Heights By Great Men Reached And Kept

Ladies and gentlemen, submitted for your approval: the album Maestro  by the incomparable BEENIE MAN.

 I will not be giving you an "introduction to Beenie Man" course because it would take all damn day.  You have computers, feel free to wiki him.  Still, to sum up:  a career spanning 40 years, over 20 albums, international stardom, and collaborations with artists ranging from Sly & Robbie to Steven Seagal (yes, THAT Steven Seagal).  What's more, Beenie Man has achieved all this while performing music that, much of the time, is completely BIZARRE.

Maestro is a stellar example of this.  It opens with a quote from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow over a murmuring crowd and... bird noises?  There's a fake-classical flourish from some synthesized strings while the crowd claps, and Beenie mutters, "This is the maestro, I have the doctorate for all things".  He begins singing in his outsized, rubbery voice.  The fake strings are chased around by a strange keyboard tone, some skeletal drums start convulsing... and as Beenie Man starts rapping, it becomes clear that this ridiculous introduction is not going to resolve into a song... it IS the song.


The next track, "Nuff Gal" opens with a smooth-jazz sax and some gently swinging drums before some Manhattan Transfer-style backing vocals pop up, and then some twangs of electro bass and there  you are, listening to what is possibly the world's first smooth jazz doo wop dancehall track.  It tempts me to say "first and ONLY smooth jazz doo wop dancehall track", but Beenie Man will actually be delivering SEVERAL more of these as the album goes on.


The rest of the album keeps up this level of manic novelty.  You will get some straightforward dancehall bangers (which, of course, sound INSANE if you don't listen to much dancehall), a roots-style reggae track, a MONSTER hip-hop crossover featuring Da Bush Babees, and a track where Beenie Man sings about African History (with varying degrees of accuracy) over the tune to "The Lion Sleeps Tonight".  And yes, he does talk about O.J. Simpson in that one.

Even without the dizzying eclecticism of the backing tracks, there is still Beenie Man's voice to reckon with.   Generally a driving baritone bark, it frequently bends up into a SHRIEK that can read as fierce or joyous, as the situation warrants.  Add in a wide range of nonsense syllables, onomatopoeic shouts, and wry chuckles, and it becomes clear how a man can make a 40-plus year music career out of, basically, talking.


While I may, at times, despair at the homogeneity of popular music, Beenie Man's career gives me hope.  If music this odd and idiosyncratic can reach major success, then there will always be something to rescue us from boredom.


Here are a few tracks.  The whole thing is on the itunes, or possibly in the reggae section of your local record store.  Go on, treat yourselves.

Death By A Thousand Nows, Part 2

Know this, gentle reader:  I am not the sort of man who backs down from a challenge.  I AM the sort of man who ignores a challenge for months at a time, hoping idly that the challenge will find something better to do and leave me alone.  Sadly, when the challenge is self-imposed, this becomes the sort of hope usually classified as "false".  And so here we are, and here I am... wading through volume 2 of the Now That's What I Call Music series, American Version.

I need to quicken my pace, clearly.  Since I managed to limp through Volume 1,  THREE MORE VOLUMES have been released.  This is worse than fighting a goddamn Hydra, and only speed and diligence will allow me to best it.  That, and this delightful stout I'm tucking into.  TO BATTLE!

Volume 2 of the Now series was released in July of 1999, and it has Jay-Z on it, which briefly raised my spirits until I realized the song in question is that stupid one where he samples a tune from "Annie".  Crap.

"...Baby One More Time" by Britney Spears is first out of the gate.  Piece of cake.  This song is very much the definition of innocuous, and I'm two-thirds of the way through it without even noticing.  For such an era-defining track, there really is not much going on.  In a sense, that makes this a perfect chart-stormer:  MONSTER chorus surrounded by barely-there verses that glide back into THE PART so smoothly that the whole song becomes one all-devouring chorus.  The only real misstep is the bridge, which is only included because back in the last millennium people still thought songs actually NEEDED bridges (ignorant savages).  This chorus is such a killer that it easily rallies from the loss of momentum, and we are carried swiftly to the finish by those drums!  That Piano part!  The slap bass and guitar noodles?  Less so.  

