Republican Music Police
Sunday, January 29, 2006
An Invocation
The time has come at last for me to join this motley collective; to stand up and take my rightful place as the ultimate arbiter of quality. There's just one small problem -- namely the fact that I have terrible taste in music. For example, my current favorite song is "2d2f' off Ereland Oye's DJ Kicks. Take two seconds to guess what that stands for. Ready? Songs about blackouts and golden showers are not the hallmarks of fine taste. In any case, I've been given a key to this lock; let's see what follows.
Friday, January 27, 2006
Li'l Ann
Q: Why was Ann Coulter invited to speak at Philander Smith College?
A: Her resemblance to an "attractive and sexy, long-haired blonde" rapper
A: Her resemblance to an "attractive and sexy, long-haired blonde" rapper
Friday, January 20, 2006
If you don't like contemporary country music you can go fuck yourself
by Chris Wong
That's all I have to say
P.s. : that includes Joe and BJ
Honkytonkin',
CW
That's all I have to say
P.s. : that includes Joe and BJ
Honkytonkin',
CW
Thursday, January 19, 2006
A Record Review for my friend Richard McRoskey
by Chris Wong
RECORD REVIEW
Artist: Linkin Park
Album: Every album ever
Record Label: Sony? I don't know
Rating (out of fifty-five stars): ZERO
RECORD REVIEW
Artist: Linkin Park
Album: Every album ever
Record Label: Sony? I don't know
Rating (out of fifty-five stars): ZERO
Q: Are we not men? A: We are EMO!
by Chris Wong
I don't know what bothers me more: people who don't understand that the genre of "emo" goes way beyond the punk pop that "pop"ulates the radio waves these days, or the people who are too entrenched in their emotional maturity to admit how goddamned good this so-called "emo" music is.
Let's get this out of the way: Fallout Boy is an objectively good band. There's no three ways around it. There's so much good music coming out of this L.I.E.S. scene today that I have to admit it takes even myself a long time to catch up with it. But I'll tell you straight away that Brand New and Taking Back Sunday are making music that's every bit as good as the stuff the Descendents and Braid were putting out in the 90's and the Ataris were putting out circa Blue Skies, Broken Hearts.
Why is this an issue? Well the other night my friend Kevin and I were at a bar talking about music and Kevin raised the question: "How on earth did we get to Fallout Boy selling out arenas? How did we get from the Promise Ring to this?"
Well, no matter what the Marxist critics say, all art is organic. We don't have sedimentary movements, we have atmospheric conflations. That is to say, all music along a certain descendency runs together. And what's more it is plain to see that Fallout Boy is the necessary result of Husker Du.
Are you knocked flat on your ass from that last sentence? You should be. It really doesn't make a whole lot of sense, unless you actually think about it with the musical understanding that only people like me can possess.
Look - we need to establish the history of emo music. Most people think the roots of it began with Zen Arcade. That is, Husker Du's not-that-good album (New Day and Warehouse are probably both better...as is, most likely, Candy Apple Gray) struck a chord with the punk scenesters. Before this, hardcore punkers didn't sing about breaking up, troubled childhoods, etc. It was TV parties, and falling into the arms of Venus DeMilo. But Christ: the target demographic of punk rock - look: what they SHOULD have been singing about all along was impossible love. Imaginary love, as Rufus Wainright would put it.
And there it was...Bob Mould singing over acoustic guitar, predating Dashboard by nearly 20 years, "There are things that I'd like to say but I'm never talking to you again." Yes, yes. But emo didn't begin in earnest until the early-mid 80's when the DC scene was fucking knocking everyone's ass off. There were two bands floating around called Rites of Spring and Embrace. You may have heard of the frontmen of these bands if you know shit about punk rock (you probably don't). Rites of Spring was headed by a skinny, potchy guy named Guy Picciotto. Embrace was fronted by a skinny, short, bald, angry guy named Ian MacKaye. These bands were like Ian's former band Minor Threat in most ways musically, but their lyrics were bordering on the poetic. Don't get me wrong. They were not poetry. Examine Guy's lyrics to the song "Deeper than Inside."
"I'm going down," he begins, "going down, deeper than inside. The world. Is. My. Fuse."
Interesting sentiments, but far from canonical. The point is, though, that these lyrics were introspective, and, to many of the DC scenesters, a little wimpy. Hardliners couldn't stomp the shit out of meat-eaters or sex-havers to the strains lyrics like those. So they gave it a jokey name: Emocore.,
Well if you know the apocryphal story of "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (as in, the revolutionary war song...yes I'm busting that out) you'll know that epithets like emocore often get appropriated and championed by their targets. That sort of happened with the term "emo"...although no one ever really got comfortable with it. At any rate, somewhere along the line, emo started growing away from the underground punk scene and into the main stream, toward the grunge scene in the heyday of Nirvana, and then along the punk-pop scene as bands like Green Day and Weezer rose to prominence.
Ok. Back to how Husker Du terminates in Fallout Boy. Well it's like I told Kevin. We'll have to work backward.
