Generally speaking, I don’t like to mix business with pleasure. This is mostly because I like to give all of my attention to the task in front of me. If it’s business time, then I make sure I handle my business. Likewise, if it’s time to party, then I want to know that all of my business has been handled so that I don’t have any responsibilities holding me back when I go on a wild, booze fueled rock n roll adventure that rages on into the early morning hours.
Of course, that is generally speaking. When we are talking specifically about CMJ, the rules about the separation of business and pleasure do not apply. CMJ is a 5 day orgy of indie music, free shwag and drink specials that goes from noon to 4am every day. There is no way that I can hope to go to that many rock shows and keep a perfectly balanced composure for all 16 hours of each day. I’m not saying that I’ll be chugging bloody marys as soon as they open the doors on the first day show, but sooner or later I’m going to have to start drinking. Combine the free alcohol with a pretty awesome roster of bands, and before you know it, it’s party time.
But you’re not here for stories about drinking. You’re here for the music - which is more interesting, honestly. Because I understand this, (and because I’m a type A personality) I committed to a close study of all CMJ shows - official or otherwise - and came up with this list of recommendations and highlights. Print it out, take it with you, get your freak on.
Tuesday 8:30pm - Free Energy @ The Studio at Webster Hall A new favorite here at Tough Customer headquarters. These kids from Philly sound like the best parts of Thin Lizzy and T.Rex as mixed by the dudes at DFA. Which is basically what it is.
10:45pm - Black Taxi @ Arlene’s Grocery An intriguing combination of indie rock, surf rock and Mark Knopfler-style riffs. New stuff sounds like cross between Kings Of Leon and Cold War Kids.
11:00pm - Saint Motel @ Kenny’s Castaways Kinda like classic rock, but more modern.
1:00am - Heavy Trash @ Santos Party House Jon Spencer’s new-ish band. Everybody likes that guy.
2:00am - Ghislain Poirier @ Glasslands “Bombastic bass lines and blazing synths dripping sizzling hot dancehall rhythms.”
Wednesday
7:00pm - The Men Who Stare At Goats @ Clearview Cinema This is actually a funny, weird-looking movie about a top-secret wing of the U.S. military. Stars George Clooney and Ewan McGregor.
8:30 - Pacific Division @ DROM New golden era hip hop from the West Coast.
9:00pm - The XX @ Mercury Lounge Might as well see what all the hype is about…
11:00pm - Ninjasonik @ Le Poisson Rouge Have you seen the video for Somebody Gonna Get Pregnant? Do you need another reason? 11:30pm - Teenage Prayers @ Southpaw This is the Futures Sounds/Rumble Party. Those guys know what they’re doing, as evidenced by the fact that they tapped this snarky faux-oldies band to play their showcase.
1:00am - Boogie Boarder @ Glasslands Gallery Loud, rhythmic garage-y rock.
Thursday
8:30pm - Bottle Up & Go @ The Studio at Webster Hall “Loud, raw, perfect bluesy mess.”
11:00pm - Shilpa Ray & Her Happy Hookers @ Pianos Haunting murder ballads. This is what I imagine Tom Waits’ wife sounds like. 12:00am - Tanya Morgan @ Southpaw Best new hip hop group of 2009. Seriously.
12:00am - Priestess @ Arlene’s Grocery This is an arena caliber rock band playing in a room the size of my basement. Something will probably explode. 1:00am - Sean Bones @ Mercury Lounge Who knew that indie rock-steady reggae pop would sound this good? Top 10 album of the year, for sure.
2:30am - Cymbals Eat Guitars @ Public Assembly Vice Mag late night party. If you’re still up and looking for something to do, this would be a good choice.
Friday 10:30pm - Red Wire Black Wire @ The Studio at Webster Hall
CD release party/homecoming/totally awesome show from Brooklyn’s best electro-pop band.
11:30pm - Yes Giantess @ The Studio at Webster Hall So smooth. Plus, you’ll already be there for the RWBW set.Might as well stay and watch these guys. 2:00am - The Postelles @ The Pure Volume House Probably the catchiest band playing at CMJ. Prepare to spend the next week humming “123 Stop” to yourself.
Saturday
5:00pm - Red Wire Black Wire @ Braur Falls In case you missed them the night before and feel bad about it.
8:00pm - Pig Destroyer @ Rocks Off Concert Cruise Bone crunching speed metal - and it’s on a boat! 9:00pm - Rumspringa @The Studio at Webster Hall Just drums and guitar, but they manage to squeeze a lot of genres into their sound.
