Annoying?

There was some consternation among the mp3 bloggerati about Daft Punk’s P-Diddyesque sampling of Release the Beast to create their (or “their”) song Robot Rock. But no one seemed to comment on the other plagiarism from Human After All: Technologic sounds almost exactly like the Butthole Surfers’ Annoying Song, with the guitars removed and the synth from Ginuwine’s Pony added. Although I don’t think Daft Punk’s is supposed to be annoying (who really knows, with robots, though), it is. Both of them are nonetheless catchy.

Historian vs. Pop Musician, part 1

Came across a song to rival the horribleness (and length, 9+ minutes) of Suicide’s “Frankie Teardrop.” It’s Eugene Daniels’ “The Parasite” (which doesn’t even make sense, as it’s about North American settlers, plural), which apparently comes from an actually released major label album. This song equals Suicide’s for its amateurish sound, monumentally stupid lyrics, and a tone-deaf singing style remarkably similar to Shatner’s interpretation of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” What “The Parasite” lacks in pretension it makes up for in condescension. But the reason I’m writing about it is its historical subject matter, the bone-headedness of which gave me an idea: commenting on the admittedly rare historical pop song from a historian’s perspective. That one’s gonna take some work to do, so I’ll do a short one first: The third section from Nas's kiddie singalong "I Can," which I like, is the only historical portion of the song. I am unfortunately working from the [clean version].

Before we came to this country/
We were kings and queens/
No, your ancestors were not kings and queens, or likely anyone with even a modicum of political power. In most cases those sold into slavery were the weakest and most vulnerable members of various West and Central African societies: outcasts, criminals, debtors, soldiers, children, peasants. In fact, the African population who ended up in North America was pretty much analogous to the European immigrant population; the whites, for the most part, were from the same lower class positions. I don’t know why you’d want to claim a royal background anyway, Nas; isn’t that sort of society even more exploitative and unfair than our own?
Never porch monkeys.
You shouldn’t resurrect this, even for the sake of a rhyme, because it reminds racists.
There was empires in Africa called Kush, Timbuktu/
Again, I know all the models of “historical greatness,” at least as popularized, include past empires as a measure of a people (whatever that means), but are you enamored of the American empire today? Really, you seem sold on inequality and exploitation as good things, confusing might with right. (Note: Kush flourished 10th century – 7th century BCE. Timbuktu wasn’t an empire, but an important city in a series of Sahel empires, flourishing 13th – 16th c CE.)
Where every race came to get books/
To learn from black teachers/
Who taught Greeks and Romans/
Asians, Arabs/
“Every race” stretches the truth, since I doubt any Chinese or Amerindians studied there, but considering the inter-connectedness of the Islamic world during Timbuktu’s heyday, there might very well have been an Indonesian or two who traveled that far. And yes, Timbuktu was renowned as a center of learning among Muslims, famous for its scholars and manuscripts. Anachronistic: the Greek and Roman empires disappeared several hundred years before Timbuktu was even built. I guess it’s possible that early modern Greeks might’ve traveled there, as they were Ottoman (Muslim) subjects at the beginning of Timbuktu’s decline, but Nas means the ancient Greeks, ‘cause they were “great”.
And gave them gold. When/
I seriously doubt the teachers gave the students gold. It’s the other way around. In fact, book-selling was one of the most profitable trades in Timbuktu.
Gold was converted to money/
It all changed.
Anachronistic: Gold was first made into money early in the second millennium BCE, including in Egypt, though I’m not sure when (or if) minting coins began in West Africa. (Slabs of salt, gold dust, and cowrie shells were the currency there in the early modern period. Meanwhile, in East Africa, there were cities minting their own gold coins.)
Money then became empowerment for Europeans.
The gold from West Africa did supply Europe with some of its specie before the rise of Western European powers (the English slang “guinea” for coins indicates at least partial African origins for their money) , but that gold was very expensive, and in fact some of the Portuguese missions down the west coast of Africa were undertaken in an attempt to cut out the North African middlemen. And it is true, that Western European credit systems enabled slave (and other) trading in West Africa from the 15th c CE, but the wealth that really empowered Europeans came from the Americas.
The Persian military invaded/
Anachronistic: Nas! This was the 6th c BCE, and limited to Egypt.
They heard about the gold/
The teachings/
And everything sacred/
Africa was almost robbed naked.
Now you’re denying both African resistance (some Africans fought against the slave trade) and African complicity (other Africans did virtually all the capturing of slaves) in the Atlantic slave trade, which began in the 15th c CE.
Slavery was money/
So they began making slave ships.
Persians?! Your antecedent is unclear, Nas. Slave ships—for transporting slaves, as opposed to those powered by slave labor—were mostly a feature of the last 600 years, and besides, pre-modern enslavement was not exclusive to Africans (obvious from the fact that the root word of “slave” is the same word as “Slav.”).
Egypt was the place that Alexander the Great went/
Back to the 4th c BCE!
He was shocked that the mountains were black faces.
No he wasn’t. The Greeks considered Egyptians as among the most “civilized” people in their world.
Shot off they nose/
Anachronistic: Guns didn’t appear around the Mediterranean until 1500 years after Alexander’s invasion. You’re confusing this invasion with events in the 19th century, where European imperial agents are reputed to have chiseled away the noses on paintings of ancient Egyptians, because they looked too “black” to fit within the Europeans’ racist worldview.
To impose/
What basically/
Still goes on today you see...
Agreed.