Fallout Boy, despite being from Chi-town, is a clear disciple of the L.I.E.S. scene (Long Island Emo and Screaming). You can't possibly hear a song like Sugar We're Going Down (a great song. I don't care what anyone says) without thinking immediately of basically any Taking Back Sunday song, although specifically "You Know How I Do," should come immediately to mind. It's no broad leap to jump back to Saves the Day from there...it's an almost given. Let's leave Brand New out of the equation. They're a red herring in my opinion. Let's just go straight to STD. From STD you can go back to Lifetime, but that's a dead end. A better direction is to look at the power-pop of the Get Up Kids. That's not a stretch - the vocals, the guitar work. The only thing lacking is the hardcore influence. But that obviously came from a tangential source (and of course Lifetime is emo...it just is a tangent that can only lead to endless hemming and hawing and therefore should be avoided.). The point is, songs like Red Letter Day, or even more similarly Don't Hate Me or Anne Arbour share all the qualities that exemplify Saves the Day: distorted guitars, hard riffing, whiney vocals, the inevitable breakdown bridge. It's eerie.
Get Up Kids go directly back to the Promise Ring. It's as simple as that - the lispy vocals, the riffs are almost lifted. And we HAVE to go right back from there to Sunny Day Real Estate - yes Jeremy Enigk's vocals are nothing like Davey VonBohlen's...but SDRE is such a clear forebear for the Promise Ring (yes, and Cap'n Jazz...but once again, a tangential connection) and when you hear the Horse Latitudes you realize that TPR began its career as SDRE without a good singer. SDRE goes right back through Fugazi to Embrace and Rites of Spring. And we've already established that those bands go back to Husker Du.
So there you have it. Husker Du to Fallout Boy.
In case you missed it, here's the progression:
Husker Du-->Embrace-->Fugazi-->Sunny Day Real Estate-->The Promise Ring-->The Get Up Kids-->Saves The Day-->Taking Back Sunday-->Fallout Boy
Tell me that doesn't make perfect sense!
You can call it revisionist history if you want, but I'm so postmodern I know that revisionist history is the only kind of history there is.
Truckin',
cw
I don't know what bothers me more: people who don't understand that the genre of "emo" goes way beyond the punk pop that "pop"ulates the radio waves these days, or the people who are too entrenched in their emotional maturity to admit how goddamned good this so-called "emo" music is.
Let's get this out of the way: Fallout Boy is an objectively good band. There's no three ways around it. There's so much good music coming out of this L.I.E.S. scene today that I have to admit it takes even myself a long time to catch up with it. But I'll tell you straight away that Brand New and Taking Back Sunday are making music that's every bit as good as the stuff the Descendents and Braid were putting out in the 90's and the Ataris were putting out circa Blue Skies, Broken Hearts.
Why is this an issue? Well the other night my friend Kevin and I were at a bar talking about music and Kevin raised the question: "How on earth did we get to Fallout Boy selling out arenas? How did we get from the Promise Ring to this?"
Well, no matter what the Marxist critics say, all art is organic. We don't have sedimentary movements, we have atmospheric conflations. That is to say, all music along a certain descendency runs together. And what's more it is plain to see that Fallout Boy is the necessary result of Husker Du.
Are you knocked flat on your ass from that last sentence? You should be. It really doesn't make a whole lot of sense, unless you actually think about it with the musical understanding that only people like me can possess.
Look - we need to establish the history of emo music. Most people think the roots of it began with Zen Arcade. That is, Husker Du's not-that-good album (New Day and Warehouse are probably both better...as is, most likely, Candy Apple Gray) struck a chord with the punk scenesters. Before this, hardcore punkers didn't sing about breaking up, troubled childhoods, etc. It was TV parties, and falling into the arms of Venus DeMilo. But Christ: the target demographic of punk rock - look: what they SHOULD have been singing about all along was impossible love. Imaginary love, as Rufus Wainright would put it.
And there it was...Bob Mould singing over acoustic guitar, predating Dashboard by nearly 20 years, "There are things that I'd like to say but I'm never talking to you again." Yes, yes. But emo didn't begin in earnest until the early-mid 80's when the DC scene was fucking knocking everyone's ass off. There were two bands floating around called Rites of Spring and Embrace. You may have heard of the frontmen of these bands if you know shit about punk rock (you probably don't). Rites of Spring was headed by a skinny, potchy guy named Guy Picciotto. Embrace was fronted by a skinny, short, bald, angry guy named Ian MacKaye. These bands were like Ian's former band Minor Threat in most ways musically, but their lyrics were bordering on the poetic. Don't get me wrong. They were not poetry. Examine Guy's lyrics to the song "Deeper than Inside."
"I'm going down," he begins, "going down, deeper than inside. The world. Is. My. Fuse."
Interesting sentiments, but far from canonical. The point is, though, that these lyrics were introspective, and, to many of the DC scenesters, a little wimpy. Hardliners couldn't stomp the shit out of meat-eaters or sex-havers to the strains lyrics like those. So they gave it a jokey name: Emocore.,
Well if you know the apocryphal story of "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (as in, the revolutionary war song...yes I'm busting that out) you'll know that epithets like emocore often get appropriated and championed by their targets. That sort of happened with the term "emo"...although no one ever really got comfortable with it. At any rate, somewhere along the line, emo started growing away from the underground punk scene and into the main stream, toward the grunge scene in the heyday of Nirvana, and then along the punk-pop scene as bands like Green Day and Weezer rose to prominence.