"You Get What You Give" by New Radicals is only a half-remembered shrug to me, so... ye gods, this video offends me on pretty much all aesthetic levels (it does have a basset hound in it for two seconds, which helps).  I will be closing my eyes for this one, as the late-90's sportswear vibe is really tearing up my sight-holes. Ah, much better.  Now I can pretend that this is just a shitty Dexy's Midnight Runner's b-side.  Until the "ironic" guitar solo rudely jolts me out of my reverie, of course.  And the List Part at the end?  Where dude talks about "Fashion shoots with Beck and Hanson" and then threatens to "kick your ass in"?  A likely story, cupcake.

And now here's Robbie Williams demanding, "Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough" in "Millennium".  Why do all these creeps want to fight me?  I mean, the feeling's mutual, but my knuckles are all swollen from pounding on that wimp from New Radicals.  Anyway, Robbie Williams may be the smuggest of all Smug Pricks, but this song is fine, I guess.  It's got the James Bond sample, and the Grandmaster Flash sample, and it's sort of like if the Britney Song was combined with the New Radicals.  Swooping, endless chorus meets vaguely uplifting "we are the future" lyrics.  And it doesn't shit the bed during the last third of the song, so it's better than 'nem Radicals.

Oh.  Fuck.  Me.  It's fucking Semisonic.  Which means it's "Closing Time," obviously.  What, you thought it would be their OTHER hit?  Is it going to be a theme with the Now comps that the songs with guitars on them are going to suck WAY WORSE than the lightweight R&B jams?  That's too bad, I LIKE guitars.  Anyway, this song has the sort of dumb lyrics that can only be achieved by someone who thinks they're being WICKED PROFOUND and it has two contagiously catchy parts that go OVER AND OVER AND OVER until you want to die, which is why it was a hit, I guess.  I'm gonna be humming this tomorrow, aren't I?  BOO.

Christ, how creepy is Bono in the "Sweetest Thing" video?  Through most of these songs, I've been consoling myself by saying, "Well, at least I understand why this was a hit."  I cannot say this about "Sweetest Thing".  There are probably people out there who... I dunno, like, this is THEIR SONG and they danced to it at their wedding and it reminds them of their first date and... it's just BARELY THERE.  I don't like U2 (shock!), but they have some LEGITIMATE HITS in their catalog.  This pile of ballad-y nothin' is NOT one of 'em.

This is very rough going.  This volume, so far, is much worse than its predecessor.  And with Sheryl Crow on deck, it is not going to get much better.  I can't remember how "My Favorite Mistake"  goes, and when the guitar starts, I think I... no, I don't remember this song.  Oh, okay, I've probably heard this chorus before.  This is another song with a superfluous bridge.  Dropping that nonsense would cut this song down to a much more manageable three minutes, but OH NO, Sheryl is a SERIOUS MUSICIAN and serious musicians put bridges in their songs.  Hint:  this is why Lance Armstrong left you.  Dude HATES bridges.

This is how low I'm sinking.  I am actually glad to hear "Praise You" by Fatboy Slim.  At least there are some interesting blips and bloops and glitchy parts, and a typically masterful command of breaks.  It's also a smarmy piece of faux-sentimental trash, but I am getting desperate.  Also, in this video Spike Jonze pretty much invents the modern hipster, and so should probably be beaten about the head and neck. 

Hey, it's Garbage!  Great!  Or, rather, okay. "I Think I'm Paranoid" has a pretty decent verse, actually.  Of course, Garbage screw it up by being all "eclectic" instead of rocking, so we get satisfying guitar crunch on the verse but shimmery atmospherics on the chorus and a bridge that is... hip-hop inspired?  Shudders.  Also, much is made of Shirley Manson's beauty, but it would take a prettier face than hers to make up for having to stare at Butch Vig one-fourth of the time. 

