APOKALIPSIS

Look, I know hardly anything about American hip-hop, and this post includes literally EVERY SINGLE THING I know about Australian hip-hop, so I am clearly far, far from an authority on the subject, but chances are if you live in the United States, you know even less than I do. So I am going to exploit what little knowledge I do have.

As they say in the hip hop world, I am about to DROP SCIENCE.
Or something?!

Basically, I didn’t even know Aussie hip hop existed until I heard this song on the radio late last year:

The track is Nosebleed Section by Hilltop Hoods, a group from Adelaide who have probably become the biggest name in Australian hip hop. This was a watershed song back in 2004 the first breakout hip hop hit to originate in Australia. I have to admit that the part that sticks with me the most is the Melanie Safka sample, sounding like an old, scratchy record in the very best way, but it’s a fun song.

I think the title is clever, too. “Nosebleed section” usually refers to the budget seats in a stadium, far up and away from the action, where the joke is that the altitude is thin enough to cause nosebleeds. Hilltop Hoods might be able sell out huge stadiums these days, but they certainly weren’t able to when they recorded this song, when the audience for Aussie hip hop was mostly underground. So in this case, “nosebleed section” means way up at the front, where those dedicated fans were likely to be bloodied and bruised in a moshpit. This song is dedicated to them … and to drinking, partying, hot babes and hard work.

Drinking, partying, hot babes and hard work seem to be, unquestioningly, the most common themes in Aussie hip hop. Though it should be noted that Aussie rappers are less likely to rely on these themes than their compatriots in the pioneering Australian rock band AC/DC, it should also be noted that, well, that’s not saying much. It is only the most temperate Oz Hop albums which are restrained enough to include only one jubilant anthem to the act of getting blitheringly drunk. Such albums are, indeed, hypothetical and may in fact be too temperate to actually exist.

Drapht, who provided the song which inspired yesterday’s post, has two exceptional examples of the alco-hip hop genre, the maudlin (I almost wrote “sober” … ha!) Drink, Drank, Drunk and the bouncy Boom Boom Boom), but I’d rather talk about his song Jimmy Recard, which is mostly, but not ENTIRELY about drinking. Plus it actually has a video clip:

Jimmy Recard uses the common rap motif of an unstoppable alter ego, though from the beginning Drapht spins it as a conceit, a “what-if” scenario based on the idea that being given a different name could give anyone a different life, one that could possibly be infinitely cooler. Unlike the typical boast song, where the listener is invited to idolize the narrator, here the narrator himself is just fantasizing about being someone worth idolizing. What I find funny is that his aspirations apparently aren’t really that high — his hypothetical Jimmy Recard is referred to most frequently as “the king of the bar.” He may be “practically the man of the millennium,” but in Jimmy’s world “king of the castle” is no different than “king of the barstool.”

Jimmy Recard would, in fact, be a terrible name to grow up with, so dangerously close to Jimmy RETARD that it would like low-hanging fruit for school kids looking for someone to pick on. So I think that even the hypothetical hero of this song must delusional. Scarred from age seven onward, he now spends his days drowning in each pint he downs, imagining a crown on his head and a multitude of lacy brassieres at his feet. Hoorah, hoorah!

Finally, one last Aussie hip hop track, just because it has an amusing video clip. I found this one while trying to track down Where Yah From? earlier this week. The song is called Where You At? by the Astronomy Class, and it uses basically the same lyrics as the chorus Where Yah From?, though the rhythm is different. I can’t decide which song is catchier. Any opinions?

Actually, the is only Aussie hip hop song I’ve heard so far that features more than just thin, pasty white dudes on the mic. It’s nice to see a bit of diversity. One of the chicks in the video calls herself Africa-Australian, and my first thought was “Oh, interesting!” but then I remembered that I have a good friend who is Africa-Australian, and he is a thin, pasty white dude. So there you go.