Baleful Influence Watch, pt 2

Apologies to my legions of faithful readers (does 3 count as legions?) for the dearth of posts. Work + Wife's sprained ankle + Baby + NCAA tournament = No blogging.

The Burgeoner demolished my case for the Replacements below, and provided a number of replacements who I should’ve ranked much higher. (I guess my hatred of “Supernatural” really has faded, though the mention of it as one of the 25 best no. 1's in the 90s made me want to throttle the blogger who claimed such.)

U2: “Clocks,” Coldplay (2003)
I’d always thought this was U2, and turned the channel, natch.

Pearl Jam: “Serenity,” Godsmack (2003)

ACC Tournament

It was my lucky (crusty, the wife sez) underwear that pulled Duke through the tourney. Game one: As though some sort of mediums are working the game. The entire team seems to be channeling Duke centers from the past, except for Shavlik, who is just Shavlik. It appears that Eric Meek, Tamon Domzalski, and two Matt Christiansens are out there on the floor with Randolph, heaving up airball layups and committing a series of hopeless bungles in the lane. In addition, Melchionni has stolen Redick’s mojo, the wife notes. Game two: Redick takes the mojo back. Game three: Remarkably Zen about calls until the last minute or so, when Shelden’s head again mistaken for ball by both opposition and referees. Screaming until then limited to stupidities of announcers and shoddy camera choices by ESPN editor. No one, not even Mickie Krzyzewski wants the coverage to linger on Coach K; we all want to watch the Goddamn game. No one wants to hear Dick Vitale explain Redick’s proper use of screen from five minutes back; we want to watch what’s going on now. Query: what works about the slow down game? I dunno, but Akbar saves the day, a la NCAAs first round, 2003. Thank you, Kentucky, Wake, and Arizona. #1 in Charlotte?! Must go shower.

Ear Bugs

The wife, “And I asked if it came with headphones, and the guy sniffed, and said, ‘It comes with ear buds’.”

The sister, “Ear bugs!?”

My ear bugs don’t really fit. If I smile, or grimace, or really do anything with my facial muscles, they fall out. And after I wear them about thirty minutes my ears really start hurting. Do I have unnaturally small ear holes? Do they have different sizes available? Lucky for the multitudes of headphones around the house.

I'm not that patient

I’m glad I wasn’t “there in 1974/
The first Suicide practices/
In a loft in NYC/
…working on the organ sound…”

I’ve come across the worst album I’ve listened to this year, and I heard the entirety of Now That’s What I Call Music! 10 last week.*

Anyone who claims that Suicide is worth hearing is posing. Maybe this “band” is at the root of ‘eighties synth-pop, Wax Trax, and/or micro-house (which I know nothing about), but just because you’re seminal doesn’t mean you don’t suck. I’d bet you’d rather hear George Harrison’s Moog noodles or Popcorn’s “Hot Butter” (or was it Hot Butter’s “Popcorn”?). I know I would.

Really, people who swear by this have been duped like modern art patrons (not a coincidence: Suicide’s singer came out of NYC’s avant-garde artist community). I suspect the reason that Suicide was a duo was that they were so dreadful the drummer and guitarist left. And the remaining two wrongly believed they were good enough to carry on.

Shall we examine Suicide’s “gritty lyrics of love”**?

From “Cheree”

“Cheree Cheree/oh babyuh/oh babyuh/I love you/Cheree Cheree/My comic book fantasy/I love you/oh baby.”

Hmmm. The grit must be later in the song. Lessee. Repeat above. Then “My black leather lady***/Oh come play with me/Oh buhay-bee.”

That’s it, the sum total of the song’s lyrics.

Okay, that was the single. I mean, they prolly bent to the conventions of the marketplace; the demands of capital necessitated simplistic words, right?