9:45pm - Turbo Fruits @ Union Pool This is what I wished the Black Lips sounded like.
(Highly recommended shows in bold.)
Have you ever come across someone so messed up on drugs that just talking to them made you feel high? That happened to me the other night. It was a really strange feeling. For the first three or four minutes I thought I was the one who was acting really weird while the rest of the world was staring at me cock-eyed. Turns out I was just talking to two people deep in the throws of some mysterious drug experience.
We were at a place called Baggy’s down by the lake. The bar looks like it might have been swanky back in 1964 or whenever it first opened. Now it just seems like a smokey rec room with equal parts hipsters and vintage alcoholics. Baggy’s is pretty much empty most of the time, but this being a weekend there were about a dozen people in there. Still, we had no problem finding a few seats at the end of the bar with a commanding view of the sidewalk and the chicken and waffles joint across the street.
My friend Jon went to grab drinks while Scott and I sat down to watch drunks outside through the picture window. Next thing I knew, a young girl with a sideways grin and oddly practical shoes was standing uncomfortably close to Scott. Scott looked at me, then at the girl. Several awkward moments of silence passed with the girl just grinning at us, like she had been a part of our conversation since we got there - and like she knew Scott well enough to dismiss any thought of his personal space.
Finally Scott said, “Uh, hello?” - not greeting the girl as much as verifying that she was aware of her surroundings. She just laughed and said “yeah.” Then she smiled at us both. Scott asked if they knew each other. She offered a few words, although nothing that could be misconstrued as a sentence or coherent thought. She smiled again and sipped her drink. Then she said “I was just…yeah,” looking at us as though she was saying something that required a response. Scott started to ask another question, but she cut him off, nodding her head and agreeing before he had even said anything. It’s important to note that at this point, she was practically in Scott’s lap.
Jon had been gone for a while, so I started thinking that this was somehow a practical joke of his making. Like, maybe he knows this girl, saw her on his way to get drinks and told her to go fuck with his friends while he paid for the beers. So I asked her. “You’re fucking with us, right? This is some kind of weird performance art or something? Or your friends are secretly taping this for YouTube? Do you know Jon?” She chortled into her glass and came over to stand uncomfortably close to me.
At this point I realized she was actually at the bar with another guy. He was sitting behind us and staring at Scott like he had just fallen out of a tree. None of us said anything for a full 30 seconds. The girl looked at Scott, looked at me, smiled and said, “Ha ha. Yeah, I know…ha ha ha! Maybe.” Then she and her weird friend stepped out side and smoked at least a dozen cigarettes in a row.
Jon came back with beer and I tried in vain to explain how weird these people were acting. Actually, first I tried to convince him to hit on the smiley chick standing outside. But I guess I was a little too eager because he didn’t take the bait. He knew we were trying to mess with him, but he couldn’t understand what we thought was so weird about a smiling girl in a bar who likes to stand close to you. In theory, that sounds like exactly the kind of thing most guys go to a bar on a Saturday night to find.
Then he looked out the window. The girl was playing full on tonsil hockey with some stranger who seemed to have just been walking by the bar, while her friend was sucking down cigarettes and staring at us with his face pressed up against the glass. We waved, flipped him the bird, mimed the words “what the fuck?” Nothing. It was like he was staring into a mirror and seeing outer space.
Eventually the guy, the girl and her new found love interest made their way back inside. They were joined by a couple of creepy looking older dudes who were drinking gin and shaking pill bottles, with the same lewd grins plastered to their faces. One of them must have taken a detour to the jukebox, because the ambiance at Baggy’s suddenly took a turn for the worse. Whereas before we were sitting in a dark bar listening to the standard assortment of generic rock songs, we were now accosted by a slow mix of Leonard Cohen ballads and the most depressing songs from the Morissey discography.
Which brings us to the moral of this tale. If you’re going to get loaded on horse tranquilizers and go down to the local bar to harass strangers with your weird narcotic behavior, at least have the decency to put on some good drug music. It shouldn’t be that hard, considering that more than half the rock n roll canon would easily qualify.