And that is everything I know about Australian hip hop. All or none of it may be true.

xoxo

I heard this tune on the radio the other day, a bouncy hip hop song with an infectious horn loop that sounded like it had been sourced from either a carnival or a speakeasy. The only lyrics I caught were the hook “Where you at?”, which made it difficult to dig up online. Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of songs which ask that vital, if grammatically dodgy, question:
WHERE YOU AT?

So where was the song at?
As I suspected, it was an Aussie hip hop tune. Australia seems to have a surprisingly vital hip hop scene, even though I know next to nothing about it. The song is called “Where Yah From” by a rapper named Drapht. There doesn’t seem to be a music video, but here’s the song on youtube:

At first brush I had assumed that “where you at?” was meant in a “what’s up?” sense, but it turns out that it’s meant in a strictly literal, physical sense:
WHERE ARE YOU AT, AT THIS MOMENT?

Or as the lyrics posit, “Where do you represent on the map?”
It reminds me of a few of the hostels I’ve stayed at, where there’s big world map on the wall and guests are invited to tag their corner of the world with a pushpin. Everyone is from somewhere, and it’s usually one of the first questions you ask someone when you first meet them, especially out on the road:
WHERE ARE YOU FROM?

Except I don’t always find it such an easy question, because the answer gets confusing. I say I’m from Oregon, but I wasn’t born there, and I lived in California since 2001 except for the times I was living in Spain or South Dakota, and now I live in Adelaide, South Australia, but don’t know whether to tell people I’ve been living here for more than a year or just for a few months, because it depends on when you start counting from.

Cumulatively, I’ve spent more time in Oregon than anywhere else, fourteen years, just over half of my lifetime. I wonder if I’ll ever stay in one place that long again, and at what point a new home could replace where I now say I’m from. In ten years, what will I say when people ask:
WHERE’S YOUR HOME AT?

I’ve moved away from Oregon at every chance I got, though certainly not because of any lack of affection for the place. In my mind I’ll always be Oregonian, and the longer I spend away from my home state, I imagine the stronger I will feel that. As a crotchety old man, my Northwest American accent (sometimes mistaken Down Under as Canadian) will be thicker than it ever was in my youth as I spin tall tales about beavers, lumberjacks and the time my parents escaped being vaporized by Mount St. Helens. I will forever rejoice at wearing wear hiking boots and gortex, I will accumulate a Powell’s-like collection of graphic novels, I will drink only the finest and quirkiest of beers, as dark as they come, and I will keep an eternal vigil for great Northwest bands like Sleater-Kinney, Elliott Smith, et. al. I will recycle everything! I will compost! I will become Oregonian to the point of making everyone I meet unbelievably annoyed.

In all seriousness, though, when I think of someday saying that I’m from somewhere other than Oregon, it makes me a bit sick to my stomach. I like South Australia a lot, but I’ll never be “from” here. In the same way, my fiancee Kim will never be from anywhere BUT here, nor would I want her to be. Like a lot of couples, we will always be sort of caught in-between our two points of origin, as our relationship won’t ever be either fully Australian or fully American. That’s kind of cool, but it does make things complicated.

Here’s just one more question asked by the song:
WHERE DO YOU BELONG?

Only an Australian could rhyme that with Melbourne, but it’s a question that has nothing to do with physical location. I belong with Kim, wherever she is, and I suppose that together, we belong here in Adelaide with her family and friends, but not any more than we belong in Oregon with my family and friends, or in California with my university mates. We belong with the people who love us, from coast to coast, beyond oceans and over mountains.

I guess that we belong wherever you will have us.
And that isn’t complicated at all.

xoxo

“Sugar Kane” is a Sonic Youth song named for Marylin Monroe’s character in Some Like it Hot, which is a terrific film. It’s one of those rare songs that I remember hearing for the first time on the radio, long after it was out of regular rotation, and being transported somewhere new and different. It’s not a perfect song — the lyrics are nonsense — but it’s a knockout.
Someone on YouTube made a video for “Sugar Kane” set to clips from Some Like it Hot, which is here:

The driving force of the video are clips of Monroe, slowed down to match the hypnotic drone of the music. In almost every shot, she’s in the center of the frame. Whether she’s running from the camera or mugging for it, she always seems to know its there. The song is dark and desperate, but also glittery and bright. I wonder if that’s what it felt like to be Marylin Monroe.