Here we go with “Girl”:

Oh girl.

Turn me on.

Yeah.

You know how.

Oh Touch me soft.

You might think a song 4:04 in length might contain more, and you’d be right. There are some orgasm sounds that are too embarrassing to relate here.

All right, love songs are just silly anyway. This one is called “Che”—it must political, huh? (Unless it’s a variant on “Cheree”…)

He’s wearin’ a red star

He’s smokin’ a cigar

And when he died

The whole world lied.

Said he wazza saint.

But I know he aint [echoey sound effect on the vocals here]

Chuh…Che

Hooray Hooray

Chuh…Che

Hooray Hooray

(There are also some yelps here and there.)

So you’re arguing that good lyrics aren’t necessary for a good song; it’s about delivery and music. Alan Vega sings in the manner of a heavy-breathing midnight caller, occasionally lapsing into psychosis. There are great gaps between the each line, suggesting he made up the words as he went along.

On every song there’s a synth background that sounds like bugs at night in the summer. Occasionally there are tinkly melodies that recall opening novelty "musical" Christmas cards. Sometimes the “music” becomes a perfect replication of your fridge when it’s humming loud in the middle of the night and making it so you can’t sleep. Sometimes it sounds like a ill-grounded circuit, like how your laptop might sound when plugged into an outlet in Tanzania. From time to time some kid must’ve come on to mash organ keys randomly.

I do believe I’m going to record one of these to give to anyone who betrays me in the future.

--

*Okay, okay, I skipped Marc Anthony’s song.

**Roni Sarig, The Secret History of Rock.

***This is mumbled, so possibly mis-heard.

Potential

I’ve come across an album with the potential to be added to the 2000-2004 list: Devin the Dude’s mis-named To tha Extreme (2004). Rarely do I like a record so relaxed all the way through. This was the record Marvin Gaye would’ve made if he’d had a sense of humor. The subject matter limited to weed and sex, sometimes both in the same song, and it’s funny throughout with not one skit. Devin gets played by a freak, rides a plane high, is denied a nipple tickle, receives his comeuppance from a muscle-bound Jamaican, and fails to pay his parking tickets. Apparently, Ray Stevens (ca. “The Streak”) is a guess vocalist portraying a rapping redneck cop, “this street is ars/we seldom see rims like ‘at with a yellow stripe ‘round the tars.” A bizarre but sweet musical equivalent of “can’t we all just get along” closes out the album, and it includes both an admission of dictionary failures and the word “combinate.”

Drawback: On some of the “romantic” tunes, there’s that synthesizer wash that sounds like the way xmas tree icicles look.

I suspect the record will end up in the B range, since its strength is entirely in the lyrics. His vocals, samples, music, and beats are not really remarkable in any sense.

Sharkman

An old friend died this last week. He wasn’t old; he was a friend a long time ago. I’d only seen him once in the last dozen years, but we'd sent a few emails back and forth. It was strange to learn of his death from a website whose author did not even know him.

Watching Wizard of Oz with Sharkman was more fun than any other time I have seen that movie. I also ate more prunes in one sitting with him—he had jars of ‘em in his room, jars—than ever before or since: he had decided they were a good luck talisman for free throws at that time. I know he would’ve raged at the referees today, and I raged along with him in spirit. I think I’ll dig out the Mr. Bungle tape (his favorite, a dozen years ago) and rage some more.

Influence Watch, pt 1

Pearl Jam: Chad Kroeger, “Hero,” 2002.

Pearl Jam: Creed, “One Last Breath,” 2002.

The Worstest Shit of All

I believe that children are our are future
Way to step out on a limb, there, Whitney. As opposed to robots, I guess.

Teach them well and let them lead the way
You should try babysitting a five-year-old before suggesting putting kids in charge. Hell, I teach college students and I know I don’t want those callow shits managing anything.

Show them all the beauty they possess inside
That’s right, create a generation of egotistic monsters.

Give them a sense of pride to make it easier
Make what easier? There’s no clear antecedent here. And they aren’t gonna be any easier to raise if they’re proud.

Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be
Although moronic, up to this point the song had been coherent. Suddenly a swing into random, generic nostalgia. What do our memories of chuckling have to do with creating a race of super children? Remind us that we used to be carefree and careless? Not much of a qualification for leadership positions.

Everybody searching for a hero
Didn’t Tina Turner pose a counter argument in her theme song from that really crappy Road Warrior sequel that no one died in, despite the hyper-violent milieu?

People need someone to look up to
Weak-minded fools like you!