Or, since you’re already expanding your horizons, why not try something new? I suggest “£10 Bag” from the North London artist known as Rescuecat. The song sways from church choir interludes to flamenco guitar riffs to bouncy-yet-menacing electro pop. More to the point, RC himself assures me that it’s “about 80s computer games, childhood and heroin.” Perfect for somebody at the bottom of a K hole and the guys sitting next to her at the bar, just trying to have a beer and talk about the best lines from District 9 (winner: “I will eat your arm and gain your powah!”).
Did you catch that, weirdos? If you’re going to get so high that you don’t care what other people think of you, at least understand that you should care what they think about your taste in music.
I don’t get a lot of opportunity to watch TV when it’s actually on TV. With the exception of live sports events, most of the stuff I watch is way after the fact. I have a DVR full of stand-up comedy specials and old Discovery Channel shows that I will probably never watch. If I’m lucky, I’ll catch an episode of Family Guy or The Daily Show online a week or two after it airs. Also, I will admit to being a complete nerd for Battlestar Galactica. I’ve got the second disc from season 4 siting on top of my TV right now, and I am totally going to watch the whole thing in one sitting this weekend.
It should come as no surprise then that I completely missed out on Breaking Bad when it first aired. People we’re all “this show is fucking bananas son!” and “Dude! He killed the drug dealer and then melted the body in his bathtub!” I have to admit, this last part intrigued me, but I still didn’t even bother to look to see if I got the AMC Channel or not until about a month ago. However, I did put the show on my Netflix queue. Then, because of a wait list issue for some other disc, the whole first season showed up in my mailbox at the same time.
OMFG! Have you seen this show? It is fucking bananas son! The dad from Malcom In The Middle kills a rival meth dealer and then his partner melts the body in the bathtub! I can honestly say it is one of the best things on TV, even if I didn’t start watching it until it had already been on for a year. The characters are insane and the writing is great. The basic underlying plot of the show is one of the most creative things I’ve seen on television since forever.
Perhaps best of all, the show’s music supervisors do a great job. I’ve heard them slip in tracks from Darondo, TVOTR, Holy Fuck and The Walkmen. Keeping with this stellar “track record” (zing!), a preview for the second season that I just found online uses a bang-up track by Denver band The Knew. This only goes to show that the music supes hear what I hear when they listen to The Knew: a dusty sounding rock band whose whiskey soaked songs sound like the The Strokes after they’ve been lost in the desert for a few days. Guitars growl and drums clang while singer Jason Hansen howls into the wind. Perfect for a show about a desperate man living in New Mexico and racing death to the bank.
Weird when you think about it: what should be the best stuff on the radio is actually part of the best stuff on TV. And I’m only just hearing about it now. I guess it just means that next time somebody starts talking about melting bodies in a bathtub I should listen - literally.
When I moved from New York City back to San Francisco, I was determined to try and make Bay Area public transportation work as well as the subway does in Manhattan. I had a car, but I left it parked out in front of my apartment. Instead of driving, I walked to the BART station and took the train to work. Both my apartment and the TC offices were really close to BART stations, so it was actually pretty easy.
Yes, I know that BART trains only come every 14 minutes or so and the fares are prohibitively expensive. And the routes and schedules are more geared toward suburban commuters than city kids trying to get from one end of town to the other. And they’re also crowded and unreliable and some times the seats smell like a hobo’s sleeping bag. Still, I wasn’t sitting in traffic every day and I could be self-righteous about helping the environment, which means the pros outweighed the cons.
I also got myself a bike so I would be able to ride to all the places BART doesn’t go (i.e. any neighborhood west of Market Street, most places in Oakland, and anywhere after midnight). Right off the bat my brother said, “So you’re one of those guys who takes his bike on BART now…” like he was describing a leper or a person who’s way too into Burning Man. But I don’t care. I like the bike. It’s faster than walking, so you can actually use it as a viable form of transportation. At the same time, on a bike you also move slow enough to take everything in: sunlight reflecting off the tall buildings, the beautiful girls in the crosswalks downtown, the weird things people watch on their in-dash DVD players - all rolling past you at just under 15 mph. It’s kind of like a surreal music video custom made just for you.
Of course, it’s up to you to provide the soundtrack. If you’re brave enough to put on some headphones and tune out all those drivers who are secretly trying to run you over, then I suggest you listen to Soulo’s third and newest album, Sun Valley. The whole album plays like one long, hazy dreamscape. Sweet melodies and vocal refrains drift in and out of the ether. Listening to it, you can’t help but picture a slow, graceful ride down the sunny side of the street. Whether or not you end up at a warm, gleaming ocean or the edge of a black abyss is a mystery. There’s enough tension buried in the static to keep you guessing.