Back in 2001 the Australasian Performing Right Association published a list of the ten best Australian songs. It’s an interesting list, full of excellent songs, and I thought taking a look at each of the songs might be useful in trying to get a handle on Australian pop culture and national identity. Plus, some of the music videos are a riot.

Topping the list is a song by The Beatles of Australia, The Easybeats. The band formed in the late ’64 wake of Beatlemania, sporting moptop haircuts and a British invasion sound. Though their singles routinely topped the charts in Australia, 1967′s “Friday on My Mind” was their only song to crack the US Top 40, reaching #16. The song effectively fuses verses of minor-key working-class drudgery built on vaguely Middle Eastern rhythms with an up-tempo chorus that bounces along on early ’60s skiffle riffs. It sounds more like The Animals than The Beatles, but it have been out of place on an album like Help! or Rubber Soul.

The song was written by Harry Vanda and George Young, with had each immigrated to Sydney with their families in 1963, from Scotland and the Netherlands, respectively. It’s been argued that this doesn’t make The Easybeats a “true” Aussie band, but it’s equally arguable that nowhere but Australia could young men from such diverse backgrounds could have formed a successful rock band at that time. In any case, as we’ll see with some of the other songs, the expatriate experience is a recurring theme in Australian rock and roll, even though it doesn’t really inform “Friday on My Mind.”

Instead, the song centers around other classic Aussie themes: backbreaking hard work and enjoying leisure for all it’s worth. Lyrically it’s not far from “A Hard Day’s Night,” but with a crucial slant. The perspective in that landmark Beatles track is on the very edge of relief: the hard day is over and the loving is just about to begin. Vanda and Young’s song takes a wider perspective, with Monday cycling to Friday and the back to Monday, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, repeat. In “Friday on My Mind,” relief from the workweek is only temporary, before it’s back to the grind once again.

In spite of the song’s many merits, I can’t help but wonder if its place at the top of the list isn’t largely due to its historic and symbolic value. It’s may be oversimplifying to simply equate The Easybeats to The Beatles, but they do provide a decent starting point for the narrative of rock music in Australia, and they did produce one of the country’s first international hit records. Furthermore, Vanda and Young continued to influence Australian rock and roll for decades after the ‘Beats broke up, racking up more international hits in the ’80s as the newwave studio project Flash and the Pan, and producing AC/DC’s first five albums. “Friday on My Mind” was when Australian rock and roll announced that it was here to stay.

Next up: “Eagle Rock” by Melbourne ’50s throwback Daddy Cool…

I intended to write something completely different, but ended up writing this. I thought I might as well post it anyway.
The thing about loving a record is that after you’ve listened to them so many times, it becomes difficult to hear the songs in the fresh way you once did. After you’ve memorized the lyrics and internalized the rhythms, listening to a record can become more like running a program that your body is conditioned to respond to. The same neurons fire, the same memories and emotions cycle through. You sing the same lines, your toes tap to the same beat. Eventually, if you tread that particular path often enough, the record wears a sort of psychic rut into your brain.
Maybe you’re not numbed to it, not exactly, but your body becomes conditioned to it. It becomes a bit like breathing, and it comes naturally like that. Unless you really stop to be aware of your breathing, it happens without notice.
When you listen to a record that you’ve loved into a routine, you can sometimes forget that it’s playing. Even if it first made you bop and dance and scream, a song can fade into the background to the point that you don’t really hear it any more. It becomes like the soundtrack to the movie of your life, but you, as the protagonist become oblivious to it, even as it shapes the action around you.
That’s what leads some people to seek out bootleg concerts, re-mixes, historical documents, recording records, anything to add a new perspective to the songs on the record, anything to make them fresh again. Anything to bring new life to something already set in stone, to make that piece of vinyl do more than just sit and spin.
But maybe sometimes all you have to do is close your eyes and just let the record play one more time. Maybe it’s like breathing, and all you have to do is slow down, stop everything else and feel the air and the music flowing into you. Maybe that’s all it will take to change your world again.