Speaking of eclectic, it's Cake!  "Never There" is the sort of insincere clever-dick crap these guys always churn out, sort of a highbrow Fastball, if you will (I WILL NOT).  Still, at least it sounds different than most of this shit.  Come to think of it, that's why these jerks got to have a career.  Whatever.  At least it's short. 

Oh, I get it.  "Because Of You" by 98 Degrees is here to make me appreciate Cake.  God, done.  Can I skip this thing and just listen to "Never There" again?  NO!  I have a MISSION.  I swore an OATH (there is still one minute left of this song and it is DOING NOTHING.  Can I please get a superfluous bridge?).  Pride, it seems, goeth before a fall.  Anyway, this is some bleeps n' bloops over an acoustic guitar and some high-school wrestlers on their way to regionals are apologizing to their girlfriends.  NEXT. 

Alright!  A Spice Girls song!  Oh, no!  It's one of the ballads that I can never remember!  "Goodbye" is one of their post-Ginger singles, which is probably why I am having trouble staying awake.  Get this, you limey bastards:  No Gerri Halliwell equals me not giving a  SINGLE SHIT about the Spice Girls.  Also, I call bullshit on Sporty's makeover in this video.  Apparently there was some music in this abomination, but you could have fooled me.

Blackstreet?  With a list of featured artists as long as my arm (Mya, Mase, and someone named, delightfully, "Blinky Blink")?  Off the RUGRATS SOUNDTRACK?  Oh, yes please.  This song is INSANE, and I could not be happier to see it.  There's this plinky-plonk tropical beat, the lyrics (crooned beautifully, of course) seem to advocate sexual exploration between children, and Mase and Blinky Blink ACTUALLY RAP ABOUT THE CHARACTERS FROM RUGRATS.  I listened to this song twice, and it is hands down the best thing I've heard all night.  Oh, yeah, it's called "Take Me There".

Wait, R. Kelly is up next?  And it's a story song called "When A Woman's Fed Up"?  This is a regular embarrassment of riches!  While not as endearingly batshit as some of his other efforts, this does have:  ultra-smooth soul singing, flamenco guitars, a scat-sung bridge (THAT is how you do it!), cinematic interludes, and drums that get CRAZY LOUD right at the end.  Excellent. 

Everclear's "Father of Mine" comes on, and the part about being a "poor white boy in a black neighborhood" is a jarring choice to stick after Blackstreet and R. Kelly, but I am not hating this as much as I expected to.  Yeah, the string section is a bit much, but the guitars are doing their job adequately, and the drumming on this is pretty great so it's probably being beefed up by a sequencer or something.  Fucking major labels.  Alright, Everclear.  That could have been worse.  Now go away. 

OH, GOD.  Sublime.  I was fairly confident that I could make it through the rest of my life without hearing these creeps again.  "What I Got" is up, and you know the story.  Fake reggae-rap-rock from dudes who manage to be hippies, junkies, jocks, AND fat-asses while also being smug, arrogant white reggae assholes.  "I've got a dalmatian/I can still get high," sings Creep #1.  Heh.  Not anymore, you can't.  What?  Too soon? 

I am two minutes into "I'll Never Break Your Heart" by Backstreet Boys and I've been driving myself crazy trying to figure out which one is Justin Timberlake.  Okay, typing that sentence and this one has got me three-and-a-half minutes in.  Now I'm staring at Sublime up there and hoping I don't throw up.  Is this over yet?  Fuck, thirty seconds left and somebody just did some scat singing.  Oh, thank god it's over!!!

Hello, Jay-Z.  "Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)" is way better than I remembered.  The hook is still totally annoying and gimmick-y, but it's a lot less prevalent than I thought, and goddamn can dude rap.  And the beat in the verses is actually super hot.  Also, that ridiculous hook is actually a super ballsy move, so even though it's a flop... man, this thing is really good.  And not just 'cos it's up against such lame competition.  
The Blackstreet song is still better, though.

