Palm trees, promethazine

We love it!

Randy Newman - I Love L.A. (Chopped and Screwed by the Saturday Club)

The Mountain Goats - You or Your Memory (Chopped and Screwed by the Saturday Club)

Art Brut - Moving to L.A. (Chopped and Screwed by the Saturday Club)

O.K., this is a Blogspot thing, right, so I don't make a habit of writing about my personal life. If I'd wanted to do that shit I would have got a Livejournal. But today, I'm going to make an exception, because, though I'll still be writing about music, I want to write about Los Angeles and I want to write about the best day of my life.

The best day of my life was Thursday Sept. 16, 2004. That was the day I arrived in the United States of America, where I studied as an exchange student. I left Sydney around 10 a.m. and arrived in Los Angeles about 11 a.m. the same day. This, the hills surrounding the Los Angeles basin, was my first view of America:

It was the most amazing, awe-inspiring feeling ever. All my tiredness and jetlag - I can never sleep on planes - disappeared instantly. See, I unashamedly love America. It isn't my country - I am Australian and always will be - but I think America is a wonderful place with amazing people, and I hope one day to return there for good. When I saw those mountains, it was the culmination of years of dreaming and saving and planning.

It was even better diving through the thick brown haze visibly hanging over the city and seeing the endless suburban expanse unfold beneath me. And, like all good music geeks, I had planned for this moment - my intended soundtrack of choice for my arrival was to be Red Hot Chili Peppers Californication, glossy, sprawling rock. I thought it would be perfect for Los Angeles.

I think I listened to RHCP a bit, but it was Randy Newman's track that really captured my imagination during the time I spent in that city - and, let's make this clear; I was never in Los Angeles for any extended period of time. 24 hours after I arrived and 24 hours before I left. The intervening time was spent in Washington State. But nevertheless, L.A. was my introduction to America, and while I certainly don't know it intimately, I nevertheless remain convinced it's a great city.

Every American I've met seems to hate L.A. Whenever I meet Americans who have moved from Los Angeles, they usually say something like, "if you've ever been there, you'll understand why." And, sure, I can understand why, but still, I think L.A. is a fantastic city, and I think a lot of the reason it is a fantastic city is the same reason why so many people hate it.

Randy Newman, who has spent years in L.A., unlike my 48 hours, captured exactly how I feel about L.A. in "I Love L.A." It's so great, because he gets it. He gets exactly the same thing I get about it. And sure, "I Love L.A." is also a criticism of '80s greed and the shallow tackiness of the city, but even though it is a critcism, Newman is still being genuine with his exuberant shouts of "I LOVE L.A.!!"

See, for instance, this 2001 interview with him from the L.A. Weekly:

I remark how I always thought his hit "I Love L.A.," despite its subversiveness and frank criticism of us, was also joyous and deeply felt. "Yeah, it's so chamber of commerce -- Imperial Highway! -- it's just funny," [Newman] exclaims. "There's some kind of ignorance L.A. has that I'm proud of. The open car and the redhead and the Beach Boys, the night just cooling off after a hot day, you got your arm around somebody." He crosses his arms again and smiles in wordless satisfaction, smiles from the momentary depths of a rock-star dream on a bright and terrible day. "That sounds really good to me. I can't think of anything a hell of a lot better than that."

And he's right. I mean, I'm not stupid, I saw all of L.A.'s obvious flaws. I couldn't make it from my hotel to the gas station across the road without being panhandled by a guy with a broken foot, who, when I gave him a couple dollars was disturbingly, heartbreakingly grateful. Smog constantly obscured the horizon, I had to pay $50 for a cab every time I wanted to go anywhere because nothing could be walked to and the subway is mindbogglingly useless.

But even so, there was such a magical feeling about the whole city. And I don't mean Hollywood - what a waste of time that place is, I mean what's the fucking point? - but just everywhere throughout the city. The gigantic freeways, the way everyone seems to have an absurdly expensive car, although they obviously they don't, the great weather, the palm trees, the way it's so cosmopolitan, the huge beaches (the huge, dirty beaches, actually, but still), it's just amazing. It has all the hope and possibility and willingness to dream and believe that I love about the U.S. It seems to me that Los Angeles was the best ever introduction to America for me, because that city is like Extreme U.S. Most Americans want to pretend that L.A. is something different, but that's not true. L.A. is like hyper-America. It's got the extremely rich and the extremely poor, it's the most obvious manifestation of the nation's car obsession, it's got the immigration, but it's not melting pot immigration like in NYC, where everywhere you go you're surrounded by people from 50 different countries, instead it's immigration where the entire city is taking in new folks all the time. Uh... I'm not expressing the difference very well, there. But landing straight in L.A. prepared for all the extremes America had to offer, the good and the bad, and having all that thrown at me as soon as I touched down meant that America could not disappoint. If your first view of the States is San Francisco or New York (great as those cities are) or something, you might miss the extremes of America, the way it can be crass and mundane and sprawling. But L.A. doesn't hide that fact. It revels in it. If you love L.A., you will love America.

