I/You Are Invited

So, two things.

One: I've got this stupid Black Eyed Peas "Boom Boom Pow" song stuck in my head.*

Two: Today has been a day of invitations. I was invited to head on over to a three day training session and then a job making more money per hour than I've ever made in my life (by 25%). It's no glamour position, but aside from superhero, what is? *2


Two-A: I've been invited to a music rock guitar funtime concert show featuring the new iteration of Alice In Chains. Now, I haven't heard the new singer, or any of their new material, but at one time I loved that band. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that they do Layne Staley justice.*3

In honor of my day of invitations, here's a song about invitations. Note that my daughter went batshit crazy at 2 minutes, 35 seconds.






* If I got it in your head by mentioning it, I'm not sorry. Why should I suffer alone?

*2 How come I wasn't created by Dan Jurgens? Why couldn't I get a job as a night watchman in a space museum filled with the gadgets of heroes from the distant past? Damn you, Booster Gold, you've got all the luck.

*3 Here's a bonus song! Gotta get that Black Eyed Peas song out somehow, right? Teenage me identified more with Layne Staley (minus the eventually fatal drug habit) than any of the other grunge-era exemplars.

Shrugality

When listening to rap music (as I have been wont* to do as of late), you've got to come ready to hear boasts and brags about all manner of things. Clothes, jewelry, cars, jail time, body counts, bedroom conquests, mad skills that are capable of paying bills, etc. Sometimes this is good:

"Yo, I speak at schools a lot cause they say I'm intelligent
No, it's cause I'm dope, if I was wack I'd be irrelevant"*2

Sometimes it's good and terrible:

"Don't try to treat me like I ain't famous
My apologies, are you into astrology
Cause um, I'm tryin' to make it to Uranus"*3

More often than good or terrible, these boasts are tired. There's only so much you can say about how good you are, how good you have it, how good you can sex it up right. Particularly out of style and downright inappropriate are the money boasts. In today's economy, people aren't trying to hear how much money someone else has*4. In the months to come, the true revolutionary MCs will play up their shrewdness and frugality*5. I'd like to offer a helping hand in the form of recession-proof rap boasts*6:

Ain't got no love for Seamus,
This life I live is nuts,
Turns out that I'm so famous,
Get discounts on my haircuts

I appeal to your honey,
And you know I'm gonna,
She'll travel in style,
I'll call a cab if I wanna

Go 'head and call your boys,
You makin' all that noise,
I got the Pennysaver,
Found a discount on Ben 10 toys

Zirconia on my hand,
Sterling silver 'round my neck
Switch to the store brand,
Savin' up my rebate check

Cash put you up on that mountain,
But just now I ain't got any,
Yesterday, dove in a fountain,
Found three quarters and a penny

Girl, I'll treat you right,
Hop into my Saab,
Eat McDonald's tonight,
Then go look for a job (sing-song: In the mornin')

While you catalog shop,
Spendin' all that cash,
I'm at the co-op,
In the used menswear stash

Got a money market account,
I play it conservative,
The return isn't great,
But the stability's superlative*7

Note: If you're someone who came back to this blog after reading my previous post and expected a similar level of discourse, I have failed you.


* Wont is a word I have never heard in a rap song.

*2 Talib Kweli "Beautiful Struggle"

*3 Kanye West (guesting with Jadakiss) "Gettin' It In"

*4 See my previous post, and the lives of everyone you know who wasn't in Forbes magazine this year.

*5 The term 'shrugality' is ready for the streets.

*6 NOT recession-proof rap BOATS; buying a boat right now is ridiculous unless you plan to live on it.

*7 Yes, this is what I did just now instead of looking for a job. Why do you ask?

Good Music That I Have Recently Accquired - Cardinology

The election is over*. The tragicomedy of robo-calls, pallin' around with terrorists, and crazy ladies who don't trust radical Muslim Arab Socialists who belong to radical Christian churches who hate America has come to a close. The curtain is down, and I've got nothin'*2.

So, until I can reliably purchase my comic books and write about them*3, we'll be branching out into another source of entertainment. Music.

Whether by hook or by crook*4, here's some new music I've enjoyed. You should enjoy it too; or don't you like music? If you don't, I can't actually make a case for your humanity, robot.

This time we'll be looking at:

Cardinology - Ryan Adams & The Cardinals

There's an elephant in the room*5 when you talk about Ryan Adams. The haters say two things; "He just makes the same records" and "He jumps around between genres too much". First, shut up. Then, reconcile those two statements. You can't, can you? Know why? Because they are directly at odds with one another. I can see a time twenty years on, after Sarah Palin has plunged us into a nuclear winter during her third administration, when people talk about Ryan Adams like we talk about Neil Young right now. He's got a lot to say, most of it entirely worth your loss of hearing. Some of it needs saying in a honkytonk, some in a sweaty arena, some on your stoop while talking with a pretty lady (or pretty dude), and some on the morning after being in those places, when your brain is still soaked in a cocktail of endorphins, regret and alcohol*6.