Come to think of it, this could work on the train as well. When I’m crammed into a crowded commuter car at the end of a long day I often take refuge in my headphones. It’s nice to know that even when I am pressed up against a pile of sad and defeated looking office workers, I can still close my eyes, turn on some music and imagine that I’m somewhere else: on a beach, on the moon or even just on my bike.
Here’s a list of 18 things that are great about summer:
milkshakes
fishing
girls in bikinis
rooftop parties
bar-b-ques
fireworks
strawberries
girls in skirts
cold beer
fireflies
outdoor concerts
the beach
white nectarines
girls in tank tops
tomatoes from the garden
camp fires
short sleeves
the track “Dream City” from the Philly rock band Free Energy
This last one is probably the only item on the list that isn’t already universally recognized as one of the symbols of the summer months. The good people at Music For Robots dug up this track in honor of the warmer weather and the band’s inaugural foray into New York City. Free Energy is fronted by Paul Sprangers, formerly of Hockey Night, and their as-yet-unreleased album is produced by none other than the DFA’s James Murphy. In other words, they have pedigree out the ass.
Everything about their first single evokes a summertime make-out session wrapped in the warm embrace of a beer buzz and a mild sunburn. It’s a teenage love affair circa 1979. It’s skinny-dipping in a backyard suburban pool on a hot August night. It’s a Camaro, a blended margarita and a new tattoo all rolled into one. It’s nearly perfect.
In fact, my only objection is the smooth jazz saxophone that rears its feathered head right at the end of the song. It’s like Kenny G broke into the recording studio and held the band hostage until they agreed to let him make a cameo appearance in the last 30 seconds of the track. What’s up with that?
Maybe this is just Free Energy’s subtle nod to the small flaws of the vacation season; bug bites, traffic, sand in the sheets. Or maybe it’s just their way of acknowledging that great songs, like summer vacation, must eventually come to an end. Autumn passes us gently into winter’s frozen grip, just as Kenny G’s soprano sax riff guides us into what will probably be the fuzzed out guitar work of the album’s next track. Guess we’ll just have to wait until the album comes out to know for sure. Until then, enjoy the weather.
Anyone who has ever watched even a few minutes of stand-up comedy knows that guys are different than girls. If I have learned anything from the shallow insights of the countless cut-rate comics I have seen on TV over the years, it is this: girls like talking about their feelings, romantic dinners by candle light and shopping for shoes. Guys like sex, football, and fart jokes. There are variations on this theme of course, but that basically sums it up.
By extension, we also know that guys and girls like different kinds of movies. Hollywood producers certainly know this, and their market research has shown them that this universal truth can also be a guiding principle for film making. Males in the coveted 18-34 age bracket need to see explosions, kung-fu and boobs in their movies if they are going to throw the full weight of their demographic behind a film on opening weekend. Girls, on the other hand, need something that falls into either the romantic comedy or sappy melodrama categories to get them into theaters.
Needless to say, this presents a problem when guys and girls go to see a movie together - a pretty common occurrence, not to mention a classic American dating ritual. Sure, every once in a while you get a movie that everyone can agree on, but how many times can you go see Slumdog Millionaire? With most movies skewing toward one sex or the other, a compromise inevitably happens at the box office; either a couple sees the movie he wants (Crank 2) or the movie she wants (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants) or a movie that nobody really wants to see (Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail).
Since this is one of the greatest problems plaguing the world today, I decided to put my worn out, over-caffeinated brain to work on a solution. The result is a simple formula that can be applied to all date movies. If enough directors decide to incorporate it into their film making we might just eliminate the need for the romantic comedy genre all together.
The format basically works like a double bill compressed into one conventional length movie. One half of the movie would be for the guys, the other half for the girls. For an example of how this would work, I’ll apply the formula to the movie Felon starring Stephen Dorf and Val Kilmer. In the movie, Stephen Dorf plays a husband and father who is wrongfully sent to prison. He gets strong-armed into covering for the Aryan Brotherhood and ends up in the most hardcore part of the prison, where he shares a cell with a serial killer (Val Kilmer) by night and fights gangbangers in the yard by day.
For those of you keeping score at home, that’s prison + gangs + lots of fighting = guy movie. In order to turn that into one of our new unisex date movies, you would do two things. First, compress all of the fighting, prison gangs and weird Val Kilmer scenes into a trimmed down 45 minute section of the movie. This part is for all the dudes in the audience. Once they get their fill of blood and tattoos, you move onto the second half of the movie which is - you guessed it - for the ladies.