So, sure, it is a city loaded with problems, but still... who doesn't want to ride down the Pearl Highway jamming the Beach Boys with the top down, next to a big nasty redhead? I love L.A.

The thing that first attracted me to screwing "I Love L.A." was pretty stupid actually. Quite simply, I liked the idea of screwing a song that talked about the same things so many of the Houston tracks people like Mike Watts screw; girls, cars, driving with the top down - I say this about a lot of songs, I know, but damn, "I Love L.A." is thematically a dead-on match for Texas rap. Or Cali rap - "Rolling down/ the Pearl highway/ A big nasty redhead at my side/ Santa Ana winds blowing hot from the north/ We was born to ride . . . /put down the top . . ./baby don't let the music stop." Change the geography, and that's Paul Wall, right there.

But I think the similarity is stronger than when I've mentioned it in reference to other artists (and hey, if you're sick of me talking about connections between rap and rock, look, this blog is called Screw Rock 'n' Roll. I'm all about looking at the places rock can collide with hip hop). As far as Bright Eyes etc. goes, I'm discussing music with similar themes but the intentions are vastly different. With Randy Newman, the intentions are not so seperate from all the rappers who do the same thing. He sings about driving his car with a woman who is more for show than for company because -- isn't that really a whole lot of fun? He shouts out all the neighborhoods and streets of his city because he wants to rep it. So, yeah, there is another satirical level to the track, but, at one level, it's just Randy Newman wanting to get some brain in the turning lane.

And check this:

Same thing! Is it Newman's fault that he's a middle-aged geeky-looking Jewish guy rather than a young, toned black guy? And this isn't much of a surprise. Randy Newman does like rap. Here's another quote from the interview above:

I ask Newman what he thinks of the whole rap genre, which may be the current incarnation of cool but has always suffered creatively from its own hollow posturings of thugs, gangsters and womanizers. That black artists are generally encouraged into such postures and self-referential stereotypes by the music industry exacerbates the problem. Newman agrees with that, but resists pessimism. "I assume some of these guys have some interesting stuff going on," he says a bit defensively. "Dr. Dre is making some very good tracks for Eminem. I mean, kids aren't looking to Neil Young anymore, or to me."

First, obviously, I've got to take issue with the writer saying rap has suffered creatively from its gangsta posturing. Fortunately, Newman's willing to believe that thug-rap can nevertheless "have some interesting stuff going on." There's also this, which is interesting:

What Newman actually likes most about pop music -- ABBA notwithstanding -- is its veneration of male cool, which officially started with Elvis and lives today in hip-hop. "That's certainly the hippest stuff going," he says of hip-hop, a bit admiringly. "It's all part of that. I remember coming out of Marlon Brando movies feeling like" -- he squares his shoulders, puts out his chest, grins ear to ear -- "You know what I mean? It's a big deal, that feeling. I don't know who's the Brando or the James Dean anymore, but that's the lure of the music. Feeling hip and tough.

Which makes me think my assertion of "I Love L.A." being like a rap song is pretty accurate.

And just another quote from that article:

Part of the reason I identify so strongly with Newman is that he apparently finds it difficult, or untrustworthy, to be himself in his art. For him it's personal; for me it's that plus something else. Black artists historically have been allowed public identities, never private ones, so that their music is read as a reflection of social or even emotional struggle. The reverse is true for white artists, particularly singer-songwriters: The world proceeds from them. But Newman has always found intimacy and soul-baring confining and against instinct, and so has embraced emotional obliqueness and a storyteller role -- the de facto black musical tradition -- by default. Despite the prevalence of the first person in his songs, he positions himself as the conscientious observer in somebody else's shoes. Newman does this with such sincerity and lack of judgment that his songs emerge as unique in the annals of American song: examinations of broad types -- bigots, boozers, imperialists -- narrowed into people, played by Randy Newman. Newman is none of these people, and all of them; he is the medium who channels them, gives them heart, or brains, or motive. None of this guarantees you'll like the characters any better, but Newman's job has always been to make things clearer, not more bearable.

And I don't know what to say about that, but it is interesting.

I've also put up the Mountain Goats' "You Or Your Memory," which again strongly reminds me of my first day in America. This, though, is more about the power of our minds to twist songs into something personal, even if that means ignoring big chunks of them.

