Music Video Violence

Retired...

2009-06-25T01:19:00.003-04:00

What's up gang...

After three months off, I've kind of decided this thing has run its course.

I'm going to be starting another blog shortly, it'll be a music blog, most likely with a lot of video content, but I'm going to give myself a little more room to run.

As a parting gift, I offer this.

OK, fuck that...

2009-03-04T23:02:00.001-05:00

There were no winners there, only losers.

That wasn't a great one...

I'll post something new when I have a good idea.

Old business, new business or I fear for the future of Canadian hip-hop: Alias Donmillion v. Reviera Regime

2009-02-22T23:08:00.004-05:00

OK, first of all, some old business... last week's winner was Rancid.

Here's the victory vid, "Ruby Soho."

Good shit... now on to some new business.

OK, so, almost every one of these battles has been between two videos that I really enjoy. In fact, there's only been two that haven't been: Lil' Wayne v. She Wants Revenge (where I was a little ambivalent about both bands, although six months later, both acts have grown on me quite a bit) and In Extremo v. TaTu (which was wildly hilarious). This video combines aspects of both those battles.

Let me start by saying that I'm not really that worried about the future of Canadian hip-hop. Kardinal's on the American charts, Famous has a Juno nod, K'Naan looks like he's about two months away from being an international megastar, things are mostly OK. That said, there are a couple causes for concern.

The Main Event

In the Red Corner, from the IDF's Golani brigade, by way of Jane and Finch, the two toughest Jewish gangsters since Bugsy Siegel, RIVIERA REG-IIIME!

Toronto-born Klee Magor and Boston-born Benny Brahmz met while serving in the Israeli army in 1997. According to the lore, the two would freestyle while under fire in South Lebanon. They recorded their first album after getting discharged from the IDF in 1999, but quickly packed it in and headed back to North America after getting pissed off by Israel's weak hip-hop scene.

In 2001, Klee convinced Brahmz to join him in Toronto, and in 2004, they released their second album Thugs of War. A kid was stabbed at their album release party.

In 2005, the Regime met Necro on a trip to NYC. Necro and the Regime got along like a house on fire; they were all violent nihilists, they all liked drugs, and they were all Israeli. Necro got the group signed to his Psycho-Logical Records label. In 2008, they released Real Soldierz Ride. He also got them to join his Jewish rap supergroup Jewish Gangsters.

I'm not going to crack too hard on these guys; they clearly have more gangsta street cred than pretty much anyone else. They've really killed guys as part of the IDF, and really been shot at. My problem isn't that I think they're faking, it's that I think the video is so fucking ham fisted. Hip-hop isn't a genre that thrives on subtlety, but Riviera Regime seem to have neither the creativity to do something indie-filmish and high concept nor the budget to do an all-out bitches and bling ball fest.

This is "Sacrificial Offering," off Real Soldierz Ride.

The Competition

In the blue corner, from Allenbury, a guy who's on Muchmusic, but doesn't make much music, ALIAS DONMILLION!

Alias Donmillion started rapping in 1994. He founded his label, Donmillion Entertainment, and released his first album in 2000, but her really didn't blow up (in relative Canadian terms) until 2006. when he released his album Music Money and released the video for the single "Dirty Dot," which was nominated for an MMVA. Shortly after the MMVAs, he was arrested on a gun charge and spent two years in Kingston Pen.

This is his new video for "Back on the Block."

Here's my basic objection to this video. He spends the whole song telling us that rapping isn't very profitable for him, and that he makes most of his money from narcotics sales.

Here's the thing; I can't decide if Alias is lying about his dope dealing, or if he's just a really bad criminal. If he's lying, or exaggerating, then he would be in good company. (I think most rappers are overstating their criminal pasts.)

If he's not lying, then he's out of his mind. Again, let's get this straight; he's been free for less than a year, and he's already making a video where he confesses to multiple felonies. What the fuck are you doing, dude?

As always, votes due by Friday at midnight, comment to vote.

The two best bands ever: Rancid v. H2O

2009-02-16T00:26:00.004-05:00

A little high school nostalgia...

Back when I was a lad, there was a period of about a year where, as far as I was concerned, every band except two could have stopped making music and I would have been a-OK.

This post exists as a tribute to those two bands, the two bands that made punk relevant to people born after the mid-'70, two bands that I've seen a combined 13 times, and the two bands that were represented on the right and left sleeves of my army surplus parka in grade 11 and 12.

That's right, I'm talking about H2O and Rancid, the two best bands EVAR!

The Main Event

In the red corner, from Albany, California, a band that really, really wishes they could be The Clash... RANCID!

Rancid were formed in 1991 from the ashes of another really important American punk band called Operation Ivy. Op Ivy ran from 1987 to 1989 and featured Rancid bassist Matt Freeman and guitarist/vocalist Tim Armstrong. The band broke up just as they were starting to flirt with mainstream success. Tim responded to the death of the band by taking the borderline alcoholism he'd had since his teens and making it a full time occupation, drinking like a maniac until he wound up homeless.

In '91, Matt suggested to his wreck of a former bandmate that they give music another try. Matt's since said that he only started Rancid to keep Tim from drinking himself to death. They recruited a drummer (Brett Reed) and later added a second guitarist (Lars Frederiksen, who had just finished a brief stint filling in with the UK Subs) and the rest was basically history.

In their 18-year career, Rancid have experimented with pretty much every punk sub-genre. They've released a couple of streetpunk-type albums (their self-titled debut and breakout hit Let's Go), a ska album (...And Out Come the Wolves, my personal favourite), a pop-punky sort of album (Indestructible), a hardcore album (their other self-titled album) and a weird sort of experimental new wave-meets-dub reggae sort of album that I'm fairly convinced no one liked but me (Life Won't Wait).

They also broke-up, got back together, spawned a couple fairly awesome side projects (Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards and The Transplants), and Tim Armstrong engaged in the time-honoured rock n' roll tradition of age inappropriate marriage when he married Brody Dalle of The Distillers, who was like 12 at the time.

(She later left him for one of the douches from Queens of the Stone age, like the worthless little Aussie whore she is.)

Here's the video for "Time Bomb."

The Competition

In the blue corner, from New York's Lower East Side, the most successful band ever started by another band's roadie, H2O!

H20 was founded in 1994 by Sick of it All roadie Toby Morse. In the early '90s, Toby had started getting on stage with the band during encores, and was so well received that he started a band of his own. He recruited a bunch of his buddies with band experience to back him up and started playing shows in New York, New Jersey and New England.

As with pretty much every '90s punk band, they released a couple albums on Epitaph, had one (middling) major label album, broke up and re-formed as mature men. Their story is pretty interchangeable with the stories of several of their NYHC contemporaries, particularly Madball, who they've toured with about seven hundred zillion times.

What's important about H2O is how they fit into my personal narrative. No band helped ease the transitions from hip-hop kid who dabbled in punk to punker who dabbled in hip-hop and back again more than H2O. Guitars aside, there's very little that separates H2O from, say, the Wu-Tang Clan. They both sing about the same topics: loyalty to your friends, standing up for your 'hood, holding it down, and kicking asses. H2O even covered an Ice Cube song and had a hip-hop style beef with another artist. (That would be Ray "Of Today" Cappo, of 1980s Straight Edge outfit Youth of Today and '90s Krishnacore bands Shelter and Better Than a Thousand.)

Like Rancid, H2O's hiatus at the dawn of the millennium allowed them to be in a bunch of side projects. Toby formed Hazen St. with members of Madball and, inexplicably, the non-Blink member of Boxcar Racer. His brother Todd joined Juliette Lewis and the Licks, and Rusty Pistachio (rhythm guitar) was in a band called And a Pizza Place.

Here's the video for "What Happened," off their 2008 comeback album Nothing to Prove. It has Michael Rapaport in it, who's sort of a hero of mine.

Comment to vote, votes due by midnight on Friday.

Victory vid!

2009-02-11T10:03:00.001-05:00

Tego! "Metele Salzon!" Dig it!

INTERNET OUT! Tego Calderon wins

2009-02-10T19:19:00.002-05:00

Hey all,

My (stolen) Internet is down. Doing this from work.

Tego Calderon wins... victory video up shortly.

I Hate Winter or The Reggaeton Battle: Tego Calderon vs. Calle 13

2009-02-04T22:47:00.008-05:00

Hey all,

I feel like sort of a douche for not writing for a month, but I've a) been doing and little writing elsewhere and b) have been super tired and a little depressed thanks to the endless, dark, shitty Canadian winter.

To combat the winter blahs, I've decided to do a summery video battle.

Reggaeton is a seasonal product. Sure, you can hear it any time of year, but it really comes out in full force during the summer months. For me, I can always tell spring is upon us when I can't walk more than two blocks along Dufferin or Landsdowne without getting a blast of Daddy Yankee or Don Omar from an open car window.

For those of you unfamiliar with the genre, reggaeton is a mix of dancehall reggae, hip-hop and Latin music like bomba, salsa and merengue. While early '90s Panamanian MC El General is sort of considered the first reggaeton artist, the music didn't really start blowing up until the Puerto Ricans got a hold of it. They initially called the music Dem Bow, since most of the songs jacked the beat from a Shabba Ranks tune of the same name. Puerto Ricans like Tego Calderon, Daddy Yankee, and Don Omar represent the bulk of the genre's stars, and Puerto Rican-Americans in New York, Florida and New England gave reggaeton a beachhead in North America.

After a decade and a half of Latin Love, reggaeton crossed over into the English market in 2004, when both Don Omar's "Dale Don Dale" and Daddy Yankee's "Gasolina" made a mark on English Top-40 radio. (An aside, I think "Gasolina" may be the most annoying song ever, and it temporarily turned me off the genre as a whole."

THE MAIN EVENT

In the Red Corner, a man who's a sex symbol throughout Latin America, despite the fact he looks like Bubbles from The Wire, TEGO CALDERON!

Tegui Calderon Rosario was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico in 1972. He used to play in a metal band and is a formally trained drummer. He's also credited as being one of the first reggaeton artists to infuse the genre with a heavy dose of East Coast hip-hop. If there's such a thing as a thinking man's reggaeton artist, Tego would be it. While he certainly likes ass as much as the next guy, T also tried to throw a little social consciousness in with the gyrating. He traveled to Africa with Paul Wall and Raekwon to take part in a VH1 doc called Bling'd, which makes the link between hip-hop and blood diamonds. He officially stopped wearing jewelery after the trip.

Here's the video for "Cosa Buena."

THE COMPETITION
In the Blue Corner, from San Juan, Puerto Rico, reggaeton's arty guys, CALLE 13!

Calle 13 consists of three and a half people, MCs and half brothers Residente and Eduardo and multi-instrumentalist Visitante. The half member is Residente and Eduardo's sister Ileana, who provides vocals on some of the tracks.

You know reggaeton has come into its own when groups try and deny being reggaeton artists. Calle 13 go out of their way to say that reggaeton is only part of their rich sound tapestry, and that only some of their songs have the trademark reggaeton digital drumbeats. It's also worth mentioning that Calle 13 are the rich kids of the scene. While most reggaeton artists are straight hood cats, Residente, Eduardo and Ileana, although not raised in the lap of luxury, were brought up by weird boho art types. Their mom, Flor Joglar de Gracia, was part of Puerto Rican revolutionary theatre troupe Teatro de Sesenta.

This is their anthem of Puerto Rican pride (complete with shaking asses) "Atrevate-te-te."

If you don't remember, comment to vote, votes due by Friday, midnight.

Sorry I've been lazy lately

2009-01-20T16:58:00.002-05:00

In the mean time, dig on this.

Happy 2009, Omnikrom and TTC make me hungry!

2009-01-04T23:50:00.003-05:00

And they win!

Here's the video for Omnikrom's "Prends une photo avec moi."

Maybe I am a hipster, just a poorly dressed, uncool one: Cool Kids v. Omnikrom and TTC

2008-12-29T15:47:00.005-05:00

What's up, all?

I hope everyone had a nice Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa etc.

So, a few months ago, back when the weather was nice, I was at an event DJed by my good friends Matt Blair and Nemo Burbank.

Nemo started talking about the hipster rap phenomenon, and said something to the effect that, while he hated the whole thing, he couldn't help but like The Cool Kids 'cause they were just so damn catchy. I attempted to mount a defense of Spank Rock, to which Nemo responded with a concise "Spank Rock can go get AIDS." (Or something like that. I definitely know he wanted them to get some sort of horrible, fatal disease. The specifics may be hazy due to time and alcohol.)

Let's back up, here. What is hipster rap? That's a really good question. As far as I can tell, it's hip-hop made by hipsters -- either the garden vareity white ones like Ghislain Poirier and half of Spank Rock or blipsters ("black hipsters") like The Cool Kids and the other half of Spank Rock -- for hipsters. They lyrics are pointedly ungangsta. It usually, although not always, incorporates a lot of late '80s/early '90s throwbacks as far as aethetics, and the beats are often pretty heavy on techno influences.

Again, the key component here seems to be the hipstertude of the performers. More "street credible" acts that have accidentally attracted a large hipster audience -- a la The Clipse and Lil' Wayne -- are not considered hipster rap, even if they have electro beats and rope gold.'

I maintain that I'm not a hipster based on the fact that I'm slightly overweight, poorly dressed, broke and about six-to-eight months behind on every trend. On the other hand, I like Labatt 50, have a blog, and fervently deny my hipsterdom.

Whatever, enough about me.

The Main Event

In the red corner, from Chicago, Illinois and Detroit, Michigan, a group that's nostalgic for the '80s, even though they were both born after 1985, THE COOL KIDS!

The Cool Kids (known individually as Mikey Rocks and Chuck Inglish) may be the poster children for Internet-era music. They met via MySpace, and spent most of two years using that same website to get their music to the public, creating a huge media buzz. They then released a hit EP that was available on iTunes weeks before you could buy a physical copy, and made a load of money licensing songs to ads and video games. Oh, and most of their songs are shorter than three minutes.

They're also pretty divisive. I'm not speaking as a journalist here, I haven't done any studies, but anecdotally speaking, you either really like this group or you don't.

People in the pro-Cool Kids camp say they make likable, danceable old school-flavoured party records that appeal to people who are turned off by both thuggin' crack rap and heavy-handed, message-driven conscious music.

The anti-Cool Kids crowd say they're the Seinfeld of hip-hop, and not in a good way. They're about nothing. At their core, they're two guys waxing nostalgic for a mythical version of the year of their birth. They represent everything that's wrong with modern hipster culture, they're a meaningless collage of pop-culture signposts.

Personally, I like them. Here's the video for "Black Mags."

The Competition

In the blue corner, from Montreal, Quebec and Paris, France, the Francophone hipster rap power team of OMNIKROM AND TTC!

I openly don't know nearly as much about either of these artists as I do about The Cool Kids, and my iffy French makes research a bit of an uphill struggle.

Here's what I know. They have three members (MCs Jeanbart and Linso Gabbo and producer Figure8).

They roll with Montreal-based DJ-and-superproducer Ghislain Poirier.

They have a lot of songs that are either about food or use food as a metaphor -- again, my French is sketchy, I understand the words but can't read them for secondary meaning and I don't get idioms -- and finally, a writer for La Presse dubbed them horrible misogynists when they played the '06 Francofolies de Montreal, and the ensuing controversy got them on Radio-Canada and helped make them minor celebrities among the French-speaking third of the population.

TTC are from France and were making what's now called hipster rap way before the term hipster was resurrected in about 2002. They consist of Tido Berman, Teki Latex, Cuizinier and DJ Orgasmic.

They're also signed to Big Dada, which has got to be one of my favourite record labels of all time.

Most importantly, their first full length album was call Ceci n'est pas une disque. Put that in your non-existant pipe and smoke it.

Here's the video for "Danse la Poutine."

Now, this could just be my sketchy French again, but why are they looking for the poutine place on Rachel St. if they're hanging out with a giant carton of poutine? Couldn't they just eat him?

Comment to vote, votes due by Friday at midnight.

Robyn, The Grammiest of Them All

2008-12-20T00:32:00.001-05:00

Robyn beats Lil' Wayne.