Ok. Back to how Husker Du terminates in Fallout Boy. Well it's like I told Kevin. We'll have to work backward.
Fallout Boy, despite being from Chi-town, is a clear disciple of the L.I.E.S. scene (Long Island Emo and Screaming). You can't possibly hear a song like Sugar We're Going Down (a great song. I don't care what anyone says) without thinking immediately of basically any Taking Back Sunday song, although specifically "You Know How I Do," should come immediately to mind. It's no broad leap to jump back to Saves the Day from there...it's an almost given. Let's leave Brand New out of the equation. They're a red herring in my opinion. Let's just go straight to STD. From STD you can go back to Lifetime, but that's a dead end. A better direction is to look at the power-pop of the Get Up Kids. That's not a stretch - the vocals, the guitar work. The only thing lacking is the hardcore influence. But that obviously came from a tangential source (and of course Lifetime is emo...it just is a tangent that can only lead to endless hemming and hawing and therefore should be avoided.). The point is, songs like Red Letter Day, or even more similarly Don't Hate Me or Anne Arbour share all the qualities that exemplify Saves the Day: distorted guitars, hard riffing, whiney vocals, the inevitable breakdown bridge. It's eerie.
Get Up Kids go directly back to the Promise Ring. It's as simple as that - the lispy vocals, the riffs are almost lifted. And we HAVE to go right back from there to Sunny Day Real Estate - yes Jeremy Enigk's vocals are nothing like Davey VonBohlen's...but SDRE is such a clear forebear for the Promise Ring (yes, and Cap'n Jazz...but once again, a tangential connection) and when you hear the Horse Latitudes you realize that TPR began its career as SDRE without a good singer. SDRE goes right back through Fugazi to Embrace and Rites of Spring. And we've already established that those bands go back to Husker Du.
So there you have it. Husker Du to Fallout Boy.
In case you missed it, here's the progression:
Husker Du-->Embrace-->Fugazi-->Sunny Day Real Estate-->The Promise Ring-->The Get Up Kids-->Saves The Day-->Taking Back Sunday-->Fallout Boy
Tell me that doesn't make perfect sense!
You can call it revisionist history if you want, but I'm so postmodern I know that revisionist history is the only kind of history there is.
Truckin',
cw
"Triumph" is the best rap song ever
By Chris Wong
I'm sorry to be the one to break it to you, but "Triumph" by the Wu-Tang Clan is the greatest rap song ever written, recorded, performed, etc. etc. This will surely come to a shock to almost everyone. Party people will point to "Gin and Juice" or "California Love," forgetting that G-funk nearly always sounds the same. Backpackers will point out some obscure track by Aesop, Cannibal Ox, or Kool Keith, forgetting that nobody really gives a shit. Revisionist historians will point to "Rappers Delight" forgetting that it's not really that enjoyable a song to listen to. People with half a clue (emphasis on half) might even try to point to a DIFFERENT WTC song , "C.R.E.A.M." perhaps, or Chessboxing. These are closer to being valid answers...however they're all wrong.
The best rap song ever recorded is "Triumph."
This is the Clan at their best. Three years removed from their landmark debut EVERYONE in America (well...everyone who mattered) was waiting for the nine samurais to return to the 36 Chambers. So when the Wu dropped their follow-up, proclaiming WU-TANG FOREVER, we were ready to believe them. Clearly it turned out to be the exaggeration of the century - it wasn't even WU-TANG FOR ANOTHER ALBUM, but that didn't matter. What mattered is we had a double LP (or double CD, right RzA?) and that "Triumph" was the lead single.
You have to consider "Triumph" as a single, but it can't hurt to look at it in the context of the album. Side 2, side B of the double CD started off with Bobby Dig' going off on the industry - on cat in the hat rappers, on Dr. Seuss Mother Gooses (whatever that means), on shark rappers biting the Cuban Linx tip, on playas dressing up and acting like this some kind of fashion show (of course, Rza would later remark on "Duck Season" on the pointy ass caliber of his finger rings and Rae and Ghost still had their Wallabies)..........finally though he concludes his diatribe telling us to "get ready for the Triumph, because the gods are here to take over."
Then the beat drops.
God, what a beat! If you had speakers...if you had subs (like I did)...and you turned that bass up(like I did), you probably ruptured every vessel in your stomach. One of the most minimal beats ever to chart after 1990, Rza drops an eighth note bass kick with a little snare, a little string, and a little bit of angelic choir strains. Consider how multi-layered a Timbo track is, a Mannie Fresh, a Swizz Beats, and Rza's DAT work is all the more remarkable. Despite it's minimalism, this beat hits HARD. A pounding, droning, almost hypnotic beat - no....no one ever DANCED to "Triumph" but they COULD have if they wanted to.
And then ODB...oh Dirty...how sweet of you to want to take us back to '79. But Dirty, what? This song sounds nothing like 1979. But that's ok, because nothing else in the song makes sense. This is just 9 emcees (plus Cappadonna) at the absolute top of their game dropping science (read: esoteric nonsense), proclaiming their superiority at rocking the mic.