In this half of the movie, we find Stephen Dorf home from prison and working to put his life back in order. He is thrilled to spend time with his son and he finally buys his wife that dress she’s always wanted. He still carries the psychological scars of his time in prison, which initially makes him cold and distant. But eventually, he and his wife work through it, slowly rebuilding their life and their love together. They come through this ordeal exhausted, but happy to find that their relationship is even stronger for the effort. And then maybe Stephen Dorf gets in one last fist fight with a rude neighbor or whatever, just so everybody has something to cheer for right at the end.
In truth, I don’t usually go in for this sort of populism, but every now and then it works. Besides the afore mentioned unisex date movie, ice cream parlors and Jane’s Addiction, a good example of the something-for-everyone approach is Canadian band Beast. The duo has only been together for about a year, but they’ve locked in on a sound that works like a musical survey of the last 20 years. With touches of trip hop, hip hop, punk-funk and guitar rock, Beast plays what singer Betty Bonifassi calls “trip rock.” Bonifassi sing-raps her lyrical indictments of satan and other evil spirits over a booming drumscape that swells with gospel choirs and vicious synthesizers.
The end result may not represent a finely honed singular vision, but you can play it any party, club or biker BBQ and not piss anyone off. It stands to reason that both guys and girls will like the band as well. Pending any new advances in the date movie industry, you might just be better off taking your date to a Beast concert instead.
When I was studying Greek and Roman history in college I was frequently bothered by a nagging sensation that I had missed out on human civilization’s most outrageous party era. What could be better than the wine-soaked bacchanalia of ancient Rome or the ritual ecstasy of a Dionysian prayer meeting? Back then, people spent all their free time in a giant naked pile of sex, retsina, and roasted meat. The vomitoriums were always packed and you couldn’t walk 20 feet without stumbling onto an orgy. At least that’s how I understand it.
Then again, rumor has it that the Roaring ’20s were also pretty good, party-wise. America as fat with post-war optimism and a healthy economy. Jazz was booming out of every nightclub and people couldn’t stop doing the Charleston. Add to that short flapper skirts and a ready supply of opium, and you’ve got a decade-long party that begins to rival anything the ancient Greeks might have put together. However, even though it happened in the 20th century, I still missed that party by a good 80 years. The Roaring ’20s might as well have been the Roaring ’20s B.C. as far as I’m concerned.
This knowledge kept me depressed for a little while until I started listening to music and watching movies from the late ’70s and early ’80s. Holy shit! If the movies 54 and Boogie Nights are any indication, those halcyon days were filled with strong drugs and tight pants. The whole thing was set to a funky beat and all it took was some chest hair and a casual understanding of astrology to get even the homeliest guys laid. Sadly, I was born at the end of the ’70s, which makes me a product of the wanton disco era and therefore way too young to have enjoyed any of its perks.
Sigh. Yet another era of decadent, unbridled partying that cruel fate has willed me to miss.
My thinking about my own youthful epoch has gone on like this until recently when I came to a sudden realization. It’s not as though I”m living in an historically conservative or boring time. It would be one thing if I was trying to get buck wild in the Victorian Era or declare my unbridled individualism in the middle of the 1950s. But really, there’s nothing stopping me from busting loose right now - or jumping on MySpace to find 20 or 30 loose women to do it with me. We are in the middle of Spring Break after all; I could leave for Daytona Beach tomorrow morning and be doing body shots with a group of co-eds before sundown.
The fact of the matter is that’s just not my bag. The thought of partying all day on a Florida beach with a bunch of topless frat boys sounds awful. Add in the bad seafood and the inevitable Limp Bizkit CD stuck on repeat and you’re actually pretty close to describing my own personal hell. Don’t get me wrong - I’m all for nudity, loud music and wanton inebriation, but I have to do it on my terms. I would much rather drink my way through a rooftop party or bonfire on a warm beach somewhere. I would be happy to have people taking off their clothes and canoodling in the dark corners, just as long as I get to pick the music.