Now 2 ends with "Everybody Is Free (To Wear Sunscreen)" by Baz Luhrmann.  You know, the one where it's all dude giving advice to young people over some anonymous-ass beats and some choral voices and harmonicas and bongos and shit and the dude isn't even William S. Burroughs?  And it's five minutes long and shit?  And now the asshole who "wrote" this song is gonna make The Great Gatsby and DiCaprio's gonna be fucking Gatsby?

Man, fuck that fucking song.

Yr More Than A Punchline Now

  

The new album by Future Of The Left is incredibly ambitious, complex, challenging, immediate, and viscerally satisfying.  In a move that makes me suspect a conscious attempt at self-parody, the effete snobs at Pitchfork gave it a six out of ten.  While FOTL frontman Andy Falkous has already retaliated with his trademark blend of wit and corrosive bile, I thought I would end my exile by urging you all to BUY THE PLOT AGAINST COMMON SENSE WHEN IT COMES OUT.  TWICE. 

Saying that The Plot Against Common Sense is special is almost redundant... that's how goddamn consistent Future Of The Left are.  This is their third album and I can count the number of their songs I don't enjoy on exactly one hand.  And those songs aren't even BAD, they just don't completely annihilate me like EVERY OTHER SONG these fine people put out.  To an aging punk (that would be yrs truly), they have managed to hit, with precision and alarming force, the EXACT spot where aggression and intellect,  humor and rage, chaos and discipline, the ridiculous and the sublime all converge.


Here it all is, then.  Blinding rushes of sneering fury, stomping mid-tempo songs that manage to be both bleak and defiantly uplifting, moments of almost pastoral beauty... I hope I'm not putting too fine a point on this, but one of my very favorite bands has returned from near-breakup with two new members and an excellent album so maybe you understand if I am excited.


Oh, and Pitchfork Creep?  A moment of yr time?


LISTEN, JERK.  Remember what I said about the ridiculous/sublime up there?  That's where Mr. Falkous's lyrics LIVE, ya bum.  So, yes, sometimes they are going to fall on the "ridiculous" side of the equation.  That, dummy, is ON PURPOSE.  The absurdity of the "Fat frogs and ethnic spiders glowing in the dark" in "Rubber Animals" makes the later line "We were found unconscious just behind a Burger King/Naked, beaten, bitten by ants" much more bleak and terrifying.  The cornball jokes (and yes, the jokes are sometimes REALLY corny.  They are also frequently HILARIOUS) are there to offset the profound and (yes) touching moments.  It's the same tactic as putting the shockingly pretty "City Of Exploded Children" right after a frothing rocker like "Cosmo's Ladder" (come to think of it, it's the same tactic as naming yr prettiest song "City Of Exploded Children").


Cheese and crackers, you guys, this is a GREAT album.  I could go on (and on), but I reckon I'll spare you any more of my gasping fanboy hyperbole.  Here are "Beneath The Waves An Ocean" and the aforementioned "Rubber Animals", for yr perusal.  If anyone from the FOTL camp would like these taken down, I will of course oblige in a heartbeat... and, dear readers... SUPPORT THESE FOLKS.  BUY THE ALBUM, you deadbeats.  Maybe we can convince them to do a U.S. Tour so we can all get wrecked in th' live setting.


God Bless Future Of The Left.  Pitchfork can go fuck itself.  That is all.

The Lana Del Rey Problem

Okay, this is happening and I'm going to have to deal with it.

Have we all watched Lana Del Rey (the only thing keeping me from putting her name in quotation marks is a rather stern admonition from Theodor Adorno to not use 'nem shits ironically) flame out on Saturday Night Live yet?  Okay, I'll wait here for those of you from the remedial class to catch up.  With us now?  Okay, down the rabbit hole (Christ, am I out of wine already?  This is going to get rough.) we go.