The song starts with one of the most memorable quatrains in rap music...with the criminally underrated Inspektah Deck confessing:
"I bomb atomically/ Socrates philosophies and hypotheses/Can't define how I be dropping these/ Mockeries. Lyrically perform armed robbery."
Yes! Yes! Yes! Or as Verlaine said, with much heavier connotations: "Oui! Oui! Oui!" The Wu comes like a thief in the night....and those multiples kill. They kill. There's no deep meaning, there's no message. It's all about getting down. Like Masta Killa says in by far the weakest verse of the song,
"This relentless attack of the track spares none."
This is about killing the beat, about rocking the fucking house. This is real rap music. It's noteworthy to look at some of the more confusing verses and see how very little they actually mean, and compare that to how little you care listening to the song. Like, Cappa raps
"I twist darts from the heart/Try to intrude/ Loop my voice on the LP/ Martini on the slang rocks/ Certified chatterbox/ vocabulary: 'Donna talking/ Tell your story walking."
It's nearly impossible to look at those words and
a.) say they mean something
b.) understand why they sound so good.
We could do a poetic analysis and point to the internal assonanace ("darts"/"heart", "intrude"/"loop", "cHATTerBOX"/"voCABulary DONna"), the meter, or the use of metaphor ("martini on the slang rocks"...ummm) but really it just is what it is....
This song defies explanation...something never more relevant than in Ghost's climactic professions in the song's penultimate verse. Ghostface just drops rapid fire obscurity after rapid fire obscurity in a verse that both invites close reading, but yields nothing. What can you possibly make of lines like:
"Codeine was forced in your drink/ You had a navy green/salamander fiend/ Bitches never heard you scream/ You two faces, scum of the slum/ I got your whole body numb/ Blowing like Shalamar in 81."
Clearly, it's just Ghost showing off how much he understands the euphony of language (although I doubt he'd put it that way) and that's what this song is all about. I haven't even begun to mention U-God's olympic torch, Gza's war of the masses with an outcome disastrous, or even Rza stamping gold like Fleer. And I don't think I need to. If you've heard the song, you know it by heart. If you haven't heard it you need to hear it. It simply is the best rap song ever made and it's unlikely one will ever come around that understands that this is what rap is about - the mastery of flow, beat and language. The Wu might be a lot of things, inconsistent being the most prominent, but they made this piece of pop perfection and it might be the first rap song since "Rapper's Delight" to chart without a chorus. There's a reason for this. Before this article, I hadn't heard this song in over a year, yet I could still remember every word to every verse. That's not an everyday occurence.
From that opening beat drop to when Rae guarantees to make us jump like former Staten Islander Rod Strickland and the song abruptly ends, you're under the influence of one of the best rap groups ever at the peak of their career, and you never really leave that influence.
I hope they play "Triumph" at my wedding.
Shadowboxing,
cw
I'm sorry to be the one to break it to you, but "Triumph" by the Wu-Tang Clan is the greatest rap song ever written, recorded, performed, etc. etc. This will surely come to a shock to almost everyone. Party people will point to "Gin and Juice" or "California Love," forgetting that G-funk nearly always sounds the same. Backpackers will point out some obscure track by Aesop, Cannibal Ox, or Kool Keith, forgetting that nobody really gives a shit. Revisionist historians will point to "Rappers Delight" forgetting that it's not really that enjoyable a song to listen to. People with half a clue (emphasis on half) might even try to point to a DIFFERENT WTC song , "C.R.E.A.M." perhaps, or Chessboxing. These are closer to being valid answers...however they're all wrong.
The best rap song ever recorded is "Triumph."
This is the Clan at their best. Three years removed from their landmark debut EVERYONE in America (well...everyone who mattered) was waiting for the nine samurais to return to the 36 Chambers. So when the Wu dropped their follow-up, proclaiming WU-TANG FOREVER, we were ready to believe them. Clearly it turned out to be the exaggeration of the century - it wasn't even WU-TANG FOR ANOTHER ALBUM, but that didn't matter. What mattered is we had a double LP (or double CD, right RzA?) and that "Triumph" was the lead single.
You have to consider "Triumph" as a single, but it can't hurt to look at it in the context of the album. Side 2, side B of the double CD started off with Bobby Dig' going off on the industry - on cat in the hat rappers, on Dr. Seuss Mother Gooses (whatever that means), on shark rappers biting the Cuban Linx tip, on playas dressing up and acting like this some kind of fashion show (of course, Rza would later remark on "Duck Season" on the pointy ass caliber of his finger rings and Rae and Ghost still had their Wallabies)..........finally though he concludes his diatribe telling us to "get ready for the Triumph, because the gods are here to take over."
Then the beat drops.
God, what a beat! If you had speakers...if you had subs (like I did)...and you turned that bass up(like I did), you probably ruptured every vessel in your stomach. One of the most minimal beats ever to chart after 1990, Rza drops an eighth note bass kick with a little snare, a little string, and a little bit of angelic choir strains. Consider how multi-layered a Timbo track is, a Mannie Fresh, a Swizz Beats, and Rza's DAT work is all the more remarkable. Despite it's minimalism, this beat hits HARD. A pounding, droning, almost hypnotic beat - no....no one ever DANCED to "Triumph" but they COULD have if they wanted to.