Man, this blog loves Robyn.

Good luck to both of them at the Grammy's.

Our Grammy nominated friends: Lil' Wayne v. Robyn

2008-12-15T23:05:00.006-05:00

I'd like to think that Music Video Violence had something to do with Lil' Wayne and Robyn getting Grammy nods, but it's probably not the case.

The Main Event

In the red corner, from New Orleans, Louisiana, with a mind-blowing, pack-leading eight Grammy nominations... LIL' WAYNE!

Anything you want to know about the artists, I've probably already covered in the previous posts. If I missed it, that's waht Google is for.

What I can't believe is that Lil' Wayne, who I still think of as the least hot of The Hot Boys, is a multiple Grammy nominee.

Here's the video for "Lollipop."

The Competition

From Stockholm, Sweden, this year's nominee for "Best Electronic/Dance Album" ROBYN!

Wow...

After completing the most awesome image make-over ever, Robyn gets nominated for a Grammy. Hot damn.

Here's the video for "Cobrastyle." Dig it.

Comment to vote. All votes due by Friday, midnight.

Pass the hairspray, it's a win for Heart

2008-12-09T00:08:00.003-05:00

What up gang?

In what was a bit of a strange battle, Heart get the victory with three votes to two. (Sue voted for the hummus song, which wasn't actually supposed to be an option.)

Here's the video for "These Dreams." Good shit.

These are guilty pleasures even for me: Heart v. Crime Mob

2008-12-01T23:45:00.008-05:00

OK, before we get to the heavy shit, watch this.

You're welcome.

OK, onward.

So, I'm not big on the concept of "irony" or "guilty pleasures." I kind of feel like you should like something and totally own it or just leave it alone. As a result, I've been known to openly express my love for crap like pro-wrestling, Gossip Girl and movies the Ben Stiller remake of Starksky and Hutch.

That said, I do enjoy some things that are so totally inexplicable that "guilty pleasure" may be the only way to describe them.

The Main Event

In the red corner, from Seattle, Washington via Vancouver, BC, the greatest female-fronted rock band ever, HEART!

Heart were formed in Vancouver in the early '70s by sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson and a bunch of random Vietnam War draft dodgers. They took their name from a book by futurist and scuba diver Arthur C. Clarke. In 1976, they released their debut album Dreamboat Annie, which produced two hits, "Magic Man" and "Crazy on You." Both of these songs count as CanCon for CRTC purposes, which is why Q107 plays them about a million times a day.

In 1977, Jimmy Carter said the male members of Heart (along with hundreds of thousands of other draft dodgers) could come back to the States, causing the band to relocate back to Washington State.

To make up for lost time, the band released four albums in 1977 and '78, toured relentlessly, and had an extended legal battle with their Canadian label, Mushroom Records. By early 1979, most of the members not named "Wilson" had quit and Heart were pretty much on hiatus.

The Wilson sisters released two commercially unsuccessful albums in the 1982 and '83. In 1985, Heart re-emerged with their hard rock edges rounded off, making shiny pop-rock tunes, including "What About Love," "These Dreams," All I Want to Do" and, most importantly, the best power ballad of all-time, 1987's "Alone."

In the '90s, Heart went back to making hard rock, but their cred was already shot.

Here's the video for "Alone." I don't know why I like this song so much, I just do.

The Opposition

In the blue corner, from Ellenwood, Georgia, a group that pretty much takes every negative stereotype about rap music and lives up to it, CRIME MOB!

Crime Mob were formed in 2003 in DeKalb County, Georgia by high school friends Jay "MIG" Usher, Alphonce "Cyco Black" Smith, Brittany "Diamond" Carpenter, Christopher "Killa C" Henderson, Jonathan "Lil' Jay" Lewis, and Venetia "Princess" Lewis. In 2004, they released their self-titled debut album and produced three hit singles, "Knuck if You Buck," "Stillettos," and the oh-so-charming "I'll Beat Your Ass." All three songs were about fist fighting, as was most of the rest of the album. In Crime Mob's defense, the band's average at the time was 17.5, with Diamond being the baby at 16 and Lil' Jay being the Mob's senior citizen at 19.

Their second album, 2007's Hated On Mostly, came out a year after it was supposed to, and by the time it dropped, Crime Mob was down a member. Killa C was convicted of child molestation in early 2006, and then jailed for failing to register as a sex offender. The Mob really, really don't like to talk about this. Hated on Mostly was a more polished sounding record, and more importantly, the group had grown lyrically. Songs about mob violence were replaced by songs about sex. There was even, God forbid, something that verged on being a Cool J-esque rap ballad ("Circles"). It also had a song that sampled the theme from Conan ("On the Rise"), which is pretty fucking rad.

There's no denying that Crime Mob may be the most willfully ignorant rap group of all time. I'm not sure that anyone has done more to undermine the work done by "conscious" rappers than this group of barely post-adolescent Georgians. Maybe The Clipse, but even they have some pretty amazing word play. That said, either Crime Mob album is a guaranteed winner if you put it on at a party.

Here's the video for their first hit, "Knuck if You Buck." Check out the part where Princess compares herself to Saddam Hussein, Hitler and Osama bin Laden.

Comment to vote, votes due by Friday.

That's funky... or grimey: Either way, Donaeo wins!

2008-11-29T00:45:00.002-05:00

What's up y'all.

Four - two in favour of Donaeo, regardless of whether or not he's grime or funk, and no matter how he spells his name.

The only thing I could find to post as a victory video is a flick of him doing "African Warrior" live at some festival. I think it was shot on a cell phone.

I'm too busy to be hip: T2 and Jodie Aysha vs. Donaeo

2008-11-23T21:51:00.009-05:00

What's up team, sorry I've been a bad blogger (again). I told you from the outset, I have a bad track record with this sort of thing.

So, I've officially decided that I can no longer be cool, at least with regards to music. There are just too many electronic music genres for me to keep up with and I am too busy to keep track of it all. It feels like I've just gotten all caught up on Baltimore Club, only to learn that it's been supplanted by Philly Club, and Baltimore is "so 2007."

Fuck this. I don't care anymore. Next time I want to listen to some heavy bass beats, I'm going to get all 1995 on your asses and listen to some Shy FX.

As a final attempt at being up-to-date, I'm going to run a battle between two artists representing two of these genres that I just don't understand, then I'm going to watch the Phats and Small video with Chris Eubank in it.

The Main Event
In the red corner, from Leeds, England, representing bassline house, T2 AND JODIE AYSHA.

Bassline house popped up in early '07 as a response to grime, which some people felt had stopped being dance music and started working primarily as a soundtrack to gang fights. Bassline house, which is sometimes just called "bassline," is a little more uptempo than grime and about 100 per cent more friendly. So far, there's only been one major bassline club shut down over violence. Compared to grime, which averaged about one club closing a month, that's pretty solid.

Now, to be honest, I don't really get the difference between bassline house and the 2-step that I was listening to in about 2001, the same shit that was declared painfully uncool by 2003.

To illustrate my point...

This is 2-step.

This is bassline.

Can you tell the difference? I can't.

Anyway, the first commercial hit to come out of the bassline house was "Heartbroken" by T2 and Jodie Aysha. Apparently T2 is pretty much the Prime Minister of this whole bassline thing.

Here's the video.

The Opposition
In the blue corener, from London, England, representing "funky," a man who used to do grime before grime stopped being cool. DONAEO!

OK, so funky house is a house subgenre based around soulful vocals and big four-to-the-floor beats, best typified by the shit from the Hed Kandi comps. Funky, or UK funky, is a house-derived subgenre based around r & b vocals, soca-type beats, Latin percussion and UK Garage-style sub-bass. It also appeared as a response to grime being too dark, dank and angry. Confused yet? You should be.

Donaeo got his start 'round about 2003 providing choruses for grime MCs. I first became aware of him on the grime remix for The Streets "Fit But You Know It," which I'm pretty sure is also the first place I heard Tinchy Stryder. After a period of limited output -- Discogs has him doing nothing between 2005 - 2007 -- he came back with two big "funky" solo tracks, "African Warrior" and "Devil in a Blue Dress."

Also, he seems to have difficulty deciding how to spell his name. In about half his output, he's listed as "Donae'o." Further confusing matters, he also releases music under the name Bredren Steve and Mr. Fidget.

Here's the video for "Devil in a Blue Dress." Regardless of how you spell his name, the man has a hella dope hat.

As always, comment to vote, polls close on Friday.

So, it's a draw?

2008-11-09T22:08:00.002-05:00

Sorry for not updating for a while. Truth be told, I was figuring out how to play this.

Thanks to a vote sent to me on Facebook, which I've set a precedent of accepting, we ended up with a draw in a battle that drew little voter interest.

I've decided to call it a draw and move on.

Here's "Low Rider on the Boulevard" by supergroup Latin Alliance, which feature both Ace and Frost.

Odelay Ese! Latin Rap Classics of the Early '90s: Kid Frost vs. Mellow Man Ace

2008-10-26T22:53:00.005-04:00

If you're wondering about the creative process behind this blog, it goes a little something like this.

Usually, I'll stumble across a video I like on the Internet, decide it's combat worthy and start looking for an opponent. It's not actually that complicated. It's not like there's a ton of thought that goes into it.

This week was no different. I ran across a video I loved as a kid, then looked for a worthy match.

The Main Event

In the blue corner, from Pinar del Rio, Cuba, by way of South Gate, California, the lost member of Cypress Hill, MELLOW MAN ACE!

Mellow Man Ace (aka Ulpiano Reyes) started rapping in the mid '80s. In 1987, he formed a group called DVX with his brother Senen and their friends Louis Freese and Lawrence Muggerud. A year later, Ace would quit the group to go solo. Senen, Freese and Muggerud, better known as Sen Dog, B-Real and DJ Muggs, would re-christen the group Cypress Hill and go on to convince millions of fifteen year-olds to smoke pot.

Ace released his solo debut, Escape from Havana, on Capitol Records in 1989. The album did close to nothing for eight months until, in total defiance of music industry logic, someone decided to release "Mentirosa," a song where close to fifty per cent of the lyrics are in Spanish, as a single.

""Mentirosa" was a tremendous hit, going to number fourteen on the Billboard Hot 100. It would also be Ace's only solo commercial success. (He would have a minor hit with a remake of War'sLowrider" called "Lowrider on the Boulevard" as part of Kid Frost's supergroup The Latin Alliance.) His second solo album, 1992's The Brother with Two Tongues, sold poorly. He was dropped from Capitol shortly afterwards. He wouldn't release another album for eight years.

Here's the video for "Mentirosa." If anyone knows where I can get a hat like the one Ace is wearing in the video, let me know.

The Opposition

In the red corner, from East Los Angeles, California, the Hispanic Causing Panic, KID FROST!

Arturo "Kid Frost" Molina started rapping in 1982 as part of Uncle Jamm's army, the massive electro-hip-hop crew the was the West Coast's equivalent of the Zulu Nation. He chose the stage name Kid Frost as a tribute to the man who was alternately his mentor and his rival, Ice T.

After the breakup of the Army in 1988, Frost started working on his first solo album. Hispanic Causing Panic was released in June of 1990. Panic charted at number 45 on Billboard's Hip-Hop and R & B chart on the strength of the single "La Raza," the clip for which features some of the most awesome cholo fashion in music video history.

In 1991, he formed the Latin Alliance, a Latin Rap supergroup featuring Mellow Man Ace, ALT, Markski and The Lyrical Engineer.

In 1992, he released the concept album East Side Stories. The album flopped and he was dropped by Virgin.

In 1995, he dropped the "Kid" from his name, signed with Eazy-E's Ruthless Records label and released Smile Now, Die Later, which produced the hit single "East Side Rendezvous." He left Ruthless in 1997.

Frost is still making albums. His last album, Blunts and Ballerz, came out in 2007.

He all spawned hip-hop progeny. Frost's son is producer Scoop DeVille, who's made hits for Snoop Dogg and Baby Bash.

Here's the video for "La Raza."

As always, comment to vote, votes are due by Friday at midnight.

Yes Rude Boys! The Specials Take the Three Points

2008-10-26T22:30:00.002-04:00

The Specials win this one 6 - 1.

Here's "Gangsters" as a victory video.

No Real Good Reason: The Specials vs. The Dead Milkmen

2008-10-21T22:15:00.007-04:00

What's up gang?

Sorry I've been out of commission for the last little while. Shit has, once again, been rather insane in the world of sports media. Add that to a two-and-a-half day jaunt to the 519 and you come up with very little time for the Interweb.

There's no real theme this week, just a battle between two bands I fucking love.

The Main Event

In the red corner, from Coventry, England, the band that single-handedly brought back ska, pork pie hats and tonic suits, THE SPECIALS!

The Specials were formed in Coventry in 1977 by Lynval Golding, Horace "Sir Horace Gentleman" Panter and Jerry Golding. Between 1977 and their 1979 debut on wax, they went through five different names. (The Automatic, The Coventry Automatic, The Special AKA The Coventry Automatic, The Special AKA and eventually, The Specials.) They also toured with The Clash before founding their own record label, 2-Tone Records, and hiring Elvis Costello to produce their debut full-length.

The band released two full-length albums, their self-title debut and 1981's More Specials, and eight hit singles, before co-frontmen Terry Hall and Neville Staple left to form Fun Boy Three with guitarist Golding. The rest of the band continued on under the old Special AKA moniker, releasing one more album, In the Studio, and two more hit singles. The Special AKA broke up in 1984.

They've reformed twice, in 1996 and again earlier this year.

This is the video for "A Message to You Rudy."

The Competition

From Philadelphia, PA, a band that walks the thinnest line, THE DEAD MILKMEN!

The Dead Milkmen were founded in 1983 by Joe "Joe Jack Talcum" Genaro. He was later joined by buddies Dean "Clean" Sabatino, Dave "Blood" Schulthise and Rodney "Anonymous" Linderman.

The band release eight studio albums, plus a gang of EPs, self-released tapes and a live album.

The Milkmen became semi-famous in 1987 thanks to a Detroit Tigers rookie names Jim Walewander, who was a huge fan. When Walewander invited the band to Tiger Stadium to watch a game and meet the team, they had the following conversation with Tigers' manager Sparky Anderson.

Sparky: "Well, hello, boys."

Rodney: "WE LOVE SATAN!"

Sparky: "Well, gotta go, boys."

The band had a brief, unsuccessful stay on Disney owned Hollywood Records in the early '90s before releasing one final independent album and breaking up in 1995.

Since the break-up of the band, Genaro has released solo material as Joe Jack Talcum and as part of Joe Butterfly with Sabatino. Sabatino also drummed with Big Mess Orchestra.

Linderman recorded several solo projects.

Dave "Blood" Schulthise left music following the break-up of the band. He briefly attended Indiana University, moved to Serbia in the middle of that country's civil war, returned to Philadelphia and started working as a janitor. He killed himself in 2004. When I found out, I was sad. For me, the death of Dave Blood was a way bigger musical tragedy than that of Kurt Cobain, but it's gross to compare things like that. Let's just say that people should have made a bigger deal out of his death than they did.

The remaining three Milkmen have reunited twice. Once in 2004 as part of a benefit in memory of Blood, and again in 2008 as part of a festival.

This is the video for their biggest, and only, hit,"Punk Rock Girl."

Comment to vote, voting closes on Friday.

Holy Fuck! Look what I found!

2008-10-21T22:12:00.001-04:00

Best skate video EVER!

Well, we know my entrance music

2008-10-08T21:47:00.002-04:00

Apparently if I'm ever an MMA fighter, I should walk down to the ramp to 50 Cent.

Here's "Ayo Technology" as a victory video.

The MMA Post: 50 Cent vs. Revolting Cocks

2008-09-29T21:35:00.004-04:00

Like most MMA fans, I've spent a good deal of time wishing I was one of those modern day gladiators we call fighters. Now, I don't really want to be an MMA fighter. My cardio is shit, and more importantly, I don't relish the idea of getting my head kicked in on television.