Assuming that’s the case, one of the things I would probably put on to set the mood is Brooklyn’s Sean Bones. Sean Bones is actually Sean Sullivan, the guitar player for Sam Champion, another fave here at TC//Wire. Under the Sean Bones moniker, Sullivan has created a laid back EP of Specials-esque ska funk. The tunes vibrate with a tropical lo-fi rhythm that works perfectly as the soundtrack to the first beer at the end of a summer day. Chances are you’ll find yourself drunk on the sound before you get drunk from the booze.
A drunken bacchanal it is not, but still a damn fine way to spend an afternoon. Perhaps future generations will look back on these casual springtime romps and envy our leisurely enjoyment of drink and sound. Who knows? Only history can judge us now.
My brother and I are always calling each other with random questions or observations. The random nature of these questions and observations of course dictates that the need to share them comes at random times. Thankfully, we live in the 21st century, which means that we all have portable communicator devices (read: cell phones) on our person at all times - which is how I found myself standing outside a bar at one in the morning discussing outdated colloquial expressions.
My brother thought it was funny that we still use the expression “hold your horses.” Neither of us has ever even touched a horse, much less rode one or, uh, held one. I imagine that this is the case for most people. The majority of us are city dwellers. Outside of childhood trips to the petting zoo, we don’t come into regular contact with horses. We drive cars or take public transportation to get around and we ride bikes and skateboards for fun. But we don’t say, “stop the bus” or “hold the Volvo” when we want someone to settle down. We say “hold your horses” and everyone knows what that means, despite the fact that very few of us have any first hand experience with horses or the effort it takes to hold them.
Another expression that falls into this category is “jump on the bandwagon.” Without Google I wouldn’t even know what a bandwagon is, but I certainly understand that “jumping on the band wagon” means doing something because a lot of other people are doing it. Often times this expression is leveled at someone as an accusation, the implication being that they are incapable of independent thought. Sometimes though, things become popular all of a sudden and it’s hard to say whether you’re jumping on the bandwagon per se, or you just happened to be on another wagon heading in the same direction.
Which is where we find ourselves with singer Benjy Ferree. He’s got a new album out on Domino Records, and that album has been accompanied by the standard new album promotional effort. This means that anybody with an ear to the ground is going to catch on at around the same time. Sure, he made a smaller splash with his first record, which a lot of us missed, but his sophomore effort is a smash.
Come Back To The Five And Dime Bobby Dee Bobby Dee sounds like an R&B album from the 60s recorded by AOR musicians from the 70s and driven to the record plant in a brand new Prius. The drums crackle with reverb and the piano player sounds like he just came from church. A string section fills out the low end while a guitar grinds through the mids and highs. Above it all is Ferree, singing his ass off about death, fear and a host of other existential concerns. You might say the sound is timeless, which is not just an expression in this case. It’s a compliment and it means that nobody will struggle to figure out why it still sounds good 50 years from now.
How dumb is Chris Brown? He fucked up sooooo bad. It’s like he not only killed the golden goose, but he also roasted it over a pile of burning baby seals and then ate it with his bare hands in front of the entire California chapter of PETA.
Seriously, until very recently his life could not have been any better. If you had stopped any random dude on the street two weeks ago and granted him a wish, he would have basically asked to be Chris Brown. “Well, it would be great to be young again. But wait, I would really like to have a fancy sports car. Although, I’d also like to have a hot R&B singer for a girlfriend. Maybe I could just be a celebrity myself…?”
Chris Brown has (had) all those things. He is 19 years old. He was dating Rihanna and he was on his way to perform at the Grammys in a brand new Lamborghini. What?! That’s like god decided to make sweet love to your life. You literally and tangibly had it better than 99.9% of the other humans on this planet. Why not just sit back and let amazing things happen to you?
Instead, Chris Brown decided to beat up a girl. There is no possible way he can justify that. I mean, what could he possibly say? She insulted him? She insulted his mother? She insulted him and his mother and his grandmother? So what? You’re Chris Brown. You’re in a $250,000 sports car with one of the most beautiful girls in the world. It should be pretty easy to keep insults like that in perspective. If I was in Chris Brown’s position I don’t think I would ever get mad. Rihanna could pee in my shoes and I’d be like, “That’s cool. I’m just gonna drive my Lamborghini over to Beverly Hills and buy a thousand new pairs of shoes. And then I’m going to have sex with, like, ten groupies at once. And then me and Justin Timberlake are gonna go catch a Laker’s game. Peace out.”
