Last week came and went without any talk of politics at the site here, and I'm okay with that. Not because I'm unhappy to see a fresh team @ 1600 Pennsylvania or anything, but because I think it's an educated guess that
A. This site's readership is predominantly liberal, and
B. Nobody's clamoring for the political insight of a dick joke/dance music blogger.
Frankly, I'm thrilled that election/inauguration fever has passed, and here's why: Have you ever been at a party where someone mentions goddamn absinthe? Without fail, the conversation always devolves into this dubious fact-off, where everybody is trying to one-up each other's knowledge about a drink popularized by inscrutable French poets.
Person A: "Well actually, they made it legal in the states last fall"
Person B: "No no, that's the one without wormwood"
Person C: "No dude, it's the same"
Person B: "No, you have to get that one imported from Brazil"
Person A: "You're wrong dude, you just take the sugar cube, and the slotted spoon..."
Person B: "It needs Thujone"
Person C "Yeah, they call it the green fairy"
Persons A, B, & C: (in unison) "I mean, of course I've tried it!"
It's the most exhausting, go-nowhere horseshit excuse for conversation ever, and I hate to say it, but it's all too similar to how I've felt about 85% of the political discourse amongst my agemates for the last year or so- twenty people in a room, floundering to express that "Mrrrr, Republicans suck" in slightly stronger verbiage than they who spoke before. It's preaching to the converted in the most self serving sense, and it's terribly dull.
I was going somewhere with this, buOHHHH I get it now: Orange You Glad? Orange? I see what they did there.
I just didn't think change would taste quite so much like a pomander ball.
Jamz: Fashion victims chew they charcoal teeth!
Growing up, our neighbor, a toe headed goon with an affinity for the word "lucker", was a total culture leech: When my brothers and I got into a cartoon series, this wiener would would go get all of the action figures, shirts, and posters associated with it. On the off chance my brothers or I got a hologram or clear card in our packs of Marvel trading cards, he'd dispatch his mother to go out and buy him the complete set from the comic store.
And it went on like this, to the point that my brothers and I would go out of our way to try and convince him we were into lame properties if only so we could catch him and call him out on his bullshit.
"Oh man, you know what's really awesome? Stone Protectors."
Through middle school, our houses drifted apart, and I couldn't tell you what the hell this kid is up to today. I like to think that the final straw was New Year's Eve 1995, when, after a day at the mall, my family went over to his place to watch the ball drop in Times Square. I'd secured that slick Vulture figure from the 1994 Spider Man animated series- the one with the retractable wings- that day at Kay Bee toys, and my older brother, who had bought the Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness upon it's release earlier that fall, picked up the iconic Billy Corgan "Zero" shirt, the one with the star.
A new action figure and a band shirt. Getting to stay up late. No school. These are the nights of our lives.
Arriving at our neighbor's place with Mom and Dad, older brother Tim and kid brother Tom, neighbor jerk was all too eager to show us a purchase he'd made with his Christmas money: a copy of Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.
I think I saw flames in Tim's eyes.
That night, we sat on his floor listening to the album's first disk, Dawn to Dusk. I played with my Vulture figure, my brother seethed, and neighbor kid observed and tried to seeth by imitation, mistaking Tim's genuine frustration with an attitude projected upon him by the magic of mid-90's alt rock.
Somewhere around "Zero", that album side's halfway point, Tim and I excused ourselves downstairs to get soda. In the kitchen, we shared an exchange of "I can't believe he did it again! This guy is the worst!"
And that's when this kid came downstairs to see where we'd gone, and to confess that oh yeah, he'd accidentally broken one of Vulture's retractable wings.
It was only 10pm or so, and while our house was only next door, it might as well have been another fucking continent.
Ups to Schmolli.
DJ Schmolli "Genesis Zero" (Smashing Pumpkins vs. Justice)
I want you to show me the file: Tom and Rich Ep. 1!
My boy Benjamin just wrapped editing on episode one of his new web series, Tom and Rich. Featuring NYC comedians Tom DiMenna and Richard Grebanier, Tom and Rich Series One promises an all too true look at urban defeat and the bittersweet, futile comedy of men clueless enough to fight against it. And, y'know, my friends made it. Show the love @ FOD.
Guess that's why they broke and you're so paid
I'm only just getting up to speed on Dan Black, an artist I first heard a few weeks ago on Annie Mac and Nick Grimshaw's Radio 1 show counting down the "Sound of 2009". Ranked alongside VV Brown, Passion Pit, and Little Boots as an artist to watch in the coming year, Black swings a collected, confident style refreshingly delinquent of the inanity common to his UK beat boy contemporaries.
Think Modelselektor meets Candy Bars, or like, a Notorious B.I.G. cover built Frankenstein- style out of Tricky Stewart's "Umbrella" beat and the theme from Starman.
Wait, what?
Dan Black "HYPNTZ" (Notorious B.I.G. Cover)
Disavow The Pleasure! JT vs. Radiohead!
Leave it to our boy from SF to take a two year old, played-to-death club jam, depress the shit out of it with British track about being torn in half by horses, and walk away with a resonant, sweeping headphone classic almost as fun as this gallery of a young Justin Timberlake looking terrified in a cowboy costume.
Party Ben "(All I Want You To Do Is Be) My Reckoner" (Justin Timberlake vs. Radiohead)
Do it, do it, do it Jamz: Copycat's Best of '08!
The below track can be found on The Year of the Cat, a year-end retrospective from Sweden's Copycat.
I'll bet the rest of you chumps are gonna be all hibernating and shit, but if you're looking for me this weekend, three friends and I will be hunting out Ray Brower's dead body.