Mostly, I just want to walk down the ramp to the octagon with crowd cheering me on. I've thought a lot about how that walk would go. I've really thought about my entrance music. I think I have it down to two songs.

So in honour of this weekend's Elite XC fight, here are my would-be MMA entrance themes.

The Main Event

In the blue corner, from Queens, New York, the man who took his rap money and invested in a delicious sports drink, FIDDY CENT!

Everybody knows Fiddy's story by this point, so there's no reason for me to get redundant.

In fact, I'm not going to write anything at all. This song makes me insane. It's so good. I love how intentionally obnoxious it is.

Two lines for you to think on:

"Have a baby by me, baby/be a millionaire/I'll write the cheque before the baby comes/who the fuck cares?"

and

"Get a tan?/I'm already black/Rich?/I'm already that."

Wow.

The Competition

In the red corner, from Chicago, Texas, Belgium and various other places, THE REVOLTING COCKS!

The Revolting Cocks are basically just Al Jourgensen from Ministry and a rotating cast of other musicians. Rumour has it the band was named by an angry bartender. Jourgensen and some of his buddies were being tossed from a bar in the early '80s. As the bartender ejected them, he called them "a bunch of revolting cocks."

I have an odd relationship with Ministry. I never got as into them as most of my friends did, but I love all of Jourgensen's non-Ministry side projects (The Cocks, 1,000 Homo DJs). It's just his main band I'm sort of indifferent to.

This is The Revolting Cocks cover of Rod Stewart's "Do Ya' Think I'm Sexy." I have a feeling like there's a fighter who's already used this as entrance music, but I could be wrong. I know Jenna Jameseon used to strip to it when she feature danced. (I read that in her autobiography.)

As always, you should comment to vote, votes are due by midnight on Friday.

Apparently Korea is more "down" than Germany, Sniper beats Sido

2008-09-22T18:59:00.003-04:00

Hey all,

I'm busting this thing off real quick-like from the office.

Sniper beat Sido a convincing four votes to two, although the Sido camp made a view solid arguments.

Anyway, here's Sniper's victory video, "Koreans." No really, that's what it's called.

This is how we kick it in ESL class: Sido vs. MC Sniper

2008-09-10T00:27:00.006-04:00

It struck me that it'd been a while since I did a post featuring video in other languages, so I decided to remedy that situation. Here it is, all hip-hop, all foreign.

The Battle

In the red corner, from Berlin. Germany, the German demon spawn of Necro, Eminem and MF Doom, SIDO!

German hip-hop got it's start in the mid-1980s when kids in Hamburg and Stuttgart starting aping the American rap they heard on the American Forces Network, the radio station produced by the US Military for forces stationed overseas.

For years, the biggest German hip-hop groups, most notably Die Fantastichen Vier, were all pretty much on some "throw your hands in the air," Fresh Prince-type party rhymes. Deep, heavy subject matter was off the table.

This started to change in the '90s when a group called Advanced Chemistry released a track called "Fremd in eigenem Land" ("Foreign in your own country"), the first German hip-hop song to seriously talk about racism and immigrant bashing in post-unification Germany.

At the turn of the last millennium, a separate, much angrier hip-hop scene started to develop in primarily Turkish housing projects of Berlin. The Berliners weren't interested in directing their rage at the system like the groups of the '90s. They just wanted to fuck shit up.

The leader of the pack is Sido, who isn't just a rapper, he's also the CEO of Aggro-Berlin Records, the label that helped fuel much of the fury.

Here's some fun facts about Sido:

He usually wears a gold skull mask.

He once talked shit about fellow Berlin rapper Azad's mother in a TV interview. He later apologized.

He had the good taste to tell Mike Shinoda that Fort Minor sucks, and that Linkin Park sucks more, live on MTV Germany's version of TRL.

Here's the clip for "Strassenjunge" ("Streetkid") off of 2006's Eine Hand wäscht die andere (One Hand Washes the Other).

The Competition

In the blue corner, from Seoul, South Korea, MC SNIPER!

OK, on the real, my internet research has yielded very little information on MC Sniper. I know he's from Korea, he used to run a hip-hop club in Seoul called The South Side, he's had his songs banned from Korea's commercial airwaves, and his blood type is B. No really, that's on a website.

What's really important is that his fourth album, How Bad Do U Want It?, featured an epic posse cut called "Better Than Yesterday." This song has a beat that sounds like crazy Asian superhero music and guest vocals from a dude named Outsider who holds the world record for most syllables-per-minute in a rap song.

Hilarity abounds: tATu wins!

2008-09-07T22:52:00.003-04:00

In a tight fought battle, where many of the reading/viewing public claimed to be voting under duress, tATu were dubbed the lesser of two evils winning 4 - 3.

Here's "All the Things She Said" for a victory video.

And because I don't want to alienate any of my dozen or so readers, here's Prodigy (from Mobb Deep, not from England) with "Mac 10 Handle" to apologize for last week.

The Depressing British Band Battle in Bizzaro World: tATu vs. In Extremo

2008-09-02T22:16:00.005-04:00

OK, so you may remember a battle a little while back that pitted Sisters of Mercy against The Smiths.

This is a rematch, sort of.

I found really questionable covers of both bands' songs and have decided to put those videos into the ring. Why? Because I couldn't think of a better battle for this week and both videos are fucking hilarious.

The Main Event

In the blue corner, from Berlin, Germany, a band that has produced what may be the most fuckdickulous video in the history of music videos, IN EXTREMO.

In Extremo were founded in 1995 when two separate bands, a Rammstein-esque Krautrock act called Noah invited a group of neo-medieval folk musicians called Corvus Corax on stage for horribly ill-conceived jam session.

After the session, they were so pleased that Noah vocalist Michael Rhein suggested they make it a permanent arrangement, creating the world's first industrial band to feature lutes, bagpipes and something called a schawn. All seven of the band members took on ridiculous pseudonyms, Rhein dubbed himself "The Last Unicorn," and they decided to go by the collective moniker In Extremo. (It's Latin for In the Extreme.)

According to the band's MySpace, they played their first gig as In Extremo on March 29, 1997 in front of 1,000 people at the Leipzig Town Hall Market. Apparently there's not a lot to do in Leipzig in late March.

I really try not to put bands up here just to rip on them, but these guys are ridiculous. On the other hand, they're so ridiculous that they're just a little bit aweseome. I feel like if I went drinking with the members of In Extremo, it would end poorly.

Here's their cover of "This Corrosion." If you thought the video for the original version was silly, which it was, you should probably be sitting down for this one.

The Competition

In the red corner, from Moscow, Russia, everyone's favourite schoolgirl faux-lesbians, TATUUUUU!

I don't really feel like I need to give a backgrounder on tATu to anyone. There's not really much to say.

Back around the turn of the millennium, two 16 year-old-girls from Russia released an album of strange dance music in phonetically sung English. This was fairly unremarkable, in fact, the Romanian group Cheeky Girls did pretty much the exact same thing at the exact same time. What differentiated these two girls, known collectively as tATu and individually as Lena and Yulia, was that they were a lesbian couple.

Several things happened as a result of their declaration of sapphic love.

One, men around the world got erections.

Two, the sold a boatload of records.

Three, the Religious Right got very upset and condemned tATu as part of the gay agenda.

Four, some gay groups pointed out that while there was a lot of hand holding and caressing, it never seemed to go any further, and that it was possible that Lena and Yulia weren't lesbians at all, and that this was all a giant publicity stunt.

As it turned out, the gay naysayers were right. At the height of their fame, Yulia got pregnant. Shockingly, Lena wasn't the father. The girl's were forced to come clean and admit that they weren't lesbians, they hadn't been ostracized by their families due to the love that dare not speak its name, and that the whole thing was thought up by child psychologist-turned-post-Communist Maurice Starr Ivan Shapovalov.

A few interesting facts about tATu.

They represented Russia in the 2003 Eurovision song contest.

The ditched Shapovalov in 2004, saying he was more interested in manufacturing scandal than in helping them pursue their artistic vision.

They still exist, and are apparently continue to sell records in Russia.

Here's their cover of The Smith's "How Soon is Now?" Morrissey called their version of the song "magnificent" in an interview with the UK's Word magazine.

Comment to post, since I'm late getting this thing up. I'll extend the deadline to midnight on Saturday.

Belated winner! De La Di Da!

2008-09-02T22:09:00.002-04:00

Wow, that was one sided.

I'm always amazed when I feel like I've put up two really well matched bands and the voting public goes all one way.

Anyway, five nil to De La.

"Me, Myself and I" off 3 Feet High for the victory vid.

No Gas Face for Professor Prince Paul: De La Soul vs. Third Bass

2008-08-25T23:55:00.006-04:00

What up y'all?

I was watching some Ultimate Warrior clips on YouTube, which put me in sort of a retro mood. I decided to run with that and do a little tribute to one of my favourite hip-hop producers, Prince Paul, and have two of his proteges square off.

THE MAIN EVENT

From Amityville, Long Island, New York, representing Da Inner Sound, Y'all, DE LA SOUL!

De La Soul was founded in 1987 by high school buddies Kelvin "Posdnous" Mercer, Dave "Trugoy" Jolicoeur and Vince "Maceo" Mason. They first started to get noticed in 1988 when a demo version of a song called "Plug Tunin'" landed in the hands of Prince Paul, then the DJ for the group Stetasonic. Paul was impressed enough with Trugoy and Posdnous' offbeat rhymes that he arranged for them to be signed by Def Jam. In 1989, they released their Prince Paul produced debut 3 Feet High and Rising.

3 Feet High was a massive commercial and critical hit and, almost 20 years later, is still De La's best selling album. It also spawned some anti-De La backlash. In a genre where street cred is king, some saw De La as soft. While all three members were born in New York, they were raised in the mixed race, middle class suburbs of Long Island. That, mixed with their unusual style and love of '60s pop samples got them labelled "hippies" in the hip-hop community, a label that continued to piss them off for most of a decade.

Their next album, De La Soul is Dead, was much darker and angrier. They lashed out at critics and took shots at fairweather friends trying to launch their own careers off of De La's new found fame on "Ring Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey)" and wrote a downright disturbing song about child molestation ("Millie Pulled a Pistol on Santa.")

Their third album Buhloone Mindstate would wind up being their last collaboration with Prince Paul. Despite getting great reviews, Mindstate wound up being a commercial failure, getting swept aside by the growing popularity of West Coast gangsta rap. For their fourth album, Stakes is High, De La would go it alone, looking for a new identity.

Still, Chris Rock called Mindstate one of the greatest hip-hop albums of all time in a list he wrote for Rolling Stone, so that has to count for something.

Here's the video for "Ego Trippin' (Part Two)" off Mindstate. This video really pissed off Tupac, as he was pretty sure he was the shirtless rapper being referenced in the video. The female MC in the video is Posdnuos' cousin Shorty No Mas.

As an aside, seeing De La live still ranks as one of my greatest concert experiences of all time.

THE COMPETITION

From Queens, New York, the group that gave hope to white hip-hop heads everywhere, 3RD BASS!

3rd Bass where probably the first white rappers to get a real Hood Pass. Sure, the Beastie Boys were down with LL Cool J and Run DMC, but everybody knew they were essentially a white frat boy's take on hip-hop. 3rd Bass was different. They made a point of not sampling rock songs, were almost obnoxiously conscious of race politics and made a point of mentioning that MC Serch (aka Michael Berrin) came from the mostly black Far Rockaway neighbourhood. They also had one black guy in the group (DJ Richie Rich, aka Richard Lawson), which undoubtedly made the other two look a little more down.

The group was founded in 1987 when a mutual acquaintance introduced the three. Serch was already recording as a solo artist, Rich was DJing in local clubs and Pete Nice (aka Pete Nash) was hosting a hip-hop show on Columbia's campus radio station. The three starting working together under the name Three the Hard Way, which would later get changed to 3rd Bass.

In 1989, shortly after the Beasties unceremoniously left Def Jam for Capitol, the mighty Jam signed 3rd Bass to a recording contract. 3rd Bass inherited their label's feud with the Beastie Boys, calling them out in the press and on wax.

Their debut album, The Cactus Album, was a critical success and produced a moderately commercially successful single, "The Gas Face."

Their second album, Derelicts of Dialect, has the Bass boys replacing the Beasties with the much more deserving Vanilla Ice as their object of mockery. The single "Pop Goes the Weasel" achieved crossover commercial success based largely on the video, where the band kicks the shit out of an Ice lookalike (actually Henry Rollins in costume).

Sadly, the party had to come to an end for 3rd Bass, and they split up in 1992, citing creative differences. Neither Serch's solo album (Return of the Product) nor Pete Nice and Richie Rich's debut (Dust to Dust) managed to achieve anything close to the commercial and critical success they had enjoyed as part of 3rd Bass.

MC Serch was last seen on Ego Trip's The (White) Rapper Show. He also has a show on a Detroit hip-hop station, and briefly ran his own record label, Serchlite. He also does a little acting. (He was hilarious in Bamboozled as the white Mau Mau.) Pete Nice splits his time between a baseball memorabilia shop in Cooperstown, NY and a baseball-themed bar in Boston. He also wrote a book about baseball. Richie Rich attempted a comeback in 1999. No one's heard from him since.

Here's the video for "The Gas Face." I enjoy it for two reasons. One, they make fun of MC Hammer. Two, it features guest vocals from KMD's Zev Love X, who would later re-invent himself as MF Doom.

3rd.Bass - Gas Face Ft.Zev.Love.X
Uploaded by discodisc

The rules are the same as always. Comment to vote, votes are due midnight Friday.

GOOOOOAL! Kano beats Happy Mondays!

2008-08-23T00:54:00.003-04:00

In a close fought, high scoring match, the lad from London overcame the hools from Manchester by a score of 3 - 2.

Here's the Kano's victory video, "Ps and Qs" off Home Sweet Home. I won't front. This video brings out my Scarborough.

Opening weekend music: Kano vs. Happy Mondays

2008-08-17T23:39:00.008-04:00

What's up all?

So as two or three of you may know, this weekend was Opening Weekend for the English Premiership. As a fairly major soccer fan, this warms my heart tremendously. After spending the summer sleeping in until noon, I was actually kind of happy to get up on Saturday morning and watch Blackburn Rovers beat Everton while I ate my Raisin Bran.

To celebrate the return of the Prem, here's some good footballing music.

The Main Event

In the Chelsea blue corner, from East Ham, London, England, a former West Ham Youth player who once tried out for Chelsea, KAAAAANOOOOO!

Yeah, you read that last part right. Kano once tried out for Chelsea. Thankfully, the Lions didn't like the cut of our man Kane's jib and failed to sign him on. After that crushing defeat, he did the smart thing and focused on music.

Kano first started getting noticed as part of the NASTY Crew in the early 2000s. At a 2005 Lord of the Mics, he got on stage and battled Wiley to a draw. Wiley, for those of you who don't know, pretty much invented Grime as a genre and is (arguably) responsible for finding talents like Dizzee Rascal, althought Dizzee might disagree.

Around the same time, he released his debut full-length Home Sweet Home. The album went gold in Britain, produced three hit singles ("Ps and Qs," "Typical Me" and "Nite Nite") and received a full-on bukkake party from the press.

His second album London Town, came out in 2007 and featured noticably smoother R & B edges. While I didn't like this development, apparently the British music buying public did. London Town debuted at #14 on the British pop charts.

That said, Kano has recently parted ways with 679 records. Apparently he wanted to get back to a harder sound on his next album, but the label had other ideas.

Anyway, here's the video for "Typical Me." It's about getting tossed from bars.

The Competition

In the Manchester United red corner, from Salford, Manchester, England, The HAPPY MONDAYS!

The Happy Mondays were formed 1980 by brothers Shaun and Paul Ryder and fellow delinquents Gary Whelan and Mark Day. As far as I know, none of the Mondays ever played high level soccer, but they were often described as football hooligans by the music press, so that has to count for something.

In 1987, the released their debut full-length, the improbably named Squirrel and G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out). Their second album, Bummed, received massive critical love and the Mondays' mix of soul, funk, indie pop and acid house became the template for the Madchester Sound.