I guess it’s just a classic case of too much is never enough. This malady seems to strike a disproportionate number of celebrities - most likely because they are among the select group of people who almost always have too much. For you or me, just having the fancy car or the fancy girl or the fancy friends would probably be enough to make us feel pretty good. I’m sure plenty of people get a vicarious thrill just from imagining that they have those things. But for people like Chris Brown it probably takes more than a fast car and a hot girl to get his pulse pounding.
Unfortunately this seems to be a sad, but true fact of the human condition. The more we have, the more we want. This makes the pursuit of happiness an essentially futile task, since it will always be just out of reach. Which is a depressing thought, since I’m told that the pursuit of happiness is basically the whole point of life. Still, that’s no reason to go beating up your girlfriend. Why don’t you channel some of that anger into your art? You know, write a song about it or something.
That’s what New Villager did. The duo, which is equal parts California and New York, has composed a pensive little dance nugget called “Rich Doors.” This should have been the song they played during the meta-futuristic rave scene in The Matrix 2. The drums have a tribal pulse and the sparse lyrics have the quality of a poem spoken in the back of a long, dark cave. They seem to tell the story of someone who has it all and yet still searches for more, if only because there isn’t anything else for them to do.
If nothing else, it’s a beautiful song that is definitely celebrating something bittersweet. It could be celebrity excess or the meaningless pursuit of happiness in this lifetime. Their website leads me to believe it might also have something to do with The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, but I don’t really know what that is. So instead I will just assume it is a searing indictment of Chris Brown and domestic abuse. Listen to your fellow artists Chris. Stop the violence.
Have you heard about this Obama guy? He was recently sworn in as the 44th president of the United States of America. It happened on Tuesday, and according to a news stand I passed on the way to work on Wednesday it was an historic event. Lots of people are excited, most of them because of the color of his skin. After hundreds of years of codified, subtle and not-so-subtle discrimination this country has finally embraced racial equality in the highest office of the land. Can I get an Amen?!
That said, I think that if we’re all really being honest with ourselves then we have to admit that Obama’s presidency represents more than just overcoming the racial barrier. If there’s any truth to the propaganda I’ve seen all over the city, Obama’s followers also believe in the abstract concepts of hope, progress and change. Which is just another way of saying, “If you put on more one more lying, cheating, morally corrupt politician in charge of this country we are going to start a fucking revolution.” As a hater of politicians and a supporter of revolutions in general, I have to say I agree with this sentiment.
But I’m also picking up on something else, something that is just under the surface that has not gone unnoticed by a lot of people. The honesty conveyed by our new commander-in-chief seems genuine. It’s not the fake-ass, I’m just a regular kind of guy “honesty” (with air quotes) perpetrated by inbred aristocrats who cut their teeth in Ivy League secret society. It’s more like the Chris Rock Head of State kind of honesty, where he simply declaims what people already know - or suspect - to be true. I’m not saying he’s gonna tell us who shot Kennedy or anything, but at least he admits to trying drugs when he was young. For a politician, this is a huge step.
I would like to see a little more of this from those among us who have a high profile public persona. With the exceptions of rock stars - who are supposed to live like travelling hedonists - nobody can seem to admit they are human, that they have human weaknesses and desires. Young people fuck up. They smoke pot and crash their parents’ cars. Old people fuck up too. They get drunk and lie to their wives and sleep with young people. It doesn’t mean that they are unfit to do their jobs. It just means that they’re not good at hiding the parts of their lives that most people can be discreet about because they don’t live under a spotlight. Again, if we’re being honest with ourselves, we wouldn’t be so quick to string up politicians for having sex or doing drugs. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone and all that.
At best this is an abstract philosophical concept, one better left to bar stool poets and homemade rock albums. I can’t say for sure, but I think The Marches may have heard this call. Their new album 4 a.m. Is The New Midnight wraps the slippery underbelly of humanity in a warm embrace. The lyrics are hidden by an intentionally Beck-esque veil of nonsense, but the theme is unmistakable: decent people sometimes like to do dirty things.
This is an electro-indie soul nugget made for creatures of the night. The band swings back and forth from classical syncopation to Motown soul braced with lusty synthesizers. The lyric sheets are rife with unspoken sexual desires and odes to celebrity crack habits. It’s kind of like The Marches are singing to you about something you won’t even admit to yourself.
Remember though, this is a new era, one in which hope and honesty are supposed to have the upper hand. Well ok. Since we’re being honest, I’ll admit it. This album is weird and perverted in places, and that’s what I like about it. Barack Obama to all, and to all a good night.
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