And then ODB...oh Dirty...how sweet of you to want to take us back to '79. But Dirty, what? This song sounds nothing like 1979. But that's ok, because nothing else in the song makes sense. This is just 9 emcees (plus Cappadonna) at the absolute top of their game dropping science (read: esoteric nonsense), proclaiming their superiority at rocking the mic.
The song starts with one of the most memorable quatrains in rap music...with the criminally underrated Inspektah Deck confessing:
"I bomb atomically/ Socrates philosophies and hypotheses/Can't define how I be dropping these/ Mockeries. Lyrically perform armed robbery."
Yes! Yes! Yes! Or as Verlaine said, with much heavier connotations: "Oui! Oui! Oui!" The Wu comes like a thief in the night....and those multiples kill. They kill. There's no deep meaning, there's no message. It's all about getting down. Like Masta Killa says in by far the weakest verse of the song,
"This relentless attack of the track spares none."
This is about killing the beat, about rocking the fucking house. This is real rap music. It's noteworthy to look at some of the more confusing verses and see how very little they actually mean, and compare that to how little you care listening to the song. Like, Cappa raps
"I twist darts from the heart/Try to intrude/ Loop my voice on the LP/ Martini on the slang rocks/ Certified chatterbox/ vocabulary: 'Donna talking/ Tell your story walking."
It's nearly impossible to look at those words and
a.) say they mean something
b.) understand why they sound so good.
We could do a poetic analysis and point to the internal assonanace ("darts"/"heart", "intrude"/"loop", "cHATTerBOX"/"voCABulary DONna"), the meter, or the use of metaphor ("martini on the slang rocks"...ummm) but really it just is what it is....
This song defies explanation...something never more relevant than in Ghost's climactic professions in the song's penultimate verse. Ghostface just drops rapid fire obscurity after rapid fire obscurity in a verse that both invites close reading, but yields nothing. What can you possibly make of lines like:
"Codeine was forced in your drink/ You had a navy green/salamander fiend/ Bitches never heard you scream/ You two faces, scum of the slum/ I got your whole body numb/ Blowing like Shalamar in 81."
Clearly, it's just Ghost showing off how much he understands the euphony of language (although I doubt he'd put it that way) and that's what this song is all about. I haven't even begun to mention U-God's olympic torch, Gza's war of the masses with an outcome disastrous, or even Rza stamping gold like Fleer. And I don't think I need to. If you've heard the song, you know it by heart. If you haven't heard it you need to hear it. It simply is the best rap song ever made and it's unlikely one will ever come around that understands that this is what rap is about - the mastery of flow, beat and language. The Wu might be a lot of things, inconsistent being the most prominent, but they made this piece of pop perfection and it might be the first rap song since "Rapper's Delight" to chart without a chorus. There's a reason for this. Before this article, I hadn't heard this song in over a year, yet I could still remember every word to every verse. That's not an everyday occurence.
From that opening beat drop to when Rae guarantees to make us jump like former Staten Islander Rod Strickland and the song abruptly ends, you're under the influence of one of the best rap groups ever at the peak of their career, and you never really leave that influence.
I hope they play "Triumph" at my wedding.
Shadowboxing,
cw
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Something that probably should have served as a preface but will instead serve as an interlude
by Chris Wong
Here's what makes music so impossible to discuss in any sort of forum. It's something that so few people understand that my understanding of it, nay, mastery of it, may seem unfair. It certainly seems unfair to me. Let's see if I can put it in comprehensible terms.
Music cannot be described from any one point. You can't approach music from any of the sum of its parts. Yes some songs will have some of its parts tend to dominate - for instance, one can't listen to the song "Moby Dick" by Led Zeppelin without being overly concerned with John Bonham's overly busy drums. You just can't. But that's not what "Moby Dick" is. It's not "a kickass drum track, man." It's a song. It's an instrumental, but a song nevertheless.
So how can a song be approached? Get ready for the mother of all abstractions. A song can only be approached by evaluating the sensation it provokes. Or, more accurately the sensationS. Let's take, for instance, the song "Try Not To Breathe," by REM off Automatic for the People. I pick this song because there's so many noteworthy ways to dissect it, yet nothing leads to anything significant.
Observe:
We can talk about any of the following things in the song: its 12/8 time signature, the percussion (a shaker), Stipe's overdubbed vocals, the tone on the acoustic guitar, the lyrics. It's a devastating song, yet none of these things add up to how demolishing the song is.
The lyrics, for instance, are evocative of the Kevorkian euthanasia debates ("I have lived a full life/and these are the eyes that/ I want you to remember)...but I defy you to tell me you thought of that the first time you heard the song (although you most likely haven't even HEARD it...too busy listening to Linkin Park).
The fact is, for me, this song evokes the kind of heartache associated less with death, but with yearning, of any sort. It is just a melancholy moment of sound. No more no less. I don't mean to draw metaphorical conclusions. What I mean to do is propose that, like any work of art, a song leaves the space of its performance and enters a THIRD space between the performance and the listener. In other words, the song is apart from its performer and apart from its observer. It is a confluence of me and REM every time I hear the song. And that sensation is inevitably what the song is all about.