Their third album, Pills Thrills and Bellyaches, brought them commercial success and enough money that a band that already had a gift for a substance abuse was able to fulfill their incoherent crack and heroin filled dreams. The band began to have trouble making it to gigs, or knowing where they were at any given moment, as this famous quote from Shaun Ryder proves.

"I'm not too sure where I've been, I've just got off a plane, mate. I think it was Spain or Norway or some mad place like that… in fact ask Bez."

That was after returning home from Holland in 1992.

In an attempt to get the band back on track, the minds at Factory Records sent them to the Barbados to record their fourth album Yes, Please! Instead of focusing on music, the band sold their gear, and later their clothes, for cocaine. The massive cost overruns from the Yes, Please! recording sessions wound up bankrupting the label. The band broke up shortly afterwards.

This is the video for "Step On," off of Pills, Thrills.

As always, votes are due by Friday at Midnight. Comment to vote.

Apparently, She Wants to Win

2008-08-08T22:58:00.003-04:00

Lil' Wayne's wealth distribution platform wasn't enough to win over the voting public, with the voting public choosing She Wants Revenge's brand of gothic creepiness 5 -1.

Since you liked it so much, here's a little more cinematic freakiness in the form of "These Things." It featured Shirley Manson. I want to fucking tear HER apart.

She Wants Revenge - These Thing
Uploaded by enkil_

As an aside, look what popped up when I put "She Wants Revenge" into Google Video.

I'm not sure how I feel about you: She Wants Revenge vs. Lil Wayne

2008-08-03T23:54:00.006-04:00

For a minute there, I was worried that I might not post for two weeks running, effectively signaling the end of this blog. I was tremendously stuck for a topic and starting to worry that I'd used every idea I was ever going to have.

As always, my friends managed to save my ass without them even realizing.

Recently, I've been having a lot of conversations about acts that I'm having a little trouble admitting that I like.

With that in mind, I bring you MMV's tribute to ambiguity, Lil' Wayne vs. She Wants Revenge.

The Battle
In the red corner, from New Orleans, Louisiana, a man who's short in stature but a giant in syrup consumption, LIL WAYNE!

I work with a number of Lil' Wayne fans. Last month, while one of them was desperately trying to get tickets for his gig at Circa, which was subsequently canceled, I mentioned that I still wasn't completely sold on this "Lil' Wayne is good now" thing. They both had minor panic attacks, burned me a copy of Tha Carter 3, and pretty much refused to fuck off until I acknowledged Wayne's greatness.

I have to admit that the last two Wayne albums are pretty impressive, but I still have major issues with anyone who claims to be "The Greatest Rapper Alive" and isn't named Jay-Z. I also have a tough time looking at Wayne and not thinking of the guy who got the throwaway verses on The Hot Boys albums.

I was in Grade 12 when the single "Bling Bling" came out. "Bling Bling" may be one of my least favourite songs ever. Not only did it introduce the phrase "Bling Bling" into wider society, to the point that my dad now uses it, it also featured such lyrical gems as "Hear my cell phone ring/bling bling bling/see my earrings from a mile/bling bling." As someone who's a lyrically-minded hip-hop fan, this song was like a kick in the balls to me.

Dwayne Carter was grew up in New Orleans' Hollygrove neighbourhood. Like me, he was a gifted kid in elementary school. Unlike me, he dropped out of school at age 14 to join The Hot Boys and once accidentally shot himself with a high-powered handgun. Earlier this year, he was arrested in Arizona with a fantastic quantity of drugs.

Although Carter found fame as a rapper starting at the age of 16, he wasn't really taken seriously as an MC until he made a major comeback as a mixtape MC in his mid-20s, when he was so good that critics gushed all over his new albums, Tha Carter one through three, and were remarkably willing to overlook his past indiscretions.

Wayne and Julez Santana are working on a project called I Can't Feel My Face, bits of which have already been leaked on the Internet.

This is the video for "Got Money" with T-Pain and Mack Maine.

The Opponents
In the blue corner, from The San Fernando Valley, California, a group who's name bugs me, SHE WANTS REVENGE!

I don't know nearly as much about She Wants Revenge as I do about Lil' Wayne. I know they're from California. I know that frontman Justin Warfield used to be a rapper and released an album that was produced by QDIII (Quincy Jones' son) and Prince Paul. I know that Justin Warfield looks strangely like a biracial goth Paul Giamatti. That's about it.

Oh, and I know that they make awesome, creepy, cinematic videos.

The reason it took me two years and two-and-half albums to warm up to Revenge is pretty simple. Their name, album art and overall image convinced me that this was a band for 15 year-old girls, and the number of 15 year-old girls wearing their t-shirts did very little to change that impression.

My slow conversion began about a year ago when I was at a club for my buddy Shaan's birthday. It may have been the bad draft, but there was something about Revenge's hit "Tear You Apart" that absolutely blew my mind. Subsequent sober listenings have had the same effect.

That said, I still can't get it out of my head that revenge are a sadcore band for little girls. Here's the video for "Tear You Apart."

She Wants Revenge - Tear You Apart
Uploaded by enkil_

Comment to vote, votes due by Friday at midnight.

So, How's Your Liver? Also, Chemical Brothers Win

2008-07-28T19:18:00.004-04:00

Hey gang,

How was everyone's weekend? Mine was good, although I'm pretty sure I caused permanent damage to my body. Thanks, Big Guns.

In other news, Chemical Brothers won last week's battle 6 - 2. I can't say I'm surprised. The girl in that video is absolutely smoking hot.

Here's "Hey Girl, Hey Boy," off 1999's Surrender.

Superstar DJs, here we go.

Remembering Big Beat: Chemical Brothers vs. The Prodigy

2008-07-22T22:59:00.004-04:00

If you were born between 1977 and 1985 and live in Southern Ontario, you may remember a period in the 1990s where fully one-third of your teenage friends suddenly declared themselves "ravers."

They left school on Friday afternoon as a jock, or a faux-gangster, or a goth, or a math nerd, went to some mysterious gathering over the weekend, and came back on Monday morning with a wardrobe made up entirely of fun-fur and cyan ballcaps and a small meth problem. When you asked them what the hell happened, they either began to blab uncontrollably about new friends named "Sunshine" and "Zippy," or else passed out due to drug-and-dance induced exhaustion.

One could point to several causes for this phenomenon: evil drug dealers, unscrupulous fun-fur manufacturers, or the fact that something like seven different active promotions meant that, for a brief while, Toronto was the dance music capital of North America. I prefer to point the finger at two bands from England.

Before 1995, electronic music was pretty much the exclusive property of gays, ginos and gay ginos. Then the big-beat explosion happened. Suddenly, "rave" acts started using guitar samples and rock drum loops. Dance music songs used a "verse-chorus-verse" song structure. Electronic acts had good videos and charismatic front men. "Electronica," as was the stupid catch-all term for all synth-based music, was the new rock 'n' roll.

And if electronica was the new rock 'n' roll, then the Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy were like Elvis and Chuck Berry.

The Main Event

From Manchester, England, a band that makes really good videos, THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS.

The Chemical Brothers (aka Tom Rowlands and Ed Simon) started as a DJ duo in 1992, spinning in small venues around Manchester under the name "The Dust Brothers," as a tribute to the Beastie Boys' production team of the same name. One of their regular gigs was at the Heavenly Social Club, a spot frequented by a who's-who of Mancunian rock. By 1994, they working with acts like The Charlatans, The Stone Roses and Oasis. (Their relationship with Oasis ended rather suddenly. In 1995 they were DJing before an Oasis gig when Liam Gallagher decided he didn't care for their set and literally threw them off stage.)

In the summer of 1995, after finishing their first LP, The Dust Brothers were set to embark on their first American tour with fellow "electronica" acts Orbital and Leftfield. Before their first show, they received a cease and desist order from The other Dust Brothers, forcing a sudden name change.

Their debut album, Exit Planet Dust, went gold in the UK, mostly on the strength of the single "Life is Sweet."

Two years later, they released their second album, Dig Your Own Hole. Where Dust has been a domestic hit, Hole made the brothers international superstars. The single "Block Rockin' Beats" appeared on the soundtrack for every youth-marketed movie for the next half-decade and The Brothers became one of the few electronic acts to successfully make the transition to arena rock style shows.

You can look up what happened to them after that, but chances are you already know because you own at least one of their albums.

This is the video for "Setting Sun," their first hit video in North America. If you've ever done a bucketload of acid, then had to try and act normal in front of your parents because you were still high at 10 o'clock the next morning, you know what this video is all about.

The Competition

From Essex, England, a band that has kept re-making the same album for the last 10 years, THE PRODIGY!

The Prodigy were formed in 1990, at the peak of the British rave scene, by producer Liam Howlett and dancers/vocalists Keith Flint and Leeroy Howell. In 1991 they had their first commercial success with the single "Charly," which made simultaneous reference to a popular British cartoon of the 1970s and '80s and doing blow. "Charly" was part of a movement in electronic music known as "kiddie rave," where techno artists sampled bits of children's media in their songs. (See "Sesame's Treet" by Smart-E's for what may be the oddest example.)

Wanting to get away from that unfortunate label, Howlett took the group in a new, more breakbeat hardcore oriented direction for their first full-length album, 1992's The Prodigy Experience. While the album barely made a ripple in North America, it spawned a series of hit singles in the UK, including "Out of Space," which is still one of my favourite songs ever.

Their next album, Music for a Jilted Generation, saw the band go in a heavier, almost industrial direction on a number of songs. They even went so far as to collaborate with Pop Will Eat Itself on "Their Law," a song that took a swipe at the newly passed Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, a piece of legislation which effectively killed rave culture in the UK. Once again, the album was a huge hit in Britain, but barely existed over here.

In 1996, The Prodigy released "Firestarter" as a stand alone single in North America to help stir up hype for their dates on that year's Lollpalooza tour. With a video featuring Keith Flint in a new cyberpunk getup -- Keith had previously looked like a bit of a hippy -- and Sex Pistols-esque vocals, "Firestarter" was a massive hit and is forever linked in my mind with being 15.

Rather than strike while the iron was hot, the band wound up waiting almost a year before releasing their next album, The Fat of the Land. What they lost in momentum, they more than made up for by choosing "Smack My Bitch Up" as a single. A song based entirely around a sample of Kool Keith talking about domestic abuse, "Smack My Bitch Up" scared the crap out of parents and made Fat one of the best selling electronic albums ever.

The two big knocks on The Prodigy are that they don't make very much music anymore, and what little they do make all sounds like Fat of the Land. Both of these things are true, anyone who heard 2004's Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned knows that. But that doesn't make Jilted or Experience any less fantastic.

This is the video for "No Good (Start The Dance)" off of Jilted. Check out the strobe action.

That Was DJ Madness! Also, The Faint Wins

2008-07-20T21:44:00.002-04:00

For those of you who made it out last night, I'd like to say thank you.

My partner Jon Blair and I were absolute fire and I think all of you can verify that. For the rest of you, you suck, but you can make it up to me by coming out next time.

In other news, The Faint beat Cassidy 4 -1.

Here's the video for "I Disappear" of 2004's Wet from Birth.

Hey Everybody! Come See Me DJ Next Weekend! Cassidy vs. The Faint

2008-07-13T13:42:00.005-04:00

OK, this is where I use this blog to mercilessly promote my other shit.

As many of you already know, I'm going to be DJing at the Tiger Bar on July 19. To give people a little taste of what I'm going to be bringing to the table, I thought a battle between two of my staples might be cool.

Be warned, these two acts have very little in common with one another other than they both tend to work their way into my set.

The Contest

In the blue corner, from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with one manslaughter conviction and one near-death experience with a box van, CASSIDY!

Some rappers have real names that are so awesome, they have to work them into their stage name. Marshall Mathers III took his intials and became Eminem. Talib Kweli Greene just pulled a Madonna and dropped his surname. Obie Trice's name was so awesome he skipped picking a rap name altogether.

Cassidy, on the other hand, was born Barry Adrian Reese, which may be the weakest name ever. Barry Reese is not the name of a street-hardened soldier. It's the name of a mid-level insurance salesman. The most Barry Reese can hope for is to be a big wheel down at the cracker factory.

On the other hand, Cassidy makes me think of a washed-up '70s pop star, so it's not that much of an improvement.

Cassidy starting rapping at age 13. He first got noticed as a battle rapper, winning contests on local radio and eventually beating Roc-A-Fella artist and fellow Philadelphian Freeway in a head-to-head battle.

In 2003 he released his first full-length album Split Personality. The idea was to showcase the "two sides" of Cassidy. Half the songs showed off his battle rapping skills, while the other half were poppier and more accessible to 14-year-old girls. The album was a commercial success but put a major dent in Cassidy's street cred. The mega-hit "Hotel," with a hook featuring R. Kelly, was the perfect summer pop song, but so soft it totally prevented people from taking Cassidy's battle styles seriously.

In '05 he released I'm a Hustla. The album featured minimal pop shit and had a title track/first single that came very close to being part of the burgeoning "crack rap" subgenre. Sadly, the album was a commercial flop thanks to Cassidy being "unavailable" to help promote it.

On June 8, 2005, three weeks before the release of I'm a Hustla, Philadelphia police put out an arrest warrant for Cassidy in connection with a murder in April of that year. He spent the rest of 2005 in jail awaiting trial. As a result, touring and promotional appearances were off the menu for Cassidy, causing the label to leave I'm a Hustla to rot. (Cassidy was later found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and released after serving eight months of an 11 month sentence.)

Cassidy's third album, BARS: The Barry Adrian Reese Story, came out in October 2007 and produced the slightly annoying club hit "My Drank and My 2 Step."

This is the video for "I'm a Hustla." Although the album fell flat, the single was the first song to go platinum as a cell phone ringtone, so that has to count for something. Also, if you look carefully you can see those fucking goons from Growing Up Gotti pretending to be hard in a couple frames. 

This is a song that I usually play fairly early in my set, when I'm trying to weed out the weak by playing offensive shit that I happen to like.

The Competition

In the red corner from Omaha, Nebraska (seriously), a band that was too cool for Conner Oberst, THE FAINT!

The Faint were formed in 1995 by brothers Todd and Clark Baechle and high school buddy Joel Peterson. Originally, they were an emo band named Norman Bailer (a reference to Norman Mailer and, presumably, their heartland roots.)

After realizing the emo is unbearably lame, the band changed their name to The Faint and moved in a more danceable Neo-New Wave musical direction. In 1999 they released the incredibly sexed-up Blank-Wave Arcade and managed to be The Rapture before The Rapture had even released an album.

My personal relationship to The Faint goes back to 2002, when a bar called Red Square opened in St. Catharines, Ontario, where I was living and attending school at the time. St. Catharines is a painfully uncool town, so anything remotely hip or cool or "indie," no matter how contrived, was like a life raft for me. Red Square was located under the hooker hotel downtown, had no sign for the first year of its life and was at the bottom of a metal stairwell that was downright treacherous after a few drinks.

Certain songs became Friday night staples at The Square, to the point where if the DJ hadn't played "Decepticon" or "Deformative" by 1:00, someone would go up to him and politely ask him what the fuck he was waiting for. Of those Friday night staples, my absolute favourite to this day is "Worked Up So Sexual" off of Blank-Wave Arcade. Now that I'm DJing a little, I make it a point to put "Worked Up So Sexual" into my set wherever possible. It's just that good.

Friday night was indie rock night at Red Square, while Saturday was goth/EBM night. I went every Friday like it was a religious obligation, and went quite a few Saturdays, gaining a new appreciation for goth music, and goth women.

Sadly, there is no video for "Worked Up So Sexual," so I'll have to make due with my second favourite Faint song, "Agenda Suicide," off of 2001's Danse Macabre.

The Best Rapper You've Heard: LL Cool J is the Winner!

2008-07-11T21:44:00.003-04:00

OK heads. In a decisive 4 -1 victory, LL beat out the Brothers Davies. Here's "I'm Bad" from Bigger and Deffer. I love this song.