Layer:  The performer on Saturday Night Live is attempting to embody a James Ellroy slash (intended) David Lynch Old Hollywood tragic starlet persona.  She is failing.  Her voice, meant to be a Billy Holliday-style sultry croon, is all over the goddamn place.  She sounds more like Joanna Newsom than anyone genre-appropriate, which means she's hitting every note BUT the right one.  Her body language is awkward and muted.  Her role demands bold, confident motions that convey their semiotic meaning with a direct, sensual strength that simultaneously evokes a submissive vulnerability and a predatory, sexual strength.  Instead, she moves like she's been drugged.

Layer:  Lana Del Rey was born Elizabeth Grant.  Her father is the kind of millionaire where I don't really understand what he does.  She claims to have been performing in Brooklyn since she was 17, to little or no acclaim.  Her father hired a management team for her.  These are the people who rechristened her, fusing Hollywood legend Lana Turner with the midsize 80's sedan the Ford Del Rey (I admit to not understanding this part AT ALL).  T-shirts and jeans were replaced with satin evening gowns, lips were inflated, and Lana's vocal register shifted from a mezzo-soprano to a smokey contralto.

Layer:  Official internet canon allows two pre-Lana recordings by Lizzy Grant.  They are the Kill Kill EP and the Lana Del Rey A.K.A. Lizzy Grant full-length.  This album may also be called Nevada.  Or Nevada  may be a totally different album of earlier songs that sound a lot like Cat Power.  Except for the disco songs... which sound like they belong on an entirely different album.  Which may or may not exist.  Get me?


Layer: The song at the top of the page is a fucking KILLER.  This is where the country-indie-pop of her early work meets the club-crushing production of the new album and the doomed glamour of the new persona and the submissive sexuality and nihilistic desperation that have been through-lines of her entire career and...

Layer:  In the lyric "Open up a beer/and you say get over here/and play your video game", who exactly is playing the game?  Is it the male subject of the song, or the narrator (Lana)?  Is the video game literal, in which case these lyrics are TERRIBLE, or is the game a metaphor, in which case these lyrics are probably FILTHY?


Layer: Why is the performer in the "Born to Die" video so much more convincing than the live performer on SNL?  Is it perhaps because the mise en scene of the video demands a perpetually blank expression?  Despite its provocative imagery, this video dosen't really demand a wide emotional range of its star.  Also, the shot where the tattooed Vincent Gallo Clone sleeps with his hand around Lana's throat is pretty fucked up.


Analysis:  Is there perhaps something disturbing about a young woman (or, worse, her management team) erasing any trace of her early work?  What if her father pays for her reinvention as a fallen-angel-virgin-harlot-superstar?  What if she seems to suffer from severe stage fright?  Are lyrics like "Let me put on a show for you, Daddy" part of the Hollywood Babylon image, or are they indicative of something deeper, darker?  And is it disingenuous for the daughter of a millionaire to constantly use imagery of trailer parks, dive bars, and the American South?

Fucking probably.  Also, the stage fright thing means she's DESPERATELY unprepared for the amount of attention she's about to receive.  If Lana/her management/her father/the world want a tragic second act for the drama they've worked so hard to manufacture, they could at least have a little patience.  Amy Winehouse's corpse is, after all, still warm.

The Dark-Skinned Christopher Walken

I'm gone for two whole months, and I come back with a post that's only about ONE SONG?  YUP.  Because the song in question is the version of "Slick Talkin" by Tame One that appears on the Weathermen mix CD The Conspiracy.  Got all that?  Good.  'Cos I've got something to say.

Hip-hop is a single-driven medium.  Just like Rock 'n Roll used to be until, I dunno, the mid-to-late-sixties.   Even with three decades of excellent, artistically unified hip-hop albums, the genre still runs on short, compelling stabs of innovation (and, sometimes, moronic novelty and lowest-common-denominator vulgarity... not that innovation and vulgarity are mutually exclusive).  This is why, say, Tyler the Creator is still super important even though his album is an uneven, indulgent mess that would have made a really excellent EP.  The visceral thrill and sonic challenge of "Sandwiches" are so important that it's almost like "Boppin' Bitch" never happened.  Almost.