The important thing to remember is that the song never exists as its individual parts unless you make it exist that way. And even then it becomes strained. You can't isolate anything. Even when I was learning to play guitar and tried to listen only to the solos to learn them note for note I couldn't just shut the music out. It's that the third space had altered to emphasize guitar. Because the song always emanates from its performance as a whole. The performance (at least on CD) is always the same. The third space relies on the listener.
Luckily for me, at this point, my third space is always in the objectively and universally accurate location. My sensation is never wrong. Hopefully, I can direct you towards the proper level of enjoyment.
best wishes,
cw
Here's what makes music so impossible to discuss in any sort of forum. It's something that so few people understand that my understanding of it, nay, mastery of it, may seem unfair. It certainly seems unfair to me. Let's see if I can put it in comprehensible terms.
Music cannot be described from any one point. You can't approach music from any of the sum of its parts. Yes some songs will have some of its parts tend to dominate - for instance, one can't listen to the song "Moby Dick" by Led Zeppelin without being overly concerned with John Bonham's overly busy drums. You just can't. But that's not what "Moby Dick" is. It's not "a kickass drum track, man." It's a song. It's an instrumental, but a song nevertheless.
So how can a song be approached? Get ready for the mother of all abstractions. A song can only be approached by evaluating the sensation it provokes. Or, more accurately the sensationS. Let's take, for instance, the song "Try Not To Breathe," by REM off Automatic for the People. I pick this song because there's so many noteworthy ways to dissect it, yet nothing leads to anything significant.
Observe:
We can talk about any of the following things in the song: its 12/8 time signature, the percussion (a shaker), Stipe's overdubbed vocals, the tone on the acoustic guitar, the lyrics. It's a devastating song, yet none of these things add up to how demolishing the song is.
The lyrics, for instance, are evocative of the Kevorkian euthanasia debates ("I have lived a full life/and these are the eyes that/ I want you to remember)...but I defy you to tell me you thought of that the first time you heard the song (although you most likely haven't even HEARD it...too busy listening to Linkin Park).
The fact is, for me, this song evokes the kind of heartache associated less with death, but with yearning, of any sort. It is just a melancholy moment of sound. No more no less. I don't mean to draw metaphorical conclusions. What I mean to do is propose that, like any work of art, a song leaves the space of its performance and enters a THIRD space between the performance and the listener. In other words, the song is apart from its performer and apart from its observer. It is a confluence of me and REM every time I hear the song. And that sensation is inevitably what the song is all about.
The important thing to remember is that the song never exists as its individual parts unless you make it exist that way. And even then it becomes strained. You can't isolate anything. Even when I was learning to play guitar and tried to listen only to the solos to learn them note for note I couldn't just shut the music out. It's that the third space had altered to emphasize guitar. Because the song always emanates from its performance as a whole. The performance (at least on CD) is always the same. The third space relies on the listener.
Luckily for me, at this point, my third space is always in the objectively and universally accurate location. My sensation is never wrong. Hopefully, I can direct you towards the proper level of enjoyment.
best wishes,
cw
A DefenCe of the dirty third
By Chris Wong
If you know shit about hip-hop (and you probably don't) you'll know that "Midnight Marauders," not "Low End Theory" is the best album A Tribe Called Quest ever made. If you can get past the cheezy "tour guide" intro, you'll hear Phife di-Dawg calling it out, black-and-white, on that "Steve Biko" tip:
"Linden Boulevard, represent, represent/A Tribe Called Quest, represent/ When the mic is in my hand, I'm never hesitant/ My favorite jam back in the day was "Eric B For(sic) President"
The five-foot assassin's not alone. The song's actually called "Eric B. is President" and although Eric B's a hell of a producer and DJ, it's clear the real star of the song is Rakim and if you know shit about hip-hop (and you probably don't), you'll know that this song was the fave of more than a few backpackers. Where am I going with this? Bear with me...
The point is this: maybe ten years ago you could have gotten away with saying "I like all kinds of music...except rap." (the disgust reserved for rap during the age of alt-rock is now usually reserved for country...as in "I like everything but country") or saying "rap MUSIC isn't even MUSIC."
This is not an option anymore. One of the few things about music that mystifies me is how this happened. If I were a betting man, I'd put my money on the tragic deaths of Pac and BIG...a grand narrative that legitimized hip-hop as a tortured art form populated by gritty realistic pugilistic poets. Or maybe the emergence of Eminem as a significant artistic and commercial force solidified hip-hop's ubiquitous place in culture. Maybe the Wu-Tang Clan's pseudo-intellectual and spiritual rhymes gave them a special place among music nerds who thought it was so clever that a rapper would use the word "perpendicular" in a verse (more on the WTC in later articles). Whatever the reason, the fact remains that at this point in time, not a one of your indie rock friends would be caught dead spurning hip-hop. No way. It is a necessary component of liking "cool" music that you are able to appreciate rap.