Yeah, Sorry About That aka Comeback Videos: The Kinks vs. LL Cool J

2008-07-05T19:19:00.006-04:00

Hey all, sorry I haven't been blogging in the last month.

To be honest, I got distracted by soccer. I was producing a daily soccer round up show during Euro 2008. I also kept holding out hope that the Turkish miracle would end with Tuncay Sanli lifting a trophy, but alas.

To celebrate my triumphant return, I figured some comeback videos would be in order.

The Contest

In the blue corner, from Queens, New York, don't call it a comeback, he's been here for years, LL COOOOOL J.

LL Cool J released his first album, Radio, when he was 17 years-old. As much as we all like to knock LL for being kind of soft in 2008, in 1985, Radio was considered a heavy-ass album. It was one of the first hip-hop albums to use pop song structure in hip-hop, contained the first hip-hop ballad and, along with other Def Jam artists like Run DMC and The Fat Boys, helped LL push old school, disco minded, "a-boogie-to-the-boogity-beat" rappers with elaborate stage shows and costume changes away from the forefront. Cool J and company dressed like kids in the hood and made albums built for boomboxes, not clubs. He was also the first rapper to appear on American Bandstand.

His next album, Bigger and Deffer, was another tight record. The first single, "I'm Bad," has the distinction of being the first rap single to contain the word "motherfucker," paving the way for thousands to follow. As a balance, it also contained what may be the sappiest ballad ever, "I Need Love."

His third album, Walking with a Panther, was heavy on ballads and pop-dance songs and very light on hood-credible songs like "Radio" and "I'm Bad." At a time when hip-hop was in the midst of two rising tides, West Coast gangsta rap and and "conscious" East Coast Native Tongues shit, the weak, poppy Panther got overlooked and dissed.

Eighteen months later, he set about trying to regain some of the fans he lost with Panther, he released Mama Said Knock You Out, featuring a totally reworked ballad-to-hard shit ratio with tracks like "The Boomin' System" and "To Da Break of Dawn," where he dissed Ice T, MC Hammer and Kool Moe Dee at the same time.

Here's the title track. You know it, you love it.

In the red corner, from London, England, with a fetish for transsexuals, The KINKS!

The Kinks were formed in London, England in 1963 by brothers Ray and Dave Davies and schoolmate Mick Avory. They took their name from their stage get-up, which consisted of leather capes and high boots (considered "kinky" in the '60s, or so I'm told.)

We in North America tend to think of them as a British Invasion band, far less important than the Stones, The Beatles and The Who, but a little more crucial than the Dave Clark Five. I would disagree, putting The Kinks ahead of all of these bands, if only because they were the inventors of what's now a great rock n' roll tradition, trashing your gear on stage.

The Kinks are also remarkable because they managed to be hugely popular in two separate time periods after a tremendous fall-off. The first period was from the early '60s through to the early '70s, bookended by the hits "You Really Got Me" and "Lola." They then spent most of the '70s making super-inaccessible rock operas.

In the late '70s, bands like The Jam and The Pretenders started to talk about The Kinks as a major influence, while Van Halen made a hit out of their cover of "You Really Got Me," allowing the Kinks to stage a comeback. They produced three hit albums between 1979 and 1984 and had their most commercially successful single ever, "Come Dancing."

In 1984, Avory and Dave Davies had it out once and for all, acknowledged that they'd been pissing each other off for over 20 years. Avory quit the band. The Davies Brothers and various plugs continued to record and tour for another 12 years, but never had another Top 40 hit.

This is the video for "Come Dancing."

If you've forgotten, comment to vote. Voting closes Friday. It's good to be back.

Reigning Death From Above, DFA's Legacy Lives On

2008-06-02T00:11:00.003-04:00

Once again, the votes came down in a decisive manner, with those good Canadian boys DFA totally, totally crushing the pretentious Texan junkies At the Drive-In. This is the video for "Blood on Our Hands." It filmed in a Toronto performance space/booze can. This is probably the most balls-to-the-wall song on an album of balls-to-the-wall songs.

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

2008-05-25T17:48:00.004-04:00

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.

Runnin' With Their Shirts Off, Van Halen Wins

2008-05-24T15:04:00.003-04:00

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.

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

2008-05-17T19:30:00.006-04:00

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.

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

2008-05-15T21:14:00.002-04:00

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.

Sorry for the Delay

2008-05-11T14:44:00.004-04:00

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.

Ladytron are the Last Ones Standing

2008-05-10T02:08:00.003-04:00

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.

Please Vote You Dirty Bastards!

2008-05-09T00:57:00.002-04:00

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.

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

2008-05-04T21:59:00.003-04:00

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.

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

2008-05-03T14:07:00.002-04:00

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.

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

2008-05-01T02:18:00.004-04:00

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.

It is Both Sad and Entertaining When Friends Fight: Princess Superstar vs. Kool Keith

2008-04-27T20:09:00.004-04:00

This post is brought to you by Big Love, the TTC strike and the Toronto Raptors, who broke my heart.

The title of this post may be a little inaccurate. I don't know if Kool Keith and Princess Superstar are actually friends. I don't know if Keith has ever helped Princess move, or if Princess has ever tried to set Keith up with a lady. I have no idea if they read each others blogs.

What I do know is that they're about as similar as a small white girl from suburban Philly and a tall black guy from the South Bronx can be. They're both degenerate sex perverts, they both have a tendency to jam either too many or too few words in a verse, the both like to use weird non-sequiturs, and they both don't get along well with major labels. Most importantly, when Princess and Keith do a track together, they kick wicked ass.

The question is, who would win if they went head to head?

The Main Event

In the blue corner, from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the woman who said "I won't beat around the bush, so you can eat around mine," PRINCE-ess SUUU-PERRR-STARR.

Princess Superstar was born to a Russian-Jewish father and a Sicilian mother, who named her Concetta Kirshner to honour both halves of her heritage. I firmly believe that this may be the best real name of any rapper in history, with the possible exception of Obie Trice, who realized his name was so awesome that taking a stage name would be pointless. Both Concetta's parent's were psychologists, which might explain why she's so filthy.

Concetta started rapping and playing guitar as Princess Superstar in the early-'90s while attending NYU. In 1994, she put out a cassette EP called Mitch Better Get My Bunny. She sent copies of Mitch to the Beastie Boys and the folks at College Music Journal. In 1995 she released her first full-length album, Strictly Platinum. Strictly Platinum also produced Princess Superstar's first college radio hit, "I'm White."

After releasing almost an album throughout the back half of the '90s, Princess' production has trailed off considerably in recent years. Her last studio album, My Machine, came out in 2005, and the last one before that, Is, came out in 2001. That's not to say she's been slacking. She still performs live and has been doing a lot of work as a DJ, making mixed albums, playing gigs, and working as part of a duo called DJs Are Not Rockstars.

This is the video for "Bad Babysitter" off of Is. I like it for a number of reasons. One, I dig young girls, or 30-year-old women pretending to be young girls. Two, I like Mr. Eon, who guests on the song. He has the worst case of white rapper disease (great lyrics, no flow) ever, but he makes me laugh. Three, the whole thing feels like a weird In Living Colour sketch.

The Opposition

In the red corner, from The Bronx, New York, the man with more than two dozen alter-egos, KOOOOL KEITH!

Kool Keith first started rapping in the mid-'80s as a member of the Ultramagnetic MCs. As a group, Ultramagnetic was known for weird lyrical imagery and polysyllabic rhymes, but Keith took that to a whole new level with his boasts of having spent time in New York's Bellevue mental hospital. He allegedly was the first MC to come up with multiple aliases, although that sort of thing is hard to prove. He also provided the key sample for The Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up." When Ultramagnetic broke up in 1994, Kool Keith headed out to California and signed a deal with Capitol records. Sadly, Keith never released anything on Capitol. In 1996, he re-appeared with a new alter-ego, Dr. Octagon, and released what may be his best-known album, Dr. Octagonacologyst.

If any of you are curious as to how many alter-egos Kool Keith has, here's a complete list, along with the origins of each name, from KoolKeith.co.uk.

KEITH THORNTON – His real name.
KOOL KEITH – His rapper name.
KEITH TURBO – He used this alias for the "Keith Turbo" track from the Black Elvis/Lost In Space LP.
KEITH TELEVASQUEZ – He used this alias on Clifton with Motion Man on the Black Elvis/Lost In Space LP.
KEITH KORG – His Analog Brothers alias.
MATTHEW – Keith’s middle name and alias for a full LP.
DR. SPERM – Known to be his first alias as a rapper.
DR. OCTAGON – C’mon, you know this one.
DR. ULTRA – He was Dr. Ultra in the “Five Deadly Venoms” Sprite commercials.
DR. DOOOM – He created this character with sick rhymes and a goal of killing Dr. Octagon.
BLACK ELVIS – Dr. Dooom’s twin. Created for the Columbia Records album.
POPPA LARGE – He’s Poppa Large, big shot on the East Coast.
MR. GREEN – He used this alias on the back cover of Ultra’s Big Time LP.
MR. GERBIK – The dangerous 208 year old uncle of Dr. Octagon. Half Shark Alligator Half Man.
MR. ORANGE – This was one of his characters in the "Livin’ Astro" video.
MC BALDYLOCKS – Unknown right now.
THE FOURTH HORSEMAN – He considered himself The Fourth Horseman on the Ultramagnetic MC’s Four Horsemen LP.
BLONDE MAN – He referred to himself as Blonde Man in the liner notes of the Black Elvis/Lost In Space LP.
CLEAN MAN – This was an alias he used back when HipHopSite.com ran KoolKeith.com.
SHARK MAN – Another name for Mr. Gerbik.
ELEPHANT MAN – From 1996 to 1998 he always said he planned on releasing an album under the alias Elephant Man.
ALIEN MAN – This was an alias he used back when HipHopSite.com ran KoolKeith.com.
JIMMY STEELE – He referred to himself as Jimmy Steele in the liner notes of the Black Elvis/Lost In Space LP.
WILLIE BIGGS – He used this alias in the track "Still The Best" from the Sex Style LP. He also used it on the back cover of Ultra’s Big Time LP.
BIG WILLIE SMITH – He released a limited EP with the Beat Terrorists under this alias.
WILLIE NATURAL – This was an alias he used back when HipHopSite.com ran KoolKeith.com.
REVEREND TOM – He first used this alias on the track "Fat Lady" from Ultra’s Big Time LP and later used it on Thee Undatakerz LP.
MIKE STANLEY – He uses this alias in DJ Sooky's Riddim Warfare LP.
LARRY LOPEZ – He used this name with Heather Hunter for “Toot Toot Hey Beep Beep”.
THE X – He used this name on the inside cover of the Ultramagnetic MC’s Four Horsemen LP.
RHYTHM X – He first used this alias in the track "Funk Radio" from Ultramagnetic MC’s Funk Your Head Up LP.
X-CALIBER – He first used this alias in the track "Funk Radio" from Ultramagnetic MC’s Funk Your Head Up LP.
X-74 – He used this alias in the song "Kick a Dope Verse" by the Cenobites.
FLY RICKY THE WINE TASTER – This was an alias he used back when HipHopSite.com ran KoolKeith.com.
RICO FROM PUERTO RICO – This was an alias he used back when HipHopSite.com ran KoolKeith.com.
FUNK IGNITER PLUS – He first used this alias in the track "Funk Radio" from Ultramagnetic MC’s Funk Your Head Up LP, and he still uses this alias.
ROBBIE ANALOG – He used this alias to make fun of the RZA on the inside cover of Dr. Dooom’s LP.
SINISTER 6000 – He used this alias on Automator’s A Better Tomorrow.
CRAZY LOU – He Used this name as the guns and ammo salesman in "Weapon World" from Prince Paul’s A Prince Among Thieves.
LONNIE HENDREX – This was one of his characters in the "Livin’ Astro" video.
LIGHT BLUE COP – This was one of his characters in the "Livin’ Astro" video.
THE KID IN THE COMMERCIAL – This was one of his characters in the Livin’ Astro video.
JOE KINGPIN – He used this alias in the track "Still The Best" from the Sex Style LP.
BLACK LINEN – He used this alias in the track "Silk Suit, Black Linen" from the Masters of Illusion LP. Motion Man was Silk Suit.
ELVIN PRESLEY – He gave away cards at concerts. The cards had a picture of him with the name Elvin Presley.
DELI BOY – He was called Deli Boy in the comedy/porn “Sex For Life Too”.
SK8 JOHNSON – He used this alias in the Bootleg Skater videos.
PLATNINUM RICH – One the Diesel Truckers, along with The Funky Redneck.
EXOTRON GEIGER COUNTER ONE PLUS MEGOTRON – He used this alias on Marley Marl In Control in 1989. He also used a longer version. He also used this alias in Ultramagnetic MC’s track "Traveling At The Speed Of Thought."
ACTIVITY – This was his name when he was with the NYC Breakers
EXXON – He gave away cards at concerts. The cards had a picture of him with the name Exxon.
CAPTAIN KOOL – This was an alias he was supposed to use according to Liveonerecords.com.
CAPTAIN BLACK – This was an alias he was supposed to use according to Liveonerecords.com.
EXOTRON GEIGER COUNTER ONE GAMA PLUS SEQUENCER – He used this alias on Marley Marl In Control in 1989. He also used a shorter version.
ROBERT PERRY – He used this alias for the track Robert Perry from his Lost Masters LP.
JOHN CLAYBORNE COUSIN OF JIMMY HICKS – He used this alias on the Clayborne Family LP with Marc Live and Jacky Jasper.
MR. NOGATCO – Released an album under this name with Izreal.
TASHAN DORRSETT – Supposed to release an album under this name with DJ Junkaz Lou.
NAQUAN aka UNDERWEAR PISSY - Alias on the NEW Ultramagnetic MC's album, The Best Kept Secret.

In fact, he has so many alter egos, he's actually had rapper beef with himself. Dr. Dooom killed off Dr. Octagon at the start of First Come, First Served. Black Elvis then called out Dr. Dooom when his album was released.

If you haven't noticed by now, this is a blog that appreciates prolificness in an artist. I realize I should care more about quality than quantity, but sometimes I don't. I respect people who know how to produce, and nobody produces more than Kool Keith. In addition to releasing 17 albums and mixtapes between 1996 and now, he's also collaborated on projects like The Diesel Tuckers and The Analog Brothers, working as part of 12 different collaborative projects since 1993. He also keeps popping up as a guest on other people's songs.

This is the video for "Livin' Astro" off the Black Elvis album. Black Elvis was my least favourite Kool Keith album for a long time, but it's managed to grow on me. This video kicks fairly major ass, and more to the point, it sort of embodies everything Kool Keith is about.

Comment to vote, you know the deal.

Big Wins a Gwaan: Buju Banton Wins

2008-04-24T01:19:00.005-04:00

This week's reggae battle provided us with the strangest result to date, with four votes cast and final tally of 2 - 1 - 1 in favour of Buju. (The extra vote was a write in for Shabba Ranks. Thanks for fucking up the system Stephanie.)

For a victory video, I decided to do something a little more recent. Unlike Super Cat, or Shabba Ranks, Buju still has a really active career. This is the video for "Driver A," it came out last year on the album Too Bad. Too Bad was Buju's first real dancehall album after spending the last decade getting progressively rootsier. This song is straight fire, and the guy in the video has a good hat. Enjoy.

Dancehall Heroes of the 1990s: Buju Banton vs. Super Cat

2008-04-19T21:42:00.011-04:00

This post comes to you courtesy of playoff hockey and high school nostalgia. It also come courtesy of my buddy Nemo Burbank who said he was going to start his own version of Music Video Violence, but all dancehall reggae. It would be pretty much the same as this blog, but make readers 400% more likely to commit hate crimes.

I first got into reggae in the fall of 1995. Sure, I liked reggae before then. I asked for the Bob Marley Collection on cassette for Christmas in Grade 7, and I remember digging what ever dancehall crossed over to whatever Top-40 station I was listening to at the time. I have very clear memories of listening to Chaka Demus and Pliers and Nadine Sutherland and Terror Fabulous on AM 640 -- does anyone else remember 640 before it was a news station? -- but reggae didn't become seriously become part of my environment until the fall of 1995.