Anyway.  As with most genres, hip-hop innovation is a bottom-up proposition, with underground artists churning out dense, challenging work so sonically extreme it borders on the avant-garde.  These ideas then either win their creators a shot at the mainstream brass ring, or they get strip-mined by creeps like P. Diddy and Will. I. Am.  Either way, broke and hungry motherfuckers drive the artistic development that allows rich assholes to make Rolling Stone year-end lists, and if anyone can find a credible example of top-down progression in hip-hop, I have a particularly delicious-looking hat I am prepared to eat.

The upshot of all this is that, due to bad luck or excessive weirdness or old-fashioned ugliness, there's an almost infinite supply of really AMAZING rap singles that never reached anything like mainstream consciousness.  And "Slick Talkin" is a PRIME example.

A showcase for PCP-addled New Jersey MC Tame One, "Slick Talkin" appeared in a SEVERELY (one minute, forty-five seconds) truncated version on Tame's debut solo album, When Rappers Attack.  THIS version, which was buried at the exact center of a "mix CD" from a rap crew (The Weathermen) that only a handful of surly white kids liked, features an additional verse by Breeze Brewin (formerly of the Juggaknots) and clocks in at a much more satisfying 2:24.

The beat is by producer/rapper/curmudgeon/author J-Zone, and if he's ever done anything better than this, you all need to cram it in my ears RIGHT NOW.  We open with the sound of thunder and a sort of typewriter/freight-train noise that will be percolating in the background for the whole song.  Tame give shout-outs to J-Zone and DJ Mighty-Mi, there's an ascending synth squeal, and we're off to the races.  

Some sort of far-eastern stringed instrument (a shamisen, maybe?) gets looped to the point of dizzying abstraction, a classic boom-bap beat drops, and a CRUSHING bass tone keeps pulsing out on the first off-beat of every other measure.  The track is queasy and punishing and relentless and awkward at the same time, claustrophobic despite the vast amounts of space it contains...

And Tame One starts to rap.  "The dark-skinned Christopher Walken/Slick talkin'/Out in the bricks flossin'/T-shirt ripped off and/Wrapped around my head like it's a turban/Drinkin' Hennessy Bourbon/Cursin' all over the Clean Version".  And on.  And on. AND ON. And then, as suddenly as it started he's tossing you in the Passaic River and talking about White Castle.  It's here that the album version abruptly cuts off, which is too bad, because the Breeze Brewin verse is a cool wind after the furnace blast we just experienced.  It's nimble, clever ("I start with an open mind/But let me get vexed/I start with a peace sign/But quickly dead the index"), and, while excellent, it's mainly a nice come down from how stunning that Tame verse was.

This brings me to an important point about Rap Lyrics:  They Are Not Poetry.  Not necessarily.  The function of a rap lyric is to be PERFORMED, and performed WITH A BEAT.  Breeze's verse is, I would argue, more satisfying as poetry than Tame's.  The rhyme scheme is more challenging, the metaphors are less obvious.  It features some compelling uses of alliteration and is intellectually light years ahead of Tame's "Street team full of weed fiends that'll merk you".  And yet, Tame's verse fucking BURIES this shit.  This is because it fits perfectly into the empty spaces the beat creates.  It's thick with menace and swagger.  If it's dumb, it's IMMACULATELY dumb.

Look, I'm not trying to get you to run out and buy any Tame One albums (even though he's got a couple good ones, his recent work makes me think the PCP has finally cooked the part of his brain that did the rapping), but I wanted you all to hear this.  It's a GEM, and there's more where that came from.  Shit, there's probably some kid making one RIGHT NOW.  And that's why I love hip-hop.