When I got off the plane in L.A., I checked into a room on La Cienega, just like John Darnielle does in the song. I just skip over the fact that he checked into a "bargain priced room" while I was in a Holiday Inn (oh - other track in my head throughout the 24 hours I was in L.A.: "We be chillin' at the Holiday iiiinnn"). And in my room, I gazed out through the curtains, though not at the parking lot. This was my view:

At the time, it was the most beautiful thing in the world. And like Darnielle, I went down to the corner store and returned with supplies. Actually, I went twice. The first thing I did in the States after I checked into the hotel and put my bags and shit down was to go to a gas station and look at what was for sale. How much did a bottle of Coke cost, what newspapers could I get, what candy did Americans eat, all that sort of thing. It was a mundane sort of thing, but I was living in America, so I wanted to understand the mundane, everyday life, not the tourism side. Then I went to Santa Monica, so, yeah, I got my tourism fix, too.

And that night (not "just before nightfall,") when I did cross the street (though not "in my bare feet") I bought supplies and spread them out (though "not on the counter by the sink",) in my room when I came back. It wasn't Bartles and James or St. Joseph's Baby Aspirin, though. I know I bought Twinkies, because I had to find out what they were. And there was no "if I make it through tonight I will mend my ways," moment - this was, after all, a situation entirely different to Darnielle's. But there was the same feeling of here I am, alone (I had never lived away from home before), starting something new, and who knows what's ahead of me?

So, even though the song didn't exist when I checked into that Holiday Inn, and that it describes a night not very similar to mine, for me it is the perfect description of my first night in America.

And I've also put up the Art Brut track I did a couple days back, because it was planned to be part of this L.A. suite. What can I say about that one? Eddie Argos sings "I'm considering a move to L.A." and I think, "Me too, Eddie. If only it was that easy."

And that's my long, rambling post about Los Angeles, Randy Newman, John Darnielle, Art Brut and coming to America.

Buy Randy Newman's Trouble In Paradise from Amazon

Buy The Mountain Goats' The Sunset Tree from Amazon

Buy Art Brut's Bang Bang Rock & Roll from Amazon

Screw Rock 'n' Roll head to head: Lily Allen vs Paris Hilton

The first, and maybe last, entry in an inconsistent series where Screw Rock 'n' Roll gives you the low down on two artists and awards some sort of title to one of them.

The Artists:

Lily Allen and Paris Hilton. With the amount of blogger skeet (metaphorical and literal) expended on Allen, I believe I was contractually obliged to devote a post to her. And Paris has a new single. Let's see who, if anyone, is worth paying attention to.

The Songs:

Lily Allen - LDN: A breezy ska-influenced pop track with bored, cooed vocals chronicling the everyday happenings in the artist's environment.

Paris Hilton - Stars Are Blind: A breezy ska-influenced pop track with bored, cooed vocals chronicling the everyday happenings in the artist's environment.

Advantage: Paris. The tracks are almost indistinguishable, but hers is more fun and sounds nowhere near as smug as Allen's.

The Background:

Lily Allen: Daughter of British actor/comedian Keith Allen.

Paris Hilton: Daughter of Richard Hilton, American property developer and hotel chain heir.

Advantage: Paris. She at least developed a brand based on her privilege and has modelled, acted, appeared in sex videos, published a book and created a nightclub chain. Lily Allen got a MySpace account... sitting on her laurels much?


The African-American music connection:

Lily Allen: Her MySpace page lists influences including Jay-Z and Mobb Deep. Her "Nan, You're A Window Shopper" turned a stupid G-Unit track into a stupid English pop track.

Paris Hilton: Has plans to work with artists including Lil' Jon and Three 6 Mafia.

Advantage: It's close, but Paris actually makes music with the artists involved. Also, Lily, minus a million points for writing a song about old people.


The Look:

Lily Allen: Cute London hipster.

Paris Hilton: Skanky New York socialite.

Advantage: Lily, obviously. I mean, a good 58% of the motive behind my doing this post was the opportunity it afforded to post pictures of Lily Allen. Poor Paris has no hope of surviving on her looks, and, so, unlike Allen, must fall back on her talent.


The Lyrics:

Lily Allen: She writes about prostitutes, so you know she's deep.

Paris Hilton: Guys like Paris, Paris likes this one guy.

Advantage: Paris. Her lyrics are dull, but at least she doesn't say "al fresco".



The Hot Internet Connection:

Lily Allen: Has a MySpace.

Paris Hilton: Early track "Screwed" remixed by some guy called Alex G after it leaked.

Advantage: Tie. The Alex G remix sounds like it took about as long to make as signing up for a MySpace does.