With that opening statement out of the way, is it any good? Cardinology is so 'any good' that it's 'any great'. Adams is spot-on lyrically and The Cardinals continue to be the best musicians your hipster friend forgets to name-check when making dream lineups and ordering frilly cocktails*7. By turns hopeful, heartbroken, snide, shit-kicking, whistful and tuneful, there's not a bad song of the lot. And as stated earlier, The Cardinals sound like Music wished it could sound when it was Little Music. This being the last album of their contract with Lost Highway Records, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if all forthcoming releases just came out under the name The Cardinals. Maybe then skeptics could put aside there preconceptions of the front man and enjoy the music and words without the drama and spotlight.

Also, Ryan Adams is a huge Batman fan who admits to using some comic dialogue while writing lyrics*8. Score!



* Except for Georgia and Minnesota; seriously, GA, can you keep yourselves from voting for the man that even John McCain called "worse than disgraceful" and "reprehensible"? And Minnesota, join the progressive midwest; we won't make you gay marry a spotted owl......yet.

*2 The hits to this site plummet when I don't post, and I love anonymous attention too much to let so much time go by between your visits. Get ready for a flurry of small posts to sucker you into coming back and checking if anything consequential is going on. Whorish, to be sure.

*3 Which everyone knows is a vastly underserved corner of 'the internets'.

*4 That is to say by either robbery using a bladed prosthesis or shoplifting.

*5 'The room' meaning the international net we call the interwebs. It's a big room, but there's a funky smell that pervades most of it. Sorry, that was me. Also, the elephant is looking smaller since November 4th.

*6 Endorphins, Regret and Alcohol: The Justin Riley Story

*7 Bar rule: Anything that takes longer than five seconds to order is inefficient and lame.

*8 This is good unless I hear the phrase 'cowardly and superstitious lot' on the next album. Then it's awesome.

This Is Not My Rap, My Rap Was Good

Growing up, I listened to your standard fare for the mid-80s/mid-90s, city-dwelling American adolescent. Stuff like Tesla, Metallica, and Guns 'N Roses existed in a magical cultural limbo alongside N.W.A., Public Enemy, and The Geto Boys. Kids like me heard little difference between wicked riffs and phat beats*.

Axl Rose and Bushwick Bill; separated at birth? Only the headscarf shopkeep knows the truth.

Adults back then were scared. Scared that listening to rap music would turn their kids into uneducated, violent thugs. Sure, some of us turned out that way, but in those instances I'm wondering a bit about inevitability. See, most of the kids who stole car stereos and dealt dimebags of weed while listening to

"Step in my path, your ass is void
Cause I'm an aerodynamic, satanic, schizophrenic android"

were bored, felt misunderstood (even in the suburbs), and wanted to belong to a group of like-minded outcasts so they could feel important, feel a part of something. For the ones who went too far in emulating their favorite gangstas, I'd have to draw the parallel between that and some kid who shaved his head, slapped on a pair of Doc Martens and suspenders, and beat up black kids while listening to 'white pride' bullshit music. Some kids are shitty individuals for whatever reason, and if they're going to be troublemakers, the only element in question is what they'll use to justify it.

I listened to my share of ho-slappin', cap-peelin', cocaine-slangin' rhymes, and I have never:

• slapped a ho
• shot anybody
• or dealt drugs

Why? Because I:

• don't know any hos
• don't own a gun
• and don't like retail

Rap is more easily singled out by concerned parties*2 because, as a genre, the emphasis is on bragging about what you're willing to do/have done/can't stop doing*3. Rappers create conflict, court controversy and cash in on condemnation*4. Of course, being singled out is exactly what fans of hip-hop are craving. Being noticed is the new American dream, whether it's for a good reason or because you entered somebody's pet chinchilla into a wet t-shirt contest*5 (condescending edit: a 'wet t-shirt contest' is/was slang for being shot. wet=bloody. if you figured that out already, I'm sorry for my lack of faith in you.).

"Break yo' self, fool!"

Somewhere along the line, in the process of growing up, I realized that I don't care how tough the people who make the music that I listen to are. I also realized that at this point in the life of rap music, continuing with the same themes, same brags, same 'portrait of an inner-city youth, crawling up through the dope game' narrative is no better than recycling beats and remixing your song fifteen times. When PE said "fight the power", they were opening eyes to the fact that there was 'a power' to fight. The people who took that to heart have been fighting for a long time to open peoples' eyes to the fact that rapping about hustle and including one 'I love my family' tearjerker on your album is like wallowing in filth and then complaining that you stink. The gangsta rappers of today (the authentic ones, anyway) took the message of N.W.A. and used it as a blueprint, when they should have been using it as a warning.