Kim and I went to go see The Smashing Pumpkins last night! The Pumpkins are on their first Australian tour in over a decade, and we I saw them at the Adelaide Entertainment Center. While Kim was standing in line for our tickets, I got randomly interviewed by an American chick for a potential documentary about the tour, and I admitted to the camera that during the Smashing Pumpkins heyday I had no idea who they were — I got into the Pumpkins through Zwan.
Although it featured frontman Billy Corgan and drummer Jimmy Chamberlain, the only original Pumpkins in the current, revived incarnation of the band, along with some other indie superstars, Zwan doesn’t get a lot of credit from anyone else, but they were my first favorite band. I was extremely frustrated when they broke up before I had a chance to see them live, so there was no way I was going to pass up a chance to see the Smashing Pumpkins.
The main difference between Zwan and The Smashing Pumpkins is probably that while The Pumpkins has always been Billy Corgan’s band from top to bottom, in Zwan he shared writing credits with some of the band members. It’s too bad that Zwan had an ugly breakup and none of the band members want to speak to each other any more. (Sorry for the digression — I’m afraid that if I don’t eulogize Zwan, no one will. They really were a great band!)
Though they were lacking Zwan’s catalogue of more than 70 tunes (only about 15 were released), Billy & co. had fifteen years worth of Pumpkins tunes to draw from, including four albums of songs they had never played live in Australia. The turnout for the concert was huge. The floor was completely sold out, and the arena seats (where we were sitting) were nearly packed as well. I was probably the only person to silently whisper “play Zwan!” in between a couple of songs.
Sadly, the opening act, Queens of the Stone Age, had plenty of energy, but little creative spark that I picked up on. Some people behind us really loved their set, and they weren’t terrible, but to me they just sounded like a generic, if well-tuned, rock band, and I honestly thought they were a warm-up act for the first half of their set. They seemed like a totally different band from the hard-edged act I saw at Coachella in ’03, which I later learned is basically true — nearly all the band members have turned over since then.
You could say that the Pumpkins, with just two original members, are basically in the same boat and that they’re not the same band any more, either. Up until last night, I probably would have agreed with that.
But it only took a few shimmering chords of the first song, Porcelina, which is a traditional opener for the Pumpkins, before I was convinced that this was the real thing. The Smashing Pumpkins tore the top off of their hard-rock numbers, grooved to a couple of mid-tempo songs, and poured their hearts out into the ballads.

They played most of their hits, and it was easy to gauge how popular a song was by how many cell phones lit up from the floor. The most popular: 1979, probably followed by Bullet With Butterfly Wings. You’d be hard-pressed to find two hit songs more different from each other. Corgan performed the former on acoustic guitar alone on stage as the audience gently swayed with their lighters they smuggled in; the latter song saw the whole band bust into full head-thrashing, electric riff-rocking mode, with Corgan shrieking and spitting at the mic while people in the audience tried to not get hit in the face by a crowd surfer.
For the first hour or so, the Pumpkins played a constantly shifting variety of songs and styles, from a rock version of the synth-driven single Ava Adore, to the ’20s-era standard My Blue Heaven, which Corgan sang so faithfully and straight-faced that it narrowly avoided being campy. It was hard to not be impressed with the Smashing Pumpkins range, not to mention their talent.
At one point, Billy Corgan took a few moments to talk to the crowd, who cheered when he announced that they were going to play an old song. “Are you saying my old songs are better?” Corgan chided, “Well #$%^ you. My new songs are just as good as my old songs! It’s not my fault you don’t care about music any more. It’s not my fault all you do is play Guitar Hero! (Although, we’re in Guitar Hero, so that’s cool, I guess.)” He went on a long rant, which wavered between acerbic and good-natured, about how he’s been putting out quality music since day one, and even though it doesn’t sell as well now (obviously a sore spot), it’s still kick-ass.

