Album Cover Deathmatch!
From what I hear, this video has taken off pretty quickly, and well it should -- it's hilarious. Watch classic album covers battle to the death!
Mildly unsafe for work.
Showing posts with label National Music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label National Music. Show all posts
Tupac: Robbing Men of Their Boners and Women of Their Conjugal Bliss, Even From the Grave
Now I've seen it all.
The Associated Press (killing local reporting since 1846) offers up this report about a lawsuit between civil rights activist C. DeLores Tucker and two Philly newspapers. At issue? "Her dispute with the estate of slain rapper Tupac Shakur," according to the article.
What did that naughty Tupac do? He rhymed "Tucker" with "motherfucker." Oh SHIT!
But wait -- the shit has only begun to fly. According to the AP article,
"Tucker had sued Shakur, alleging, among other things, that her husband, William Tucker, had suffered loss of 'consortium' because of the emotional distress brought on by Shakur."
Oh yes. Consortium. If you think that sounds like some kind of awful Freudian metaphor for something, award yourself one point. Baby, Dictionary.com gives us this legal definition:
"The legal right of husband and wife to companionship and conjugal intercourse with each other."
So let me get this straight: a so-called activist is suing a newspaper for mischaracterizing a Tupac lyric which was so scathing that it prevented her husband from getting a hard-on?
I've got one word for ya:
By the way, have any of you seen the movie Tupac: Resurrection? (Thanks, Olympia, for sending it my way.) It's interesting in the way Born Into Brothels is interesting, which is to say that if you peel back the cutesy, crowd-pleasing surface, there are some very ugly monsters lurking underneath. The selling point is that it's told in "Tupac's own words," and indeed it's compiled from a number of interviews and monologues. But a careful listener will hear that many times, Tupac's speech is spliced together from several different interviews, often in mid-sentence! His speech, his life -- they're so heavily edited to put a positive spin on a man who was one of the most internally embattled characters of his day. By the end of the film, Pac is basically being cast as a black Jesus figure, a patron of the arts, and a sensitive gentleman who only occasionally ran into trouble with the press and the law. It's no coincidence that the film was made by Tupac's mom, Afeni Shakur. You can just see her pulling the strings the whole time.
Guess she had to get him back for "Dear Mama" some way or another.
Will Haven Signed
Bieler Bros Records, home to UK math-metallers Sikth, have recently signed one of the bands that got me into hardcore: Will Haven.
When I first discovered them in the late '90s, Will Haven's thick-chained guitars and relentless 3/4 time signature were quite possibly the heaviest thing I had ever heard. It was simplistic, reductive, and palpable. I grew up listening to alternative; in 1996 a high school friend turned me on to the Deftones, and from there it was only a short jump to heavier sounds. Snapcase came first -- they had just released Progression Through Unlearning, which I think to this day is their best album ever. But shortly thereafter, I found Will Haven's "Ego's Game" on a comp CD, and was thrilled to hear another band using the same kind of guitar style and rhythm. After investigating both bands' back catalogs, I have to say unequivocally that Will Haven's is the better of the two: it's more consistent, and while that certainly leads to a degree of predictability (Will Haven outside of the 3/4 time signature is almost impossible), it's definitely preferable to Snapcase's many failed experiements.
The official announcement:
"Bieler Bros Records is proud to announce the signing and return of metal-core pioneers WILL HAVEN. Will Haven will release their as of yet untitled Bieler Bros. debut in early 2007. The release will be the bands first since 2001's critically-acclaimed Carpe Diem."
The Conspicuous Willingness of Secondary Metal Markets to Commercialize/Market Themselves as Though They Were Primary
... or: You're All Fucking MySpace Sellouts.
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF OVERHYPED DEATHGRIND ARTISTS
Summer 2003: Daughters
Fall/Winter 2003: Between the Buried and Me
Summer 2004: Invocation of Nehek
Summer 2005: Through the Eyes of the Dead
Fall/Winter 2005: Job for a Cowboy
Summer 2006: Suicide Silence
Oh yes, motherfuckers: I see you. I see exactly what you’re doing.
You know what you are?
Coldplay.
Keane.
The Killers.
Editors.
of metal.
The "it" band until the next "it" band comes along.
Fuckin’ shame on you.
Brian MacDonald Finally Gets His Due
Almost exactly two years ago now, I found myself in Marlboro, CT, home of the now-defunct Pine Needles cafe. I was attending the show that would become the material for my third-ever Local Motion column.
Wait -- before I continue, you NEED to see this fuckin' stuffed moose head they had on the wall in this place.
I mean, look at that! 100% of the moose, 0% of the old boys club elitism! Who else has that? SUCH a bummer that it closed.
Anyway, so I'm at Pine Needles, hanging out, and seeing this guy Brian MacDonald for the first time. And this dude -- to hear his voice is to be instantly bowled over. He has a beautiful baritone. I was just astounded. He ran down Dylan and Warren Zevon covers with such reverence and integrity; he had originals that ran the gamut from wacky tunes about getting old to love songs to wondering where the hell your life is at in the middle of the night.
After his set, I talk to him for a good long time. Turns out he's already read my column (!!!) and he chats with me about my predecessors (Tom Pizzola, India Blue, Jayne Keedle, others I can't even remember -- homeboy's been on the scene for a long time). We had a great conversation.
Well, turns out that Bri was gigging something like 300 nights a year -- and, y'know, no insult to him or anything, but he's not exactly a young whippersnapper no more, so I'm just amazed at the work he puts in. And he's just released this album called Midnight in Nowhere (get it on CDBaby) that's doing respectably well, but seems to be getting more attention in random European countries than here in the states.
If there's anyone who was going to be able to gracefully continue doing all that heavy gigging and songcrafting into their old age -- whether or not they got their due -- it was Bri. Luckily, now he doesn't have to.
He called to tell me about some good news. A couple months ago, he was coming off of a previous night's lackluster gig when he got a phone call from his longtime producer, Rick Jarrard. Rick's Nashville-based song publishing company has been taking off of late.
"You sick of gigging, Bri?" asked Rick.
"Well, yeah, I kinda am. I had a gig that I just kinda ... got through last night."
"Well, you don't have to gig any more. I wanna take you on as a salaried songwriter."
When Brian got off the phone with Rick, he sat down right where he was -- which happened to be a Stop and Shop parking lot -- and called all of the venues where he had upcoming gigs. He politely cancelled them all. As he explained to me, "pretend you work at McDonald's. You're not ashamed, but you have to pay the bills, you have to feed your family, so that's what you do. Now imagine it's the middle of the lunch hour rush. Someone walks in and says, 'I wanna give you the job of your dreams. Here.' How long would it take you to take off your apron?"
Congratulations, Brian. I've never looked so forward to not seeing someone play live.
everyone in belle and sebastian is ugly.
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