However, a new problem looms on the horizon, and that is that all the desire to appreciate hip-hop, commingled with the indie aesthetic has led to the spurning of the significant lifeblood of rap music. Look: it may be unacceptable to say "I like everything but rap," but it has not yet become unacceptable to say "I like rap, but I don't like that commercial shit." Hell, even people who claim their favorite musical genre is rap let this one fly. Fuck that. And I'm not just saying that. I have my reasons.
Let's get back to the Tribe. ATCQ is one of those seminal rap groups. Like Wu-Tang (circa 36 chambers), Tupac, Biggie, Rakim, Nas (circa Illmatic), KRS-One, and Public Enemy...among others...no one who appreciates rap music on any level (garden variety rap fans and backpackers alike) can deny their importance and quality. That is to say, everyone LIKES Tribe to a certain extent, whether their favorite rapper is 50 Cent, Ja Rule, Eminem, Dr. Dre, Ras Kass, Vinnie Paz, etc etc etc. And Phife's favorite song back in the day was Eric B. is President.
Why do I think that's so important that I pointed it out twice? Well, let's see. In one telling couplet, Rakim drops the jewel:
"Eric B easy on the cut, no mistakes allowed/ Because to me M.C. means M.ove the C.rowd"
You're goddamned right Ra. And there it is folks. There's a reason Chuck D's biggest impact was on wax, not on public speaking tours. It's because fella could rock a mic. Do you think anyone's really dropping any knowledge? Fuck no. You backpackers need to wake up. Mos Def's political sentiments are misguided at best. Dead Prez hates all white people. How is that acceptable? Common's too confused about his own opinions to offer anything illuminating. And Public Enemy...well...the Fight The Power sentiment seems a little simplistic and immature.
That's not to say these artists aren't entertaining in spite of their shortcomings. Of course they are. But that's because they can rock a mic. Don't you understand? Saying you don't like an artist because all they rap about is "cars, clothes and hoes" is about the stupidest thing you can say. What do you think Pac rapped about on his best songs? Biggie? What in the fuck was "The Chronic" about? You can say what you want about Illmatic being a masterpiece (and I tend to agree) but what did NOT being about cars clothes and hoes accomplish? All we have is the vast unprofundities he offers like "Life's a bitch and then you die..that's why we get high". Well, ok....but I'd rather focus on the flow on LOCK.
And that's why southern music is the best music out right now: Fire beats, talented rappers (it's hard to think of anyone with better flow than TIp, Paul Wall, Cham, Bun-B, Luda, Dre and Big Boi, Scarface, and others), and a sense of humor that rap has lacked.
I mean let's look at the state of hip-hop right now. Jigga's gone and we need to deal with it. Vinnie Paz was all right...but instead of telling us how he stays one step above us like a pharmacist, now he's telling us over and over how we're faggots who should hang around with women watching Will and Grace. Ras Kass was about to blow, complete with a fat ass beat from preemo, but nothing ever happened just like nothing ever does. Em is too busy singing and producing tinny drum beats to rap about anything else but his mommy, slut wife, and hate for Ja Rule. 50 believed his hype. Ghostface is triumphed as a relevant force in hip-hop but when's the last time you bumped a Ghostface record? And Kanye...well Kanye, as good (read: repetitive) a producer as he is, he has Black Thought disease, meaning he is an expert at having no flow of his own.
What's left? The only interesting things in rap music: Cham and Paulie, and the best rapper alive since the best rapper retired: Lil Weezy. That's the way it is. You may as well accept it. UGK's Riding Dirty has always been a classic. Get Your Mind Correct by Paul and Cham became one. Scarface is the king of the south, and probably the real best rapper alive. And Tha Carters I & II are instant classics.
It's not just me. Pitchfork agrees. See - even a blind squirrel finds a nut.
...Thinkin' thoed,
cw.
If you know shit about hip-hop (and you probably don't) you'll know that "Midnight Marauders," not "Low End Theory" is the best album A Tribe Called Quest ever made. If you can get past the cheezy "tour guide" intro, you'll hear Phife di-Dawg calling it out, black-and-white, on that "Steve Biko" tip:
"Linden Boulevard, represent, represent/A Tribe Called Quest, represent/ When the mic is in my hand, I'm never hesitant/ My favorite jam back in the day was "Eric B For(sic) President"
The five-foot assassin's not alone. The song's actually called "Eric B. is President" and although Eric B's a hell of a producer and DJ, it's clear the real star of the song is Rakim and if you know shit about hip-hop (and you probably don't), you'll know that this song was the fave of more than a few backpackers. Where am I going with this? Bear with me...
The point is this: maybe ten years ago you could have gotten away with saying "I like all kinds of music...except rap." (the disgust reserved for rap during the age of alt-rock is now usually reserved for country...as in "I like everything but country") or saying "rap MUSIC isn't even MUSIC."
This is not an option anymore. One of the few things about music that mystifies me is how this happened. If I were a betting man, I'd put my money on the tragic deaths of Pac and BIG...a grand narrative that legitimized hip-hop as a tortured art form populated by gritty realistic pugilistic poets. Or maybe the emergence of Eminem as a significant artistic and commercial force solidified hip-hop's ubiquitous place in culture. Maybe the Wu-Tang Clan's pseudo-intellectual and spiritual rhymes gave them a special place among music nerds who thought it was so clever that a rapper would use the word "perpendicular" in a verse (more on the WTC in later articles). Whatever the reason, the fact remains that at this point in time, not a one of your indie rock friends would be caught dead spurning hip-hop. No way. It is a necessary component of liking "cool" music that you are able to appreciate rap.