If the concert did anything, it proved that he was right. The Pumpkins haven’t played Adelaide since they were the biggest alternative rock band in the world over ten years ago, and without great new songs, they would be in danger of becoming a nostalgia act. But there was no real dip in quality as the band tore through songs from 1991 to 2008. It turns out that even Machina II, the album their record label boycotted and the Pumpkins had to bootleg for free to fans on the internet, can hold its own against mega-hit Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness.
It was hard to deny that Billy Corgan has written some terrific songs over the past 15 years, and as long as the Smashing Pumpkins were playing songs, the concert was great. Unfortunately, the last 40 minutes of the show was taken up entirely by three jam numbers, which started out great, but got numbing after awhile.
The first jam song, Cash Car Star (from Machina II), included a medley of other pop songs, including Brittany Spear’s recent hit Piece of Me, and Buffalo Springfield’s seminal For What It’s Worth. It was cheeky and entertaining!
The second song was built around a long, simmering riff and space-age lyrics. It genuinely excited me more than any other new song I’d heard that night, but it turns out that it wasn’t a new song at all — after doing a lot of searching on the Internet when we got home from the concert, I realized it was a cover of Pink Floyd’s Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun. I’m not sure if the Smashing Pumpkins have played that tune before, but it was an excellent jam.
People were starting to leave at this point, though. Two long jams are quite a bit to take. What we got to finish up the concert was a 20-minute version of United States, a tune from the Pumpkins’ new album Zeitgeist. The song itself was decent. The jam, which was basically just massive walls of feedback, sounded more like Corgan testing the audience’s endurance and sense of loyalty more than it sounded like anything with a tune. I was bored. Kim fell asleep.
We stuck around for the encore, which involved Corgan coming out to sing a single acoustic number, but it was worth it to not leave on an endless note of noise. Their new single, Superchrist, is another remarkably jammy and meandering song, which hopefully does not indicate the future direction of the band. I hope that Billy Corgan sticks to what he’s proved he can consistently do over nearly two decades: writing awesome songs.

Related links:
* Adelaide’s local paper reviews the show.
* Bill Corgan talking about fans, Willie Nelson and drugs at the show. Perfectly captures the odd, half-irony of his stage banter.
* Now you, too can watch the Pumpkins jam out. A video of United States from deep in the crowd, about ten zillion times closer to the stage than we were sitting.
* Aussie Pumpkins fans discuss the show.

oh, and yes: Billy Corgan wore a skirt. Yay!

This is from a very obviously American cartoon show about The Beatles in which the Fab Four solve problems by playing their hit songs. It’s equal parts creepy and charming, which has a very weird effect.

My favorite part is at the beginning when the kid sees them and says “Look! It’s the Beatles! All my problems are solved! You guys can help me drive my car!”

Not, “You guys are a pop culture phenomenon!” or “Wow, I love your music!” but “Here are four dudes with nothing to do who can participate in my wildly ill-conceived plan!” His idea seems to be that if all four Beatles switch off driving for him, they won’t have to make pit stops. Which, I mean … that’s brain-numbingly stupid. Has this guy EVER been in a race in his life?

But you have to admire the guy — even though it’s a terrible plan, he is going to do it FULL OUT, with STYLE. He doesn’t just round up some friends, or go down to the Home Depot parking lot to hire a couple of day laborers — he gets THE BEATLES.

That’s how we do it in America – you go big, or you go home.

And it’s a good thing, too, because The Beatles are able to use their musical abilities to draw hundreds of Beatlemania-frenzied girls on to the race track, where the teenagers are promptly plowed down by the unswerving race cars, creating an enormous pile-up of flesh, steel and human tragedy, allowing out heroes to win the race. Hooray!

Which proves once again that nobody does it like The Beatles. All you need is love, right lads?

