, which featured former Miss Teen USA contestant Bobbie Jean Brown, getting sprayed with water, molested by the band and getting a pie in the lap. MuchMusic dubbed the video "offensively sexist" and refused to air it, which was sort of an achievement when you consider what videos were like at the time.

Two more thing. One, if one band got fucked by the rise of grunge, it was Warrant. While other glam metal bands had years to get rich and then blow all their money on drugs, Warrant essentially got 18 months before Nirvana and company rolled up and blew them out of the water. Canadian glam metal act Slik Toxik were victims of a similar circumstance.

Two, if you're not too distracted by Ms. Brown, go ahead and listen to the lyrics of this song. They're AWFUL. I can't believe people were shocked they wrote this in 15 minutes. I'm wondering what took them so long.

Anyway, here's the "Cherry Pie" video.



The Opposition

In the blue corner, from Pasadena, California, with a has-been factor of being reunited and it feels so good, Vaaaaan HA-LEN!

I'm not going to get into intense biographical details about Van Halen here, because everybody either knows the story already or doesn't care. I will say that I basically built this post around this video. My friend Stephie B. was possibly the biggest party girl I knew in university. She is now a high school teacher, which I find hilarious, and I regularly serenade her with this song. My other friend Beth G. also knew how to throw down pretty solidly in university, and is also now a teacher. She basically used this as her theme song for her first two years in the teaching profession.

Here's some things about the video.

1) It's inherently disturbing. At least Bobbie Brown was slutting out for the pleasure of Warrant, who are full grown men. These women are stripping for middle school students. That's fucked up.

2) The voice of Waldo is provided by a young Phil Hartman.

3) The best thing about this video, other than Miss Phys Ed's near-see through shirt, has got to be the extent to which David Lee Roth's vaudevillian sensibility is allowed to run wild here. The man has the rest of the band doing co-ordinated dance numbers. That's either incredibly lame or incredibly awesome. It could go either way.



As always, comment to vote, voting closes Friday at Midnight.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

OK, So I'm Taking a Week Off, Nobody Panic

Hey all,

I feel like I got a little fail on me, but shit was hectic at work and I just didn't get a chance to post, so I'm just taking this week as a hiatus. Trust I'll be back at it next week.

In the mean time, here's the video for "Office Boy" by Bonde do Role. If BDR beat CSS back in the Brazilian Buzz Band Battle, this would have been their victory video.

OK, next week, I swear.


Sunday, May 11, 2008

Sorry for the Delay

Hey all, may be a little late getting the next post up on account of I have to go to the Borough for Mother's Day.

As a tribute to our Boomer mums, here's the clip for Asha Bhosle's "Dum Maro Dum,"from the 1971 Bollywood flick Hare
Krishna Hare Rama. Although it's sung by Bhosle, it's actually the super-hot Zeenat Aman who's shown singing in the scene. Even though my folks aren't Indian, I figure it's sort of appropriate because they could be the wasted white kids in the clip.

Also, I realize this isn't technically a music video, but it's close enough.


Saturday, May 10, 2008

Ladytron are the Last Ones Standing

After several weeks of blowouts, we finally had a close contest. Ladytron edged out Felix 3 - 2 in one of our most competitive battles yet.

This is the video for "Destroy Everything You Touch," off the Witching Hour album. This video manages to make an innocent hobby like mountain climbing seem super creepy. In it, the members of Ladytron are both the mountaineers and the mountains. That's right folks, they're climbing mountains made out of their own faces. It makes the "Seventeen" video seem like a playful puppy in comparison.

Friday, May 9, 2008

Please Vote You Dirty Bastards!

We have a tie right now.

I realize it looks like Felix Da Housecat is winning, but my Dad put in a father-to-son Facebook vote for Ladytron. Come on and vote to break this tie. Polls are open for another 24 hours.

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Battle of the Electroclash Survivors: Felix Da Housecat vs. Ladytron

Does anyone out there remember electroclash? Is anyone, other than me, willing to admit to liking it?

If you're suffering from Selective Memory Disorder, electroclash was a musical genre that combined retro-'80s synths, house basslines, porn sleaze and musical theatre silliness. It was a big deal for about eighteen months six or so years ago. I won't front, I fell for the sound whole-heartedly. At the time, several of my friends mocked me for getting sucked in by what was clearly the millennial equivalent of novelty disco. They were right.

