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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