I have a lot of things to do. I am picking up and moving in a few weeks. I am on the verge of leaving my current lifestyle behind and becoming a globe-hopping nomad with nothing to my name besides a few plane tickets and a backpack. I probably need to sit down and think long and hard about going to go inside of this backpack.
Instead of doing anything practical about my impending departure, I have spent a good part of the day organizing my music library so that I can listen to all the hits of 1960-65. This seemed like a good way to broaden my sonic horizons and get a better understanding of the state of pop music 45 years ago.
Strangely, while I was very excited to listen to the Billboard Top 100 songs from the ’60s, you would probably have to pay me to sit through any of the same charts from the past ten, or possibly 20 years. From where I sit, the state of pop music in 2007 is rather dire.
And now that I have just finished a 4 1/2 hour stint of listening to the Billboard Top 100 from the bygone year of 1960, I am ready to tentatively proclaim that the state of pop music 47 years ago was JUST AS DIRE. There were some good tracks by the likes of Elvis, Sam Cooke and Roy Orbison, but for every “Stuck on You” there would be an awful novelty song about fightin’ injuns, itsy-bittys bikinis or turning nursery rhymes into love songs. Add to that dozens of schmaltzy ballads, upbeat but uninspiring pop tunes, and general pandering to the masses, and you truly have a scene ripe for overseas invasion.
These Top 100 lists are interesting for both the story they tell, and what they omit — you could listen to all these charts for each year to the present and only get two Bob Dylan songs, for example. But if you just listen to the Dylan albums (which is what I had previously been doing), you also won’t get an accurate portrait of the era.
This is perhaps a fruitless pursuit, but I am kind of obsessed with trying to understand the trajectory of pop and rock music in America from the ’30s to the present. I guess it springs from the same place as my urge to travel across the country, and across the world.
The sheer amount of music to listen to, and countries to visit is simply staggering.

I have recently come into possession (i.e. I am borrowing) an external hard drive of the Billboard Top 100 songs from roughly the past fifty years. This is amazing. It is like an instant time-warp device.
Unfortunately, being obsessive-compulsive about my music collection means that I will not be content until I have matched each track up with its album artwork and renamed it to properly jive with iTunes. This wouldn’t be less daunting if we weren’t talking about 5,000 SONGS. That’s nearly two weeks worth of music. Perhaps I should hire a research assistant. Perhaps I should get a new hobby.

p.s. HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

The intersection between religion and rock music has always been an interesting one for me. The traditional world-views of rock and religion are supposedly in conflict, but they share the ability to inspire intense fervor and devotion. A few years ago Rolling Stone printed a pretty epic interview with U2 frontman Bono, which covers a lot of ground, including why he does not see God as being incompatible with rock music. “Look at the people who have formed my imagination,” he said “You buy Patti Smith: Horses — ‘Jesus died for somebody’s sins/But not mine . . .’ And she turns Van Morrison’s “Gloria” into liturgy.”

Eventually, just based on that quote, I bought myself a copy of Horses. It’s not great “casual listening” music, but a lot of it is pretty powerful, and “Gloria” is tremendous. This live version (from Saturday Night Live, circa 1975) is actually better than the album cut, in my opinion.

It walks such a tight line between faith and denial. In that famous opening line, Smith both acknowledges Christ and distances herself from him. The song then goes on to tell what looks like a hedonistic tale of sexual attraction and fulfillment … until the chorus kicks in, and all of a sudden the rapture sounds more than sexual, because the name is GLORIA, and Smith has subtitled this song “In Excelsis Deo,” and it seems all at once that this is not a song about boy-meets-girl, but God-meets-man, God coming down to Earth, about faith born again, about the glory of everlasting love and unrelenting grace…

But as the song ends she returns to her original declaration:
“Jesus died for somebody’s sins …”
and with a final, defiant wink, “.. but not mine.”

This is just one interpretation of a very slippery song that I could easily write a whole thesis on, but as I wrestle with my own faith and doubt, that’s the way I hear it.

Here’s another quote from the Bono interview:
“The music that really turns me on is either running toward God or away from God. Both recognize the pivot, that God is at the center of the jaunt. So the blues, on one hand — running away; gospel, the Mighty Clouds of Joy — running towards. …. Both deal with the relationship with God. That’s really it.”