As with all strange musical fads, the acts with actual talent managed keep their careers going after their genre became a punchline. So while the all-style, no-substance Fischerspooner are currently unsigned and Tiga, best known for a high-irony Nelly cover, has been reduced to remixing The Killers, Ladytron and Felix Da Housecat are still producing.

The Main Event

In the red corner, from Chicago Illinois, with a tendency to get mistaken for King Britt, FELIX DA HOUSE-CAAAT!

Felix Da Housecat was never really part of the electroclash movement. He's not from New York or Montreal or Berlin, he wasn't a lame art hipster and he never really got into the silly performance art shit that Fischerspooner were all over.

While most electroclashers were making music that was nostalgic for the '80s, Felix actually made music in the '80s. He released his first single, "Phantasy Girl," in 1987. He was 15. Felix's parents were less than enthused with their son's fascination with club culture and his association with house pioneer DJ Pierre and basically forced him to give up music entirely. By 1992 he had dropped out of college, against their wishes, and returned to the Chicago club scene. He produced several club hits under multiple monikers (Aphrohead, Sharkimaxx, Thee Madkatt Courtship) and spent the back half of the '90s running Radikal Fear Records, one of house music's most productive labels.

In 2001 he released Kittenz and Thee Glitz, his most commercially successful album ever and the album that many critics blame for creating the whole electroclash sound. It's also one of my favourite albums ever. If anyone ever asked me that "five albums for a desert island" question, this would have to be included. (The other four albums would be Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, The Descendants' Milo Goes to College, De La Soul's Stakes is High and Rancid's Let's Go.)

This is the video for "Madame Hollywood," off of Kittenz. It's a pretty strange video, which makes sense, because Felix seems like a pretty strange dude.



The Opposition

In the blue corner, from Liverpool, England, with a live show inspired by Power Point, LAY-DEE-TRON!

Ladytron was founded in 1999 by an English keyboardist, a Chinese-English industrial engineer, a Scottish ex-model and a Israeli-Bulgarian biochemist. They make fantastic albums and have one of the most underwhelming live shows I've ever seen.

In 2001 their single "Playgirl" got some solid burn in the music press, but they didn't really get noticed until they released "Seventeen" in 2002. In addition to being prominently featured in the movie Party Monster, "Seventeen" manages to deliver a scathing indictment of the modeling industry in less than 30 words. Their third album, Witching Hour, does not make my desert island all-time list, but is one of my favourite albums to come out in the last two or three years.

In defense of Ladytron's live show, I did see them directly after seeing CSS for the first time. After seeing Lovefoxx explode all over the stage, watching a bunch of nervous looking, androgynous pale people fiddle with laptops while an art movie was broadcast behind them just wasn't that impressive.

What Ladytron lacks in live dynamism, they make up for in video creepiness. Every time I watch a Ladytron video, I wind up feeling like I've been touched inappropriately. This is the video for "Seventeen." I like it because it both accurately illustrates the song's lyrics and gives you an idea of how much fun a live Ladytron set is. I dislike it because it makes me shiver a little.



As always, you should comment to vote and the polls close at midnight on Friday.

Saturday, May 3, 2008

Wow, That Wasn't Even Close: Princess Superstar beats Kool Keith

I don't even know what to say here.

Even with people admitting that Kool Keith is a better rapper than Princess Superstar, and giving Keith props for having a cool sci-fi video, it was abundantly clear that the people like slutty Italo-Jewish babysitters more than they like schizophrenic African-American Elvis impersonators. Fair enough.

Here's the video for "Perfect" off 2005's My Machine. It's not quite on the same level as "Bad Babysitter," but hey, what is. Also, the male models in this video make me laugh.



Also, just so you know how dope they are in tandem, here's the "Keith and Me" joint where Keith and Princess combine forces.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Heads Up MMV Nation! Former Winner Robyn Coming to Town!

What's up y'all?

This is an emergency broadcast to let those of you who haven't seen the new edition of Eye know that Battle Two Winner Robyn will be in Toronto at the Phoenix on Monday. I'm still slightly embarrassed to admit it, but I'm totally fucking going. You all should to.