The reason the date is so specific is that in the fall of 1995 I left my small K - 8 grade school where predominant ethic groups white and Canadian-born-Chinese for a large, windowless, concrete high school where the predominant ethnic groups were Caribbean-Canadians and Chinese kids from somewhere else, presumably China.

It immediately became clear to me that if reggae had been a rare, exotic additive to my old musical diet of mid-'90s alt rock and cheesy pop-dance, it was going to be a staple from now on whether I liked it or not. Reggae was everywhere. It rumbled out of cars in the parking lot, drifted down from the balconies of the highrises that backed onto the school and made up a solid 40% of every school dance. Some of the other white kids went on crazy anti-reggae rants fueled by equal parts racism and religious devotion to Trent Reznor, but I rode the reggae wave as much as possible.

Sure, I was still mostly listening to Epitaph punk and Sonic Unyon CanRock, but I found that reggae was a) easier to dance to and b) made girls more willing to make out with me than, say, Rancid. I still couldn't understand the lyrics most of the time, but I also couldn't always understand what my classmates were saying, so that wasn't a big deal.

The Main Event

In the red corner, from Salt Lane, Kington, Jamaica, with a bad judgment call of militant homophobia and dissing dark skinned girls, BU-ju, BAN-ton!

Like almost all dancehall artists, Buju Banton started rhyming at a ridiculously young age. He inexplicably chose the moniker "Gargamel" for the early bit of his career, but later changed his stage name to Buju Banton. Buju for a childhood nickname, Banton as a tribute to early '80s dancehall chatter Burro Banton. Presumably he also got tired of being outsmarted by the Smurfs.

Buju had huge success in Jamaica in the early '90s. Unfortunately, he also made two huge mis-steps. The first was a song called "Boom Biddy Bye Bye," which basically advocated killing gay people. (He subsequently took it back, ish.) The second was a song called "Love Me Browning," where he got all internalized racism on everyone and expressed a strong preference for light skinned women. (He also took that back, sort of.)

In 1993, he started his North American career with a the album Voice of Jamaica. Voice of Jamaica showed Buju getting a little more conscious, rhyming about issues like AIDS and crime. In 1994 he converted to Rastafarianism and started making progressively rootsier, less-dancey records before going back to his club roots in 2003.

This is some vintage mid-'90s, pre-Rastafarianism, post-raw ignorance Buju. The song is "Deportees (Things Change)" off Voice of Jamaica. There are two really dope things about this video: 1) It has a bit of a plotline, as does the song, and 2) it has some absolutely killer examples of period urban wear.

Now the opposition.

In the blue corner, from Cockburn Pen, Kingston, Jamaica, with severe career mis-step of selling out and guesting on a Sugar Ray track, SUUU-PER CAT!

Super Cat is sort of a tragic figure. After spending the second half of the 1980s and the first half of the '90s as the man to beat in dancehall reggae, he found his popularity starting to fade. Rather than rush back to the studio start trying to kill it, he guested on a Sugar Ray song, made a shitload of fast money, shot his credibility and effectively ended his career.

Now, in Cat's defense, I'm being a little harsh. I'm just speculating here, but one has to think that he felt sort of entitled to Sugar Ray's filthy lucre. Him and Shabba Ranks worked their asses off to get dancehall on African-American radio stations. They got signed by major labels in the U.S. and guested on songs to help break the genre, only to see guys like Buju, Beenie Man and Bounty Killer, make the real money.

For those of you who don't know, Super Cat was the closest thing to a crossover superstar in the mid-to-early 1990s. He worked with a who's who of '90s hip-hop and R & B (Biggie and Puffy, Heavy D, Mary J. Blige, Kriss Kross, Method Man) and was the first guy to do hip-hop remixes of his songs for play on American radio. He had a song on New York Undercover. This guy broke down doors.

Ironically, Super Cat has had a bit of a comeback in the last little while, doing guest vocals for American rappers and R & B singers. It seems like the taint of "Fly" finally wore off enough for him to be credible again. He also released his first album in nine years back in 2004.

He's probably been helped by the fact that every crossover dancehall artist to come out in to past half-decade has named him as their number one influence. Damian Marley sounds like a rootsier Super Cat, Collie Buddz is a white Super Cat with a slower flow, and Sean Paul has just jacked his sound outright.

This is the video for "Scalp Dem" off The Good, The Bad, The Ugly and The Crazy, an album he co-produced with Junior Cat, Nicodemus, and Junior Demus. That's right folks, double your Cats, double your Demuses. This video is awesome. First of all, it highlights the odd obsession of early dancehall artists with Western movies. (Guys were using Josie Wales and Lee Van Cleef as stage names. Super Cat called himself the Wild Apache.) Second of all, it may set the record for the largest number of white people in a dancehall video.

Nothing's Changed, I Still Love You, and Apparently You All Love Morrissey: The Smiths Win

2008-04-17T23:59:00.004-04:00

A solid, but by no means definitive, win for Morrissey, Marr and the other two dudes. While The Smiths took the battle in a 5 - 2 decision, the Sisters' supporters did manage to make a strong case for The Sisters' brand of theatrical, over-the-top gothic silliness. I like it when we get a good debate going around here.

Picking a victory video here was hard. The video I really wanted to post isn't really an official "video" per se. It's actually footage of them performing "Shoplifters of the World" on the legendary British TV show Top of the Pops. At first I thought it would violate the concept of the blog, but then I figured that it's my blog and I can do pretty much whatever the fuck I want. Just so we're clear, I wouldn't put this up in a battle, but I feel like I can get away with it as a victory vid. Even though it's just straight up performance, the angles on this puppy are killer, and more importantly, Morrissey is so gay here. It's really killing it.

This was one ofThe Smiths "between albums" singles, and is also one of my favourite Smiths songs. My period of heavy Smiths fandom overlapped with a phase in my life where I was stealing a fair bit. I really liked having this song going on my headphones as I walked into Wal-Mart to stuff a bunch of shit down my pantleg.

English Bands Loved by People Who Had a Tough Time in High School: The Smiths vs. Sisters of Mercy

2008-04-13T01:35:00.000-04:00

High school wasn't brutal torture for me.

Apart from the usual adolescent dramas and a really odd bit of Grade 11, I had a pretty good time. I went to a lot of park parties (the urban equivalent of bush parties, for those of you who didn't grow up in GTA), had a couple pretty decent teachers, managed to lose my virginity before heading off to university and had a decent supply of dope. On the other hand, I spent most of my high school career so stoned I didn't know where the fuck I was, so my memories may not be totally accurate.

That said, I did get my ass kicked a bunch of times over being "different" or "mouthy," did poorly with girls, had bad acne and greasy hair, spent the first half of my teens really skinny, then got really fat overnight. I figure that gives me as much claim to a harsh adolescence as any other middle-class white kid.

People who had a "hard time" in high school -- by which I mean most people who didn't play football but weren't gang bangers or huge ginos -- almost inevitably liked mopey English bands from the 1980s. Even when I went to school in the mid-to-late '90s, there was a strong contingent of cats who were moping around in mod-style army parkas, trying to look as disaffected as humanly possible while smoking Dunhills and John Player's Special, feeling like every word out of Morrissey's mouth was about them.

This is for them.

Before I get down to the heavy shit, I feel the need to explain my choice of bands. The Smiths are both the mopiest and Englishist of the mopey English bands. It would be hard to argue their presence here. The Sisters require a little explaining. The Cure would probably be The Smiths' natural opponents here. Morrissey and Robert Smith are one and one-a to depressed teens. And there may one day be a battle where The Smiths and The Cure go mano a mano, as much as that's possible for bands fronted by two supremely androgynous dudes. For this week, it had to be the Sisters for two reasons: one, my boy Shaan got hella excited when I mentioned the prospect of this battle and two, the video for "This Corrosion" is so above and beyond that it has to be recognized here.

The Main Event

In the Red Corner, from Hulme, Manchester, England, with disaffection factor of a sexual identity crisis, THE SMITHS!

Pretty much the entire world more or less knows the story of The Smiths. They were founded in 1982 by Steven Morrissey and Johnny Marr, they became tremendously popular in the UK and Ireland and developed an almost obsessive cult following in Canada and the US. In 1987 they broke up, in part because Marr got sick of Morrissey's obsession with '60s pop and in part because Morrissey has an ego so large he needs a fleet of tractor trailers -- or lorries, as they say in England -- to haul it around.

Here's some lesser known facts about Morrissey, which I gleaned from Wikipedia and True to You, an online Morrissey fanzine.

1) He was saved from bullying as a child because he was a pretty decent athlete, something I'm sure his hardcore fans have a hard time dealing with.

2) He was briefly the lead vocalist of Slaughter and the Dogs, which blows my mind.

3) He regularly wrote very opinionated letters to Melody Maker and New Musical Express before he was famous.

4) He's still not officially gay, which also blows my mind.

When I was in Grade 10 and 11, I loved the shit out of The Smiths. They were the only "soft sounding" band I would let interrupt a personal playlist that was dominated by Rancid, The Wu-Tang Clan and TSOL. I was impressed that there was a band who could take a song about going to the fair and make it depressing as shit. ("Rusholme Ruffians," for those of you who don't know.) The sad cow sounds in the background on "Meat is Murder" convinced me to try and go vegetarian. I failed, but at least I know the sweet tasteless taste of soy.

My absolute favourite Smiths album was, and still is, Strangeways, Here We Come. Strangeways was the only Smiths album that British music critics didn't like, and was produced when the tensions between Morrissey and Marr were at their highest. The band actually broke up before the album came out, and Morrissey apparently recorded most of the vocals in the booth by himself, after Marr et al had already laid down the instrumental tracks in another session.

This is the video for "Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before." This song was only released as a single outside of the British Isles. The label felt that releasing a single that references mass murder only a couple months after the Hungerford Massacre, one of the worst mass murders in modern British history was a bad move. On one hand, I sort of think the label pussied out on this one. On the other hand, you'd have to think sales would have been pretty soft given the timing. As a result, the footage for the "Stop Me" video was also used in the British video for "I Started Something I Couldn't Finish," which was released instead of "Stop Me."

A couple more observations here. One, how is Morrissey not openly 100% gay? His bike has a wicker basket for Christ sakes. Two, guys who rock the Morrissey look look like dorks. (I know, I tried to pull this off for a bit.) Girls who rock the Morrissey look are strangely attractive.

OK, now the opposition.

In the blue corner, from Leeds, England, with a disaffection factor of being hailed as the founding father(s) of modern goth music, The SIS-TERRRS of MERRRR-CY!

The Sisters of Mercy aren't so much a band as one guy, a rotating cast of other people, and a drum machine/musical version of Dr. Who's robot dog named Doktor Avalanche and the Chorus of Vengance.

The one guy is Andrew Eldritch, lead vocalist, drum programmer and allegedly a very difficult guy. I say allegedly because I've never met the man and I don't want to get sued. He could be very nice. However, the fact that every Sisters album had a different line-up, with Eldritch and the machine Avalanche being the only points of the continuity, indicates that he might be a little hard to get along with. His legions of former bandmates have also made loud, public statements to this effect.

The Sisters were formed in 1980 and went "on strike" in 1994 after Eldritch got in a fight with the band's label over money. The "band" -- read, Eldritch and whoever else was willing to hang out with him -- starting performing again in 1996, but have yet to release an album of new material.

The Sisters are important for two reasons. One, they're credit with influencing every goth band since. Eldritch hates being called goth. He claims he was pigeonholed after experimenting with goofy clothes for a couple weeks. While that may or may not be the case, I'm pretty sure that if it wasn't for The Sisters, we wouldn't have legions of black-clad bands with electronic drums and deep, monotonous vocals. That may or may not be a good thing, depending on where you stand. I also firmly believe that Eldritch's insistence that he's not a goth makes him the gothest dude of all time. If there's one thing goths and hipsters have in common, it's that the more you deny being one, the more likely it is that you are.

Two, they were involved in one of the ugliest legal battles in rock history. Two Sisters cast-offs -- original bassist Craig Adams and former Dead or Alive member Wayne Hussey -- started gigging as The Sisterhood in the mid-80s, playing songs that had been vetoed by Eldritch. Eldritch claimed the name was too close and responded with a resounding "fuck you." He started a side-project of his own, also called The Sisterhood, and sued the hell out of everything that moved. The two sides eventually settled when Hussey and Adams changed the name of their band to The Mission, who were also hugely influential in the goth-rock scene. Spike wore a Mission t-shirt in several episodes of Degrassi.

This is the video for "This Corrosion" off the album Floodland. This song came out at the peak of The Sisters commercial success. It's rumoured to be a sort of goth diss-track aimed at Hussey and Adams. If that's the case, goths are really horrible at insulting people, because the lyrics make almost no sense. The Eldritch and the Doktor were the only official members of the band for this album, but American bassist Patricia Morrison (formerly of The Bags and The Gun Club and a co-conspirator Eldritch's version of The Sisterhood) was brought on for live performances.

This is another video where I don't want to say too much about it because it's just so out of hand. Every time I watch it I feel like I'm watching someone try and stage Cats, Les Mis and a musical adaption of Mad Max on the same stage at the same time.

For those of you who are still unclear, comment to vote. The future of democracy depends on you.

BONUS POST: Famous is Killing It Right Now

2008-04-12T17:25:00.001-04:00

Hat's up y'all?

(Osama, that was for you.)

OK, so this isn't a battle, but I've been loving this video for the past month or so so I thought I'd put it up here.

Two weeks ago I put up a battle between the Dream Warriors and Maestro Fresh Wes, and I kind of bitched a little on how it's harder to hear Canadian rap now than it was 15 years ago. Rather than just sit around and complain, I thought I'd give a Canadian rapper a dozen eyeballs worth of exposure. (Hey, at least I'm realistic about my level of influence.)

His name's Famous, he "borrowed" the beat from "Black Republicans" and looped it to make a really long song, and he has a killer mystery poster campaign going on right now that you've probably seen but didn't get what you were looking at.

Felicitações ao CSS, o Mais Buzziest das Faixas Brazilian do Zumbido

2008-04-12T17:16:00.000-04:00

The people voted and, aside from Sqwd's pronounced love of pauses, the results were pretty clear, 3 - 1 for CSS. I don't know what did it; if it was the iPod ad, the ghost puppets in the video, the DFA reference or just how freakishly hot Lovefoxx is, but people had a clear preference here.

Their victory video is the clip for "Music is My Hot Hot Sex," aka "The iPod Touch Song."

Even before the ad, this was one of my favourite CSS songs, in part because Lovefoxx busts out her native tongue at the end of the song. I also love this video, because it encapsulates how hard it must be to make a video with a band who's whole shtick is making music for people with severe ADHD.

Female Fronted Brazilian Buzz Bands: Cansei de Ser Sexy vs. Bonde do Role

2008-04-04T01:34:00.000-04:00

OK, so I know I promised Sqwd a special edition of Music Video Violence just for him, to make up for disappointing him so bitterly. That, and because he's a whiny little bitch. My whiny little bitch. I promise that The Sqwd Special Edition will be forthcoming, but first I wanted to do something a little less creepy and a little more tropical.

I'm not very well traveled. I know a lot of people who are, and I hate them. I particularly hate them because they keep telling me that I could be well traveled, too, all I need is a bunch of money and some time off. Unfortunately, I'm massively in debt, poor, lack financial discipline and refuse to take time off work for severe injury and illness, let alone a vacation, so I don't see a whole lot of travel in the near future.

In the medium term, I really want to go to Brazil.

Brazil's a country that's fascinated me for a while. On one hand, it has pretty much everything that's good in the world: fresh produce, incredible wildlife, good barbecue, the world's most exciting soccer, decent basketball, great music and really, really insanely attractive women. Oh, and they speak Portuguese, which is one of the coolest sounding languages in the world. It has almost no hard consonants.