Copycat "Stand By For the Floor" (Hot Chip vs. Ben E. King)
Penis Medicine Spam as Contemporary Poetry 6
And as the queen perceived him, she saluted him way, said
bill, and if we catch anybody even daring be prince by the
peoples favour, keepe them his conservant with distinctions,
goes into the water, that give variety to the performance.
no drama.
Closed his window blinds so that he might not in that battle.
meanwhile, o chief of the bharatas, hill illumined with
the rays of the sun. Thus down it how gard refused an offer
and made an having done all that he should have done, the.
You know that part in Let the Right One In when Eli's caretaker realizes that he's totally cornered in the boy's locker room so he pours acid over his own face in order to avoid being identified by the authorities? Wonka Tinglerz- basically just plain Pop Rocks dipped in chocolate- taste like that scene is happening in your mouth, only divided by yum.
Th-th Freshness: Santi x 36 = Durrrty, we go hard.
Doughy New England boy though I may be, I fucking love Three 6 Mafia. I do. They're the closest thing hip hop has to Bauhaus, and alongside Bone Thug, have carved out a spiffy niche of consistently danceable goth-rap. (Sidebar: Sucks for Bizzy.) Profound music? Of course not. But Three 6's spooky and admittedly immature world calls to mind Autumn nights of tussin, cloves, and Call of Cthulhu in the best way possible.
If you were one of those bewailing M.I.A. being relegated to hook girl status on this fall's "Swagga Like Us", I implore you to give a listen to DJ Paul and Juicy J's take on Santi's contribution to Jay Z's "Brooklyn (Go Hard)". In laying their Castlevania synths (and a solid Project Pat verse) over a Philly girl's love song to the jerk borough, a Tennessee crew somehow reassures us all that when the zombies take BK- and they will- at least you've already got your soundtrack in tow.
Santogold Feat. Three 6 Mafia & Project Pat "Shuvit"
Recession Jamz: Emil & Friends rule Harvard Ave!
First Passion Pit, now Emil & Friends- is Boston on it's way to becoming the new Montreal? Who knew there was psychedelic dance rock this solid coming out of- you'll forgive me- fucking Allston? Shouldn't you guys be shoplifting Slim Jims from Marty's Liquors and peeing in the street instead of cranking out Prince- caliber white boy funk?
And how much are you paying for rent?
Emil & Friends "Downed Economy"
Emil & Friends "Electric Feel" (MGMT Cover)
KOL: Waging war to shake the poet & the beat.
Man, Dolby Anol's remix of Kings of Leon's "Use Somebody" is totally the part of the movie where the two people who came to the dance with the bad dates lock eyes from across the room, start making their way towards one another, meet, say super clever shit to one another, and share a night together under the reflected stars of a disco ball as their jilted escorts look on incredulously- except, you know, with way more licking and biting than you usually see in movies like that.
The Kings play Madison Square Garden on January 29th.
Kings of Leon "Use Somebody (Dolby Anol Remix)"
Cover Jamz: Hanging 'round, downtown by myself.
In seventh grade, when Marcy Playground's "Sex and Candy" took Everclear's spot atop my local Top 40 radio station's nightly request countdown, I knew the following about sex:
1. The best way to get money for Marvel cards was by stealing porn magazines from my older brother, cutting out the pictorials, and selling them to classmates.
1b. Ryan Devens, you still owe me five dollars for that Jenny McCarthy Playboy spread where she's wearing the Santa costume, you rat.
2. OH MY GOD THEY'RE SAYING "SEX" ON THE RADIO.
From Atlanta, La Chansons trade out the original track's sleepy acoustics for twinkling synth drops on their cover of "Sex" for Buffetlibre's Rewind 2.0 complilation. Emblematic for whole new generation of sexually disaffected twentysomethings, it's fine expression of the song's glum satyriasis, and a fresh anthem for bored, impossibly attractive Parisian youths moaning about how fucking without DMT is so plebeian you might as well just be giving each other a high five.
La Chansons "Sex and Candy" (Marcy Playground Cover)
New Feature: Thursday Three - 1/9/09
Peep this: New lazy ass feature. Every Thursday, I'm gonna post three videos that I've dug of late. Just things I like, if only to kick my own ass into gear about writing and filming more. HERE WE GO.
3. Leaked I Love You Phillip Morris footage - I'd seen a Discovery Channel special about the bizarre life of Steven Jay Russell about a year or so ago, and it'd be nice to not hate Jim Carrey again. Also, this will be the strangest movie ever made, ever.
2. Tom DiMenna, "Ode to Fredo" - Tom was good enough to drop by the flagship presentation of We Can't Live in a Cave's Felt and Foam (every other Thursday @ The Creek!) last month to perform some tracks from his Godfather musical. Way funny and weirdly touching, he also films them for the internet and looks little like John Cazale.
1. The New Deal, "Reese's Commercial" - Made me almost pee. In the interest of further pluggery, We Can't Live in a Cave will be opening for The New Deal in the premier of their new sketchstravaganza, A False Sense of Social Security, tonight @ The PIT. 9pm, yo. Do that.
Auld Lang Jamz: Passion Pit & Author in Absentia
Yeah, so it turns out that I don't have any time for anything anymore as I am a 23 year old company man Grandpa.
I'll get this spot back up and running in the next 48. To tide you over until then, freshness from the B-Roc crew: a Hitsville USA as hell remix of one of the more promising acts to hit the national scene in 2008, Boston's own Passion Pit. PREACH. (And Happy New Year, tronkies.)
Passion Pit "Sleepyhead (The Knocks Remix)"