However, a new problem looms on the horizon, and that is that all the desire to appreciate hip-hop, commingled with the indie aesthetic has led to the spurning of the significant lifeblood of rap music. Look: it may be unacceptable to say "I like everything but rap," but it has not yet become unacceptable to say "I like rap, but I don't like that commercial shit." Hell, even people who claim their favorite musical genre is rap let this one fly. Fuck that. And I'm not just saying that. I have my reasons.
Let's get back to the Tribe. ATCQ is one of those seminal rap groups. Like Wu-Tang (circa 36 chambers), Tupac, Biggie, Rakim, Nas (circa Illmatic), KRS-One, and Public Enemy...among others...no one who appreciates rap music on any level (garden variety rap fans and backpackers alike) can deny their importance and quality. That is to say, everyone LIKES Tribe to a certain extent, whether their favorite rapper is 50 Cent, Ja Rule, Eminem, Dr. Dre, Ras Kass, Vinnie Paz, etc etc etc. And Phife's favorite song back in the day was Eric B. is President.
Why do I think that's so important that I pointed it out twice? Well, let's see. In one telling couplet, Rakim drops the jewel:
"Eric B easy on the cut, no mistakes allowed/ Because to me M.C. means M.ove the C.rowd"
You're goddamned right Ra. And there it is folks. There's a reason Chuck D's biggest impact was on wax, not on public speaking tours. It's because fella could rock a mic. Do you think anyone's really dropping any knowledge? Fuck no. You backpackers need to wake up. Mos Def's political sentiments are misguided at best. Dead Prez hates all white people. How is that acceptable? Common's too confused about his own opinions to offer anything illuminating. And Public Enemy...well...the Fight The Power sentiment seems a little simplistic and immature.
That's not to say these artists aren't entertaining in spite of their shortcomings. Of course they are. But that's because they can rock a mic. Don't you understand? Saying you don't like an artist because all they rap about is "cars, clothes and hoes" is about the stupidest thing you can say. What do you think Pac rapped about on his best songs? Biggie? What in the fuck was "The Chronic" about? You can say what you want about Illmatic being a masterpiece (and I tend to agree) but what did NOT being about cars clothes and hoes accomplish? All we have is the vast unprofundities he offers like "Life's a bitch and then you die..that's why we get high". Well, ok....but I'd rather focus on the flow on LOCK.
And that's why southern music is the best music out right now: Fire beats, talented rappers (it's hard to think of anyone with better flow than TIp, Paul Wall, Cham, Bun-B, Luda, Dre and Big Boi, Scarface, and others), and a sense of humor that rap has lacked.
I mean let's look at the state of hip-hop right now. Jigga's gone and we need to deal with it. Vinnie Paz was all right...but instead of telling us how he stays one step above us like a pharmacist, now he's telling us over and over how we're faggots who should hang around with women watching Will and Grace. Ras Kass was about to blow, complete with a fat ass beat from preemo, but nothing ever happened just like nothing ever does. Em is too busy singing and producing tinny drum beats to rap about anything else but his mommy, slut wife, and hate for Ja Rule. 50 believed his hype. Ghostface is triumphed as a relevant force in hip-hop but when's the last time you bumped a Ghostface record? And Kanye...well Kanye, as good (read: repetitive) a producer as he is, he has Black Thought disease, meaning he is an expert at having no flow of his own.
What's left? The only interesting things in rap music: Cham and Paulie, and the best rapper alive since the best rapper retired: Lil Weezy. That's the way it is. You may as well accept it. UGK's Riding Dirty has always been a classic. Get Your Mind Correct by Paul and Cham became one. Scarface is the king of the south, and probably the real best rapper alive. And Tha Carters I & II are instant classics.
It's not just me. Pitchfork agrees. See - even a blind squirrel finds a nut.
...Thinkin' thoed,
cw.
A Brief Introduction
By Chris Wong
This is not a blog. This is a series of articles about music by me and BJ. Why should you read these articles? It's simple: we are the ultimate arbiters on music. Period. Our vast wealth of knowledge may be exceeded by others, MAYBE, but our superlative taste will not likely be matched.
Much like Harold Bloom has proven the lone voice in the canonization of western literature, so too do we seem poised to emerge as the authoritative voices in pop music. There is no accounting for taste, perhaps, but there is also no accounting for how universal and objective our taste in music is.
There is no spoon. But there is this website.
Rock on.
This is not a blog. This is a series of articles about music by me and BJ. Why should you read these articles? It's simple: we are the ultimate arbiters on music. Period. Our vast wealth of knowledge may be exceeded by others, MAYBE, but our superlative taste will not likely be matched.
Much like Harold Bloom has proven the lone voice in the canonization of western literature, so too do we seem poised to emerge as the authoritative voices in pop music. There is no accounting for taste, perhaps, but there is also no accounting for how universal and objective our taste in music is.
There is no spoon. But there is this website.
Rock on.
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