On the other hand, it's also a pretty fucked up country by almost all accounts. It has some of the worst income disparity on Earth and you're more likely to get killed in Rio than any other city on the planet, save Johannesburg. (Strangely, South Africa is also really high on the list of country's that fascinate me. I don't know what this says about me.) Oh, and they're cutting down the rain forest at almost mind blowing speed, and they're also really odd about race.

Apparently I'm not the only one who's really into Brazil, because Brazilian bands are fucking huge right now. I think it may have something to do with both the rich musical heritage and the unreasonably attractive women. Just a thought. Anyway, this week, we're going to put the buzziest of the Brazilian buzz bands and put them head to head.

The Main Event

In the blue corner, with a buzz factor of an iPod ad, from São Paulo, CANSEI de Ser SEXY!

Sometimes a band just gets so cool you want to backlash and stop liking them. I had that urge when CSS became an iPod ad band, but I didn't because a) that's a really douchebag move, and b) they're just too good to not like.

If you believe the band, CSS was pretty much started as a joke. Legend has it a couple of them more or less learned to play their instruments in front of audiences. They got hugely blown up by Brazilian website Trama Virtual, and a writer from The Guardian said they could be the "biggest band ever to come out of South America" before they had even signed with a record label. That sort of talk is usually meaningless hype, particularly when it comes from the British music press, who are notorious for discovering the greatest band in human history every five or six days. While it's still hard to see them eclipsing Sepultura, let alone Spanish-language superstars like Soda Stereo, anyone who's seen CSS live can understand why someone would get so excited about them. They're one of the best live bands I've ever seen. I watched them open for Ladytron two years ago and they pretty much blew the dour Liverpudlians off the stage. In fact, CSS frontwoman Lovefoxx sort of scared the Ladytron crowd.

Lovefoxx is like a tiny, neon-clad, Japanese-Brazilian Tasmanian Devil. She stage dives without irony, she manages to make bad dancing look sexy, she jumps on the monitors and loses her balance and dry-humps her bandmates. She makes Torontonian hipsters dance, and that's no small feat. She also touched my friend Morgan's boob at the Ladytron show. Sadly, she's engaged to one of the guys from The Klaxons, totally breaking my heart.

This is the video for "Let's Make Love and Listen to Death From Above." There's a couple rad things here. One, there's not many bands that would put their ego aside and write a love song to another band. Two, I feel like the ladies (and gentleman) of CSS are giving me a little tour of their hometown in this video. This video takes my urge to visit Brazil and doubles it.

Now for their opponents.

In the red corner, from Curtiba, with a buzz factor of being discovered by Diplo, BONDE do ROLE!

In Brazil, the kids in the hood have developed a music they call funk. It sounds a like the bastard child of Miami Bass and violent hate. I started listening to it when I was in my first year of university after reading an article in Spin about, funk balls, parties that got the kids so wound up they would stab the fuck out of each other in the middle of the dance floor. Apparently Diplo got into it around the same time, but because he's much cooler and more important than me, he set about trying to break the genre in North America, where I just sat in my room, downloaded Furaçao 2000 mixtapes off the Internet and smoked pot.

Discovering Bonde do Role in Curtiba was sort of Diplo's equivalent to discovering Lucy at the Olduvai Gorge. They're kind of the giant ruby in his global dance music crown, right between MIA and Baltimore Club.

For the record, Bonde do Role have about as much hood cred as me. They're a bunch of middle-class art school kids playing hood music, but they know that and they're cool with it. It's just that comparing these guys to legitimately heavy dudes like Juca or Mr. Catra is kind of like comparing MC Paul Barman to M.O.P. Not that there's anything wrong with Paul Barman, in fact, I'm a big MC PB fan. Nor is there anything wrong with Bonde do Role, they are what they are and they own it by doing things like sampling Alice in Chains and the Grease soundtrack, and Bonde do Role DJ Rodrigo Gorky produces some of the best mixtapes I've ever heard.

Bonde do Role almost broke up late last year when MC Marina Ribatski quit the band. Gorky and MC Pedro D'Eyrot decided to replace her in an American Idol-style reality show on MTV Brazil. In the end they picked two new female vocalists. The incredibly un-Brazilian-named Laura Taylor was chosen by the audience, while Ana Bernardino was picked by the band after she took a piece of meat out of her vagina.

This is the video for "Solta o Frango" off their North American full-length debut With Lasers. The name of the song translates as "Release the Chickens," which I sort of knew from eating a lot of Portuguese barbecue. Or at least I knew "frango" meant "chicken."

This video features the now departed Marina Ribatski on the mic. I think she has the same stylist as Lovefoxx. That or all Brazilian girls are taking this retro '80s hipster thing and flying it to Absurdistan. This video is so good it almost makes me want to shit myself. I can't even tell you anything about it or I'll ruin the incredible surprise.

Go do it.

My Definition of a Boombastic Blog Entry: The Dream Warriors Win

2008-04-04T01:03:00.000-04:00

OK, I really don't know what down this week, but people really didn't seem to be feeling the battle. Maybe it wasn't my best writing, maybe I didn't plug this week's battle enough, or maybe people just weren't feeling the CanRap concept. I know Sqwd wasn't.

Anyway, we still managed to get some sort of a result, so that's OK. Dream Warriors took it 2 - 1.

And hey, that's all good, the people have spoken. The only problem is that it makes it a little tough for me to post a victory video. Everything after their first album, And Now, The Legacy Begins, was total crap. The original video for "My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style" is impossible to find, to the point where I think I may have hallucinated it, and the second video for that song is pretty pretentious and wretched.

The only thing left for me to do is post the video for "Ludi," the third single off the Legacy album. To be honest, it's my least favourite of the three singles off that album, in part because I thought the idea of a rap song about a board game was pretty weak. I still maintain that position, but listening to the song again, I'm blown away by how catchy it is. As a rap song, it's sort of weak, but re-contextualized as a pop-reggae song, it's damn near perfect.

Golden Era CanRap: Maestro Fresh Wes vs. Dream Warriors

2008-03-31T01:52:00.001-04:00

Hey folks, what's happening?

For the record, I really dislike white people who fetishize old school hip-hop. It really weirds me out when people who don't know who the Clipse are ejaculate all over old Run DMC songs and talk about how "they don't make it like that anymore." I don't like vital music genres being reduced to museum pieces, and I really don't like the idea that hip-hop is only good when viewed through the safe lens of nostalgia.

That said, I'm going to be everything I hate for the duration of this post.

For the record, I love a lot of modern Canadian hip-hop. Cadence Weapon may be one of my favourite rappers period right now, More or Les is a friend of mine, Mayhem Moriarty is one of the best lyricists running and Point Blank kind of frighten me, if we're being totally upfront.

The problem is that it's fucking near impossible to hear Canadian hip-hop any more. I don't watch as much MuchMusic as I used to, but when I do, I never see a Canadian hip-hop videos. Radio may be worse. Back when I owned a car, I used to bump Flow pretty regularly while riding in my Topaz. The only Canadian MCs who got any play were fucking Belly and Rochester, and they didn't even get that much. Sadly, it seems as if the Golden Age of Canadian Hip-Hop ended around the same time as the Golden Age of Hip-Hop as a whole.

Back in the early '90s, it seemed like there was half dozen Canadian rap videos in regular rotation on Much at any given time. Not only were the biggies like Maestro, Dream Warriors and Michie Mee getting tons of play, but acts like Ground Control, MRF, Devon, Kish and HDV (now known to Americans as Jacky Jasper) were all over the place, all putting out quality shit.

So what we're going to do here is have two great Canadian rap acts of the early '90s go head-to-head for the right to represent this fine country.

In the blue corner, from Scarborough, Ontario, with an embarrassing career move of "Certs Wid Out Da Retsyn" and a comeback factor of Metropia, Instant Star and a video with Gowan, MAESTRO FRESH WES!

The great thing about being Scarberian is that everyone has a story about knowing one or more of Maestro, Mike Myers, FeFe Dobson, Jamaal Magloire, The Barenaked Ladies, Monika Schnarre, Mike Ricci or Choclair. We're all connected in the almighty East End.

There's really no need for me to paraphrase a Wikipedia bio on this guy. You either know him or you don't. He's Asiatic and he's got the power, from Birchmount, just north of Glendower. As someone whose lame and Caucasian, but from Birchmount, just south of Glendower, I've always felt a real kinship with Maestro. As a result, I'm really happy to see him in the media again, even if it is on crappy Canadian TV shows. I was really worried about him for a while, because if we're being totally honest, there was a period in the mid '90s where he was releasing some real crap.

I was really torn up over which Maestro video to throw into the competition. Obviously "Let Your Backbone Slide" was the biggest hit, but I kind of always thought "Drop the Needle" was a tougher sounding song, plus it samples some '80s CanRock band called Haywire, so it has a little more CanCred. If I'm being really honest, though, my favourite Maestro jam has always been "Conductin' Thangs."

Here's the reasons this video is dope:
1) More punchlines per minute than any other song of it's era.
2) The awesome prohibition-era nightclub motif.
3) Whatever it is Maestro's doing in front of the CN Tower.
4) The tight little ska-sample backbeat.

In the red corner, from Jane and Finch, with a bad career move of everything after the first album and a comeback album of Spek's solo career, The DREE-AM WARRIORS!

If you don't know anything about the Warriors, they were formed in 1988 by King Lou and Capital Q. They played sort of weird, arty, jazz-and-reggae inspired hip-hop and used a lot of slant rhymes in their lyrics. Their first album And the Legacy Begins was actually bigger in the U.K. than they were at home, but pretty well failed to get over at all in the U.S. They had three hits, the most famous of which was "My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style," which had an awesome video and an even better sample of a Quincy Jones song.

Their second album, Subliminal Simulation, dropped in 1994 featured a new MC named Spek and had a single called "Day In Day Out," which was about 1/100th as cool as anything on the first album. Even at age 13, I was hugely underwhelmed. I basically blamed Spek for fucking up Canada's greatest rap group, and when their third album was crap to, I felt justified. Ironically, Spek was the only Dream Warrior to go on to have a solo career.

Unfortunately, YouTube doesn't seem to have the awesome first video for "My Definition," they only have the crappy American one they released when the Warriors signed to 4th and BWay in the States. That's almost criminal, because the first video was so good it was offensive and the 4th and BWay video eats dicks.

As a runner up, I'm putting the video for "Wash Your Face In My Sink" in to rep the Dream Warriors. It's a pretty strong video. I particularly enjoy the 12-sided die and fact that, unlike rap videos of the era, the Sucker MC in this video is very clearly labeled.

You know what to do.

A Hard Fought Victory Over Vowels. Congrats MSTRKRFT.

2008-03-30T01:38:00.000-04:00

OK kids, we have a winner.

After an extra day of voting and much animated discussion, MSTRKRFT takes the the title, winning 5 - 3.

I have to say, I was pretty impressed with everybody's comments on this one. It's nice to see that smut with little redeeming social value can provoke thoughtful conversation.

MSTRKRFT's victory video is "Street Justice." I really like this video for a number of reasons. One, it has a guest appearance by the Trackdirtyaz, who I like a lot. Two, it's modeled after dance party TV shows. I love dance party TV shows. Electric Circus may still be one of my favourite shows of all time, with Soul Train on WGN a close second. Three, one of the girls in this video looks a little like Jennifer Beals in Flashdance. I love Flashdance.

Dirty, Smutty Hipster Disco: MSTRKRFT vs. Simian Mobile Disco

2008-03-24T21:49:00.000-04:00

What's really good?

OK, so it's no secret I spent more than two years wasting my talent slinging porn at a Wal-Mart sized sex store, the name of which rhymes with "induction."

In addition to the promised slightly-more-than minimum wage, this job offered me a few decent perks before it caused my soul to implode.

They included the following:

1) Discounted porn.

2) Free (read, stolen) porn.

3) Long, uninterrupted stretches of time to read, write, eat and stare at the walls.

4) An excuse to start reading Fleshbot on a regular basis. (By the way, it's not like I'm making news here, but Fleshbot may be the absolute best thing on the web. If you're not a regular reader you've been napping for like half a decade.)

5) An ability to differentiate high quality smut from middling smut.

It's the last two that are really important here.

There was a period of time in 2006 where Fleshbot was regularly posting music videos that would not make the rotation on MuchMusic or MTV. It turns out that YouTube is a veritable treasure trove of musical smutitude. Now, as it turns out, a lot of it is crappy re-hashings of old David Lee Roth videos. But some of it is pretty awesome.

I decided to take two of those videos and pit them against each other in a battle to see whose filth is hotter.

A couple things about these videos. They have more in common than just nakedness. Both bands produce a sort of music that straddles the gap between straight up house and retro-'80s electro, a sound I've dubbed Hipster Disco, in part because it's accurate and in part because I've always wanted to invent a genre.

The Main Event

In the red corner, from Toronto, Ontario, with a pretension factor of no vowels, MSTRKRFT!

Pretty much everyone already knows the MSTRKRFT story. The group was started by Jesse Keeler from Death From Above 1979 and Toronto producer Al-P as an outlet for Keeler's housey, DFA-inappropriate musical urges. A year later, DFA was no more and MSTRKRFT was all Keeler had.

(Two asides: One, Al-P is in no way related to El-P or Al B. Sure, which sucks. Two, I am still not 100% over the death of Death From Above 1979.)

This video was one of the '06 Fleshbot classics, and with good reason. Not only is this song a fucking banger, the crew at Fleshbot wasn't lying when they called this bad boy Jules Jordan-esque. (Be aware that there be a porn link, kiddies. For those of you who don't know, Jules Jordan isn't just a pornographer. In my mind, he's THE pornographer. Really and truly, this man has provided countless hours of enjoyment for me.)

That said, this video isn't just pervy. It really doesn't make any sense, either. I dig that. There's no reason for a milkshake to fall from the sky. It just does.

And now the opposition.

In the blue corner, from Manchester, England, with a pretension factor of a long, goofy name and releasing shit on a French label, SIMIAN MO-bile DISCOOOO!

Where MSTRKRFT came as the result of a side project, Simian Mobile Disco rose phoenix like from the ashes of electro-rock act Simian.

Here's what I know about Simian. When I was working for an excellent little campus paper at a less-than-excellent university, I got a review copy of Simian's We Are Your Friends. I don't remember if I ever got around to writing the review, but I remember really liking the album. I think I may still have it. I should probably go look at some point.

After the band's 2005 break-up, half the guys from Simian started remixing songs for acts like Muse, The Go! Team and Air. In 2006 Kitsuné records released "Hustler" and the rest, as they say, is history.

As far as I can tell, and I won't front like I put extensive research into this blog, their are two "official" videos for "Hustler." Both of them are righteously dirty, but I picked this one because I think it contrasts with the MSTRKRFT joint a little better.

A few things I like about this video:

1) Girls kissing girls. It's cheesy, it's clichéd and to be totally honest with you, I don't really like all-girl porn that much, but in music videos it works. Hell, just ask Pittsburgh Slim.

2) The slow build. There's no action until two-thirds of the way through. Again, not so cool in porn, but it works in the smutty music video context.

3) The cheese-bag, '80s art school film vibe. I'm going to assume this was like a "meta" type reference to art school film, rather than actually thinking that's cool.

If the MSTRKRFT video is lay it all out early, cumshots 'til you explode, Jules Jordan-style joint, the Simian Mobile Disco video is more like an Eon McKai video. It's art you can jack off to, if you really, really need to jack off.

(Again, two asides. One, Cadence Weapon did an absolutely insane mash-up of "Hustler" and Rick Ross' "Hustlin'" called, not surprisingly, "Hustlin' Hustler." I suggest you all go find it when you're done here. Two, my former co-worker Marty once made an excellent observation on the work of Eon McKai. "It's a gritty portrayal of urban life, it's fucking awful .... Do you jerk off to Scorsese films?")

OK, so once again voting closes midnight Friday. Sorry to take away a day of democracy, but my trip to the hinterland through me off schedule. Won't happen again.

Hang Tight

2008-03-24T01:18:00.000-04:00

What's up y'all?

Just got in from the 519 tonight. Expect a new post tomorrow evening-ish after I get back from the gym.

