OK, fuck that...

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

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.

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

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.

Hilarity abounds: tATu wins!

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

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.

Remembering Big Beat: Chemical Brothers vs. The Prodigy

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.

Runnin' With Their Shirts Off, Van Halen Wins

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

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

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

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

What's up all?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



The Opposition

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

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

Here's some things about the video.

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

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

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



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

Ladytron are the Last Ones Standing

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Main Event

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

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

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

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

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



The Opposition

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

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

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

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

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



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