I never found anyone to fulfill my needs
I hope your parents died before they heard this. You are one picky broad. Not a single hero to be found? And why the perspective shift? It’s more disconcerting than AC/DC’s in “You Shook Me All Night Long”.

A lonely place to be
You can fill that lonely hole with cocaine, I heard.

So I learned to depend on me
Yep, you surely went it alone. Whitney Houston raised herself on the streets.


I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone's shadows
Certainly stepped right out of the shadow of your pop-singer mother. Nowhere close to imitating the career of cousin Dionne Warwick, fo sho.

If I fail, if I succeed
Why has this suddenly veered into a discussion of Whitney’s successes? Really, I didn’t see the song heading in this direction after hearing the thesis statement.

At least I live as I believe
Again, you’re being vague here. You haven’t clarified a lifestyle.

No matter what they take from me
What the hell? Who are they?! What things are being stolen from you? Recalling your life on the streets? Oh… I get it, the cocaine paranoia.

They can't take away my dignity
No, you’ve accomplished that all by your lonesome. Hey, you depended on yourself!

Because the greatest love of all
Another sharp swing in theme, but I would like to know your argument.

Is happening to me
That must be nice, after all your tribulations.

I found the greatest love of all
What is it?! What is it?! I fear we’ll never find out, given this song’s propensity to swerve more often than a A. E. Van Vogt short story.

Inside of me
Wait, this isn’t going to get icky, a la an R. Kelly song?

The greatest love of all
Suspense!

Is easy to achieve
Wait, what about all that hardship in the beginning? I would think that the greatest love wouldn’t be that easy to get to.

Learning to love yourself
What?! I mean, I understand now why it was easy to get there. But that’s all I get.

It is the greatest love of all
Being selfish is the ultimate state of love?


And if by chance, that special place
“That special place”? Did a line get dropped out during revision, assuming there was some sort of editing done on this song?

That you've been dreaming of
Another perspective, finally a personal second person. Sure, we’ve been partly included earlier—being ordered about on how to manage our youth and the phony inclusiveness of a fuzzy, shared past in the first verse—but now it’s our special place. Nothing generic about that.

Leads you to a lonely place
First of all, it’s rhyming “place” with “place.” With all of Whitney’s problems she’s apparently suffered, maybe her imagined special place was full of loneliness, but what kind idiot dreams of lonesome locations?

Find your strength in love
Thanks for the tip.

The Most Baleful Influences on Pop Music...

in the last two decades.

1. Whitney Houston. Maybe she didn’t really originate her of style of bombastic pop, but she’s one of the main reasons soul went into the toilet after Al Green went into the ministry. (New jack, new girl groups, and other hip-hop miscegenation with the genre have since fished it from the bowl.) The monstrous self-importance, the stupid operatic voice modulations, the plodding arrangements. Her music (or more correctly, its success) is at the root of Mariah’s ‘90s chart dominance, the bazoople platinum Titanic soundtrack*, and American Idol and its know-nothing, insipid judges**. She’s the proud architect of the second worst song of all time, “The Greatest Love of All.”***

2. Pearl Jam. I hate their stupid name. I despise their sludge guitars, their turgid drums, and that handsome guy’s vocal whine. Is his name Jeremy? Or is that one of their songs? I detest their lame album-naming abilities. (Something they share with Whitney. Whitney Houston.) But what I revile more than anything is the fact that they seem to be the model for nearly all subsequent heavy rock acts, so second- and now third-generation imitations (none better, or worse, than the original) overpopulate radio airwaves and best seller lists everywhere.

3. Replacements. Unlike the aforementioned, the ‘mats actually have good songs. But for some reason Paul Westerberg’s vocal stylings were the archetype for “alternative” rock singers (though that phase seems to have passed). His band was a bunch of sloppy drunks; the grating soul singing method matches not with cleanly produced studio fare. The Replacements are indirectly responsible for the resurrection of Santana after nearly three decades of irrelevance, a dude who wasn’t interesting in the first place.

Honorable Mention: De La Soul. 3 Feet High and Rising came in 1989 with a running skit about a fictitious game show interrupting its tracks. The songs themselves were amusing. The skit was not. This has become the prototype for nearly every commercial hip-hop album since. Let’s assume 10,000 skits since, three of them funny. I still haven’t forgiven Prince Paul enough to listen to his subsequent albums.

*What about those millions of idiots who shelled out $18 for one song and the rest incidental music? For one song that you could hear on crappy radio stations ten times a day.

**Not to mention all the other primetime remakes of Star Search that the wife prefers over televised comedy or basketball.

***”We are the World” is, of course, the worst.