Odelay Ese, ST Thrash Their Way Into the Winners Circle

2008-03-22T17:20:00.000-04:00

What's up jerkbombs?

Sorry I was a little late with the postage over here, but wifey has forced me to spend time with her family in London. (The shitty 519 one, not the cool one in England.)

Apparently Black Flag's goofy-yet-preachy style annoyed the voting public, while Suicidal Tendencies are "just too gully" to ignore. Cyco Mike Muir and company took the voting 5 - 1, sending Big Hank, Greg and Robo home with their tails between their legs.

Here's "Possessed to Skate," ST's second "hit" video from their second full length Join the Army. Between the release of the self-titled disc and Join the Army, ST had already gone on hiatus, gotten back together, changed members and started to go metal. That said, the message behind the video (parents = bad, skateboards = good) remains unchanged. Way to stay consistent, guys.

The most common YouTube version of this video has Cyco Mike doing some sort of weird introduction ten-ish years after the fact. I have no idea what this is from, but I went with it because Muir is so barely with-it that it's fucking hilarious.

Early '80s Californian Hardcore Bands: Black Flag vs. Suicidal Tendancies

2008-03-15T02:00:00.000-04:00

I was a pretty big punk rocker in my youth. Sure, I listened to enough hip-hop and went to enough raves that I can reasonably lay some claim to that shit, too, but ultimately punk rock is/was my true love.

The problem with punk rock is that it's pretty backwards looking genre. For a subculture that's all about rebellion and tearing down the system, punk spends a lot of time locked into it's own little system, looking at things that have already happened, getting all fucking precious over it's history.

As tough as it is to admit, when you're really into punk rock, you're really as much of a nostalgia freak as neo-hippies and those fucking rockabilly kids. (Although you're much better dressed.) You spend almost all your time listening to music that came out twenty or thirty years ago, and no one can blame you.

Sure, there are some great punk bands currently in operation (Career Suicide, Fucked Up, Cairo Foster) and there were some great punk bands back when I was really "in the scene" (The Swarm, Haymaker, H2O, Rancid) but ultimately, the old shit is better. It's ridiculous to feed a young man a steady diet of The Blitz, Bad Brains and TSOL and then expect him to shit his pants over The Distillers and Social Code.

This week I decided to pit two of my adolescent favourites against each other.

The Main Event

In the red corner, with a career total of 19 members, from Redondo Beach, California, BLAAA-CK FLAAAAG!

The Flag are pretty much the most bad-ass band ever. If you haven't read Get in the Van, Henry Rollins' tour diaries from his days with the Flag, you've lived an unfulfilled life.

For those of you who don't know, the Flag toured almost non-stop for most of a decade, released 20 recordings in 10 years, launched the musical career of a Virginian ice cream parlor employee named Hank Garfield (better known as Henry Rollins) and are credited with creating a hardcore scene everywhere they played. And yes, they went through members like a Denny's goes through eggs.

The Flag was created in 1976 by guitarist Greg Ginn and vocalist Keith Morris. Ginn wanted the band to practice for several hours a day, Morris wanted to do a metric shit-tonne of drugs. The relationship soon soured and Morris went on to form The Circle Jerks, who would act as the Bird to the Flag's Magic.

The band would have two more singers between Morris and Rollins; Ron Reyes, who quit the band after getting freaked out by the violence that followed the band, and Dez Cadena, who would shred his vocal chords and become the bands rhythm guitarist.

The band had their first full-length album, Damaged, shelved for almost two years after a nasty break-up with MCA records, which also forced the band to stop releasing records under the name "Black Flag" for a year. Instead, their albums featured the band's four bar logo.

This is the video for "TV Party" off Damaged. After this point, the band started the slow slide away from punk rock and towards being a sort of improvisational metal band. By the time they released 1985's The Process of Weeding Out, the short, tight sing-a-long anthems of Damaged had been replaced by nine-minute instrumental freak outs. As I've gotten older, I've grown to appreciate the Flag's metal output, but this is still my idea of the Flag at their best; goofy, smart and violently angry all at once.

By the way, the production values on this baby are hilariously low and awesome. The whole thing looks like it was filmed for about 50 bucks. That's punk rock.

OK, now their opponents.

In the (Sureño) blue corner, from Venice Beach, California, with a career total of 21 members, SUUU-ic-IDAL TENNNNNN-dancies.

There are a lot of similarities between ST and the Flag. Both bands came from So Cal beach towns. Both bands were viewed with suspicion in the scene. (In fact, ST was voted "Worst Band/Biggest Assholes in a 1983 Flipside Magazine poll.) Both had a reputation for incredibly violent shows, although at ST shows the violence was in the pit, where as violence at Flag shows was mostly between the band and the crowd. Both bands had one dominant founding member who either fired or drove off other band mates with a shocking regularity. And mos importantly, both bands finished their career as metal bands. But where Black Flag's metal was an arty sludge, Suicidal played straight up thrash. 1987's Join the Army was a DRI-style crossover thrash album, and 1988's major label debut How I Will Laugh Tomorrow When I Can't Even Smile Today was pretty much a Metallica album.

There are a few really cool things about ST. They were arguably the first real skatecore band. They made some very heavy records and, most importantly, they made it semi-cool for white skateboard kids to dress like cholos. When I was 17 or 18 I spent three months dressing like a cholo as sort of an ST tribute. Nobody got it.

How down ST actually were depends on who you ask. I think it's pretty safe to say that at least some of the "ST are gangbangers" paranoia was at least partially based in racism. Their heavily Latino membership undoubtedly freaked people out. On the other hand, the logo for the Sureño V13 set did pop up in some of their early releases.

This is the video for "Institutionalized" off of their self-titled debut album. You've probably already seen it, but you should watch it again. This is the video that made me love this band.

OK motherfuckers. Get your vote on.

Scandinavia Rules Supreme! Congratulations Robyn.

2008-03-14T23:39:00.000-04:00

OK, we had seven voters this time.

That's almost double last weeks turnout, but is still pretty sad. Apparently people don't like music videos, or democracy.

Those of you who did bother to vote were unanimous in your decision. The final tally was Robyn seven, Rachel Stevens zero. Apparently Ms. Stevens is either not reformed enough for our voting public or Robyn's crazy Swedish sensibility was just too irresistible.

To congratulate Robyn, I'm going to put up the video for "Every Heartbeat," her fucking sick collabo with Kleerup. It's not nearly as weird and wacky as "Konichiwa Bitches," but it's just as impressive. The first time I saw this video I watched it four times back-to-back. This song is the jam. The video's not bad either. I really don't have anything bad to say about this song.

Good job Robyn, you've come a long way, baby. We're all very proud of you.

Battle of the (Sort of) Reformed Pop Tarts: Robyn vs. Rachel Stevens

2008-03-09T04:06:00.001-04:00

Sixteen year-olds aren’t known for their judgement.

I’m not saying this to harsh on the young’uns, I’m just pointing out the obvious. I was 16 some time ago, and I did some dumb shit. So did most of my friends. Sixteen year-olds do things like dress up like goths, experiment with bisexuality and heroin, convert to Islam and go through weird flirtations with Neo-Nazism.

The nice thing about being 16 is you can do all this dumb shit, then basically write it off to youthful indiscretion. Nobody will hold your old Skrewdriver records or kufi against you in the long term. You were 16. You were “finding yourself.” It’s all good.

Imagine what the world would be like if you were branded by your adolescent idiocy for the rest of your life? That’s kind of what life’s like for pop stars. They make one stupid decision when they’re kids, cut one dumb, treacly single, and are branded as a cheesy teen-pop star for life. That’s why so many of them live out the rest of their lives in miserable obscurity. It’s better to walk around as a nobody than live out the rest of your life as Tevin Campbell or one of the guys from Another Bad Creation.

That’s why I’m always amazed when teen popsters manage to salvage any sort of grown up career, let alone a respectable one that’s based on nostalgia.

But wouldn’t it be interesting if we were to take two recovered '90s teenyboppers put them head-to-head to find out who’s done the best job of distancing themselves from their shameful past.

Yeah, let’s do that.

The Main Event

In the red corner, with a shame factor of “Show Me Love,” from Stockholm, Sweden, ROBYN!

Here’s the backgrounder on Robyn.

She was raised by weird experimental actors in Sweden, “discovered” at age 13 and spirited away to work with weird Swedish Sven Gali Max Martin, the man who would later be responsible for most of Britney Spears’ early output.

At 18, after experiencing some commercial success in Sweden, Robyn was unleashed on an unsuspecting world. Her single “Show Me Love” was an über-hit pretty much everywhere on the planet in the summer of 1997. I worked at a movie theatre in the summer of 1997 where I was forced to hear “Show Me Love” about a dozen times a shift. The song is still intrinsically linked in my brain with the smell of stale popcorn and harsh grease-cutting chemicals.

Later the same year, Robyn was booked as an opening act for the Backstreet Boys, but had to pull out due to “exhaustion.”

Unfortunately, it’s hard to take the child of two members of an experimental theatre troupe and force her to be the new Tiffany. Robyn eventually rebelled against her masters, first by writing ballads about abortion (hers), then by covering obscure ‘60s soul records, then eventually by making weird electro stuff where she sounds like a cross between a hyper-sexual Björk and Missy Elliot re-imagined as a tiny Nordic girl.

In 2005, the idiots at Jive Records eventually said “fuck this” and cut her loose. Since then, she’s been releasing shit on her own Konichiwa Records label. She only just got North American distribution, but she’s been doing a pretty good job of getting noticed in Europe, so we could see a full-fledged comeback before long.

I’m not going to front. I think post-2005 Robyn is the fucking balls. I don’t want to bias the electorate, but I like this girl a lot. So much so that I really had to debate which video I wanted to put up as an example of her more recent work. Eventually I chose “Konichiwa Bitches”, just because I think this song/video let’s your really know where this girl’s head’s at.

OK, now for the competition.

In the blue corner, with a shame factor of S Club Seven, from London, England, Raaaay-CHEL Steee-VENS.

OK, before we even get started on this one, let’s just go ahead and admit that Rachel Stevens is more poppy, more tarty and considerably less overall reformed than Robyn. She didn’t go from Swedish proto-Britney to some sort of weird acid casualty. Instead, she went from being one-seventh of the worst musical act in human history to maker of aggressively sexed-up dance tunes and future gay-scene icon.

For those of you in need of a history lesson, Rachel Stevens was a remember of S Club Seven, the worst musical group in human history. They were sort of a mixed-gender 1990s version of The Monkees. Except, where The Monkees made music that actually wasn’t that bad, S Club Seven made music that was so bad it has no Earthly purpose other than to torture terror suspects. . You can’t like it ironically, you can’t like it in spite of yourself, You can’t even put it on at a party and have girls giggle and dance with youthful nostalgia. You can only use it to hurt people.

Here’s a refresher.

After the cancellation of Viva S Club, the final S Club series, all of them dropped off the face of the Earth for a few years. In 2004, Rachel Stevens re-emerged as with “Some Girls,” a song so intense that the song alone, never mind the video, gave me a fairly serious erection. Rachel is hot. She’s kind of like Kylie Minogue multiplied by the power of Teagan Presley. She’s not doing anything deep and profound, but she makes ladies dance seductively whenever her shit is played. I appreciate that.

This is the video for "So Good" off the album Come and Get It, her second post-S Club outing. You know how all the Britney/Hillary/Lindsay types are going for this new "more grown-up" electro sound. This is what their shooting for. Now you can see how much they fail.

OK fools. All that's left is the voting process. You shouldn't need a Google account to post now, but if you do email me at cpdart@gmail.com and I'll try and figure it out.

UPDATE: It goes without saying that the deadline for voting is Friday at Midnight.

Technical Difficulties.

2008-03-08T20:16:00.000-05:00

Yo, nobody panic.

A new battle will be posted in the next 24 hours.

We Have a Winner! Congratulations Noreaga!

2008-03-08T01:10:00.000-05:00

OK, apparently you motherfuckers don’t respect the democratic process, since only four of you bothered to vote.

Sadly, we ended this week's polling in a two-two tie. After a tie-breaker (coin flip), Noreaga was crowned this week’s champion. If you have a problem with that, you should have fucking voted.

In celebration of Noreaga’s triumph, we’re going to put up another one of his video’s. This is “Mas Maiz” off of 2006 reggaeton album/orgy of guest artists N.O.R.E. y la Familia … Ya Tú Sabe. To give you an idea of how many guests artists are on this album, this joint alone features Big Mato, Nina Sky, La Negra, Fat Joe, Lumidee, Chingo Bling and Lil’ Rob. With that many guests, it’s a small miracle Noreaga gets on the cut at all.

A few more things about this song:

1) I want to have sex with Lumidee in the worst way.

2) Fat Joe’s Spanish is about as good as my French. His mother must be appalled.

3) Chingo Bling is a fucking genius.

Go get it.

The First Post - Talented but Underproductive Rappers: Del the Funky Homosapien vs. N.O.R.E.

2008-03-01T22:38:00.000-05:00

Those of you who've known me for sometime will know I'm a) full of shit and b) have wicked ADD. As a result, there's a good chance that this bad boy will get abandoned along with various other blogs, podcasts, bands and publications I've been involved with before getting bored and moving on to some next shit. That said, this idea is pretty simple. Simple enough even I can stick with it. It's sort of like the Tank Abbot-era UFC for music videos. Two videos enter, one video leaves. Sadly, we don't have a cage, or Bruce Buffer. I'm working on it.

In lieu of weight classes, there will be categories randomly created by me. If this thing gathers steam, maybe they can be suggested by you.

(Yes, I know early UFC didn't have weight classes either, hence allowing us to see 600 pound sumo wrestlers get kicked in the grill by 175 pound savateurs. Fuck off.)

Our first battle will be in the Talented but Underproductive Rappers weight class.

In the blue corner, weighing in at 160 pounds soaking wet, from Oakland, California, with five solo albums released over the course of 17 years, DEL tha Funkyyyyyyy HO-MO-SAPIEN.

Now, to be strictly accurate, Del has been a little more productive than one album every three and a half years would indicate. He produced the Deltron 3030 album alongside Dan the Automator in late 2000, he's contributed to three, soon to be four, Hieroglyphics Crew albums along with fellow Hieros Casual, Pep Love and Souls of Mischief. He did some guest vocals on the Gorillaz first album and on both Handsome Boy Modelling School records. Apparently he was in an episode of MTV's Made, which I think is fucking hilarious.

All that said, with seven and a half years between his last album, Both Sides of the Brain, and the freshly hatched 11th Hour, I don't really give a shit how many guest joints he does. That shit's just lazy.

Anyway, here's "Workin' It." It's on the new album.

In the red corner, weighing in at well over 230 pounds, from Puerto Rico by way of Queens, New York, with four and a half solo albums in ten years NORRR-EEEEE!

For the record, I have an problem with N.O.R.E. I keep insisting on calling him Noreaga. Much like my dad keeps calling Kareem Abdul Jabbar Lew Alcindor. For one thing, Capone-N-N.O.R.E. sounds stupid. For another thing, the actual Noreaga, who spelled it Noriega, looked like a pineapple.

With an average output of a solo album every two and a half years, Noreaga's production doesn't seem that slack, but those numbers are a little inflated. First of all, it includes 1999's Melvyn Flynt - Da Hustler, which sucked and nobody bought. Second of all, it doesn't show that he did exactly nothing between 2002 and 2006, and 2006 only brought us his weird reggaeton album N.O.R.E. y la Familia ... Ya Tú Sabe, which only counts as half an album because a) it's reggaeton and b) has an almost mind blowing 27 guest artists, making it more of a mixtape than anything. On the upside, it did have "Mas Maiz," which is a fucking sick song.

Here's "Cocaine Cowboys" off last year's Noreality. This video was banned by MTV, natch, and then apparently by MySpace, which is sort of insane, considering MySpace has some pretty borderline shit. I can understand why, though. The video alone is enough to make you want to grind your teeth and have really self-centred conversations.

OK, so that's it. All that's left is the democratic process. Voting closes at midnight on Friday.

EDIT: Just so we're all clear, comment to vote.