Who'd have guessed that Professor Griff would be the second-most damaging person in this picture to PE's legacy?

While not much has changed in the rap game in twenty years, there are some signs of truth breaking through, little by little. I'm pleased to say that there are some cracks showing in the pimp facade of rap*6 (thanks to Blender*7):

50 Cent is a big, hungry tiger who should not be taunted

Un-hip-hop is the new hip-hop

When's the last time a rapper publicly acknowledged the slim chance he stood in a fight (especially regarding another rapper), or copped to liking a smart, skinny white girl*8?

I think I've heard a Lil Wayne (right) song, but I'm not sure. If I did, it didn't grab me. But, regardless of what I think about his music, and even if he shoots a prostitute in the face with a bullet made out of cocaine tomorrow, I'm glad in this instance that somebody said something unexpected, out of the ordinary and hip-hop.

?uestlove from The Roots (left) having a realistic exchange in a magazine is not surprising to me, but he, and they, damn sure need more recognition.






I'm not saying there's no place for Petey Pablo's crunk party raps, because there is (I'm looking at your stripper pole, Team Awesome). I'm just saying I'd like my rap to have grown up with me, and started being honest about who we both are and what we want from each other*9.


* I mean kids who were tone deaf.

*2 Haters.

*3 anything/everything/murdering people

*4 A lifetime of reading about Peter Parker, Reed Richards, Bruce Banner, and Wally West has readied me for attempting alliteration anytime (see?).

*5 Gaining recognition for killing a chinchilla is only the good kind of recognition if said chinchilla is breaking into your home with the intent to hurt your family.

*6 So-called 'Nerdcore Hip-Hop'/'Geeksta Rap' doesn't count. Music mags can talk all they want about a geek revolution in hip-hop, but from where I was sitting in 1989, it was all geek music. Cool for liking rap? Tell that to my friends and I as we sat in the basement, listening to Dopeman, playing the Marvel Superheroes roleplaying game, and avoiding intramural athletics.


*7 Yeah, I read Blender. It's a looong bus ride. Wait, you know what? I don't need to apologize to you! You got a problem with me readin' Blender? In the words of Dr. Dre:

"I'm hot like lava
You got a problem?
I got a problem solver
and his name is revolver"*10

*8 Who was dead wrong about the Democratic primary, by the way. Just ask Tracy Morgan.

*9 Don't expect me to wait forever, Rap. AltCountry is a really good listener.

*10 Note: I do not, in fact, have a problem solver. If you have a problem, I'll be happy to try and work something out.

Rock On - Dan Kennedy

I was wrong again (it happens…let's just say 'occasionally'). I saw the title and cover of this book and thought 'Please, not another ironic hipster penning a love letter to his childhood wrapped tightly in a faux enthusiasm blanket while burnishing his indie rock cred.' (Okay, maybe my initial thought wasn't quite that coherent and profanity-free, but we're all great wits in retrospect. Also, 'Faux Enthusiasm Blanket' – possible post-emo/screamo band name.) Turns out, Rock On is sans hipster irony, and less of a love letter than a debriefing from one of the smoking craters caused by the music wars. Dan Kennedy is (or should be) well-known for his frequent and varied contributions to numerous McSweeney's publications. For those of you who don't know McSweeney's, rectify that posthaste.

As for Rock On; it's a smart and funny look at the author's disillusionment with an industry that poses as creative while seemingly ready to wring the necks of baby bunnies if it will get them another airplay for their 'product'. It's not a newsflash that when you have an industry controlling artistic expression the results seem less than genuine. It is, however, revelatory just how many decisions made in those ivory towers are driven by a combination of fear, laziness, and stupidity; and here I thought greed was the only boogeyman to aim for.

For eighteen soul-crushing months Kennedy fought the good fight in the marketing department of one of the biggest music companies in the world. His experiences would prove harrowing if they weren't hilarious, and by all rights his observations should be dripping venom. As a former employee of the world's largest purveyor of books (They Who Shall Not Be Named), I identified with Kennedy's day-to-day dread and deer-in-the-headlights inability/unwillingness to play the game with his superiors.

Tales of conference room status wars waged by embittered ladder climbers, near-fisticuffs over baked goods, the mad dash of prospective personal assistants, the inanity of making a point about selling out by selling out, and a parade of yes men who never got music in the first place make Rock On the perfect encapsulation of the wrongheadedness of 'big music'. Maybe Dan Kennedy's book is the first fragment of an asteroid coming to usher the corporate dinosaurs into their ice age. It comes not a moment too soon.

For more book reviews, interviews, and industry news (from more independent booksellers) check out The Inside Flap.