The Zeitgeist:

Lily Allen: Hating Lily Allen is about to become the new liking Lily Allen.

Paris Hilton: Americans could probably find a greater consensus on Paris Hilton being a bad thing than they could find on Guantanamo Bay, Dick Cheney or Intelligent Design being a bad thing. The time is ripe for some Hipster® to decide Hilton isn't all that terrible.

Advantage: Tie. Paris is only relevant on VH1, Allen is only relevant on blogs. Both media are faintly ridiculous but still offer enough entertainment to be worth momentarily paying attention to.


The Winner:

Paris Hilton!

She's just a classier act. Now, can we please quit this Lily Allen shit and start posting Dipset mp3s again?

Pre-order Lily Allen's Alright Still from Amazon

Pre-order Paris Hilton's Stars Are Blind single from Amazon

Bonnie "Prince" Tyler is the next big thing

The Saturday Club Presents... Bonnie "Prince" Tyler - Whatever I Say People Are, That's What They Are


You ever noticed that the fast route to getting decribed as a lyrical genius who brilliantly describes the minutae of working class life in starkly drawn detail is to write about prostitutes? Now sing it over a ska-influenced backing, and fake a strong British regional accent. Then you get a MySpace account and all of a sudden you're next big thing. Just check this out:

So who's that girl there?
I wonder what went wrong
So that she had to roam the streets
She don't do major credit cards
I doubt she does receipts
It's all not quite legitimate
- The Arctic Monkeys, "When The Sun Goes Down"

Boring bullshit? No, you idiot! He's writing about a prostitute! It is GRITTY AND REAL!

Or:

A fella looking dapper, and he's sittin' with a slapper,
Then I see its a pimp and his crack whore.
- Lily Allen, "LDN"

Naïve people watching? You moron! She's writing about a prostitute! It is SHARPLY WRITTEN OBSERVATION!

So, imagine how fortunate I felt when I discovered Bonnie "Prince" Tyler, an artist who writes clever earthy cynical discerning insightful apathetic witty lyrics about prostitutes. And he has a MySpace. His strong-and-possibly put on accent is Australian rather than English, but that shouldn't matter, because both are equally axotic to American bloggers. Oddly enough, he looks a lot like me with a slightly fuller beard than usual, but, no, that's just coincidence. His hot single which will doubtlessly be setting the blogosphere alight (tell your friends! especially if they have blogs!) is "Whatever I Say People Are, That's What They Are." Download it:


The Saturday Club Presents... Bonnie "Prince" Tyler - Whatever I Say People Are, That's What They Are


If you doubt Tyler's ability to write brilliantly incisive lyrics about modern life, look at his words:

In the food court at the shopping mall
I see a pimp and I see a whore

What's more, he did that entire song in, like, ten minutes. Can't you see how huge this will be?

When I spoke to Bonnie "Prince" Tyler, he told me, "There's a big sofa supermarket near Broadmeadow train station. I always look at it and think someone's got a Saturday job there, they're 17, they're stuck in Newcastle and they fucking hate it, and they wish they could listen to a song that was about prostitutes -- that's the person I'm writing for."

Note: This sort of thing only works if you're white. The Ying Yang Twins did "Ghetto Classics," "Live Again," a sympathetic song about a stripper, but nobody thinks they're witty or insightful.

My little brother just discovered Screw Rock 'n' Roll

Actually, that's true. My brother heard my Chili Peppers remix and got me to burn a Screw Rock CD for him.


Art Brut - Moving To L.A. (Chopped and Screwed by the Saturday Club)


I was going to save this for a double post, but it's so long since I've had anything new up that I figured y'all needed something new to jam before you bailed on me for good. So enjoy - I'll have another... related... track up tomorrow, and I'll do the big write up I was planning then, too.

If anyone has Pimp C's "Pourin' Up" screwed, holla at me, because I've been listening to a weak-ass screwed version I've done of it, and it's fucking bad-ass. I mean, the song's great as is, but it becomes a monster once it's throwed.

Elsewhere, get a look at the new Singles Jukebox which featured getting real excited about Lupe Fiasco's "Kick Push," because it's one of the best tracks out this year. I was ridiculously verbose about it, and I could have written twice as much. I didn't even get to mention the beat. And what I didn't get was that I was the only one to mention the lyrics, and the lyrics absolutely make that track. Look, I said (in part):

His characters, too, are vividly real — when the skater meets a girl who can match his prowess, Lupe, with a few lines of conversation, illustrates the couple and their relationship so acutely that he could base an entire novel around them.

But if I could have, I would have quoted that entire section. So I will here:

Met his girlfriend she was clapping in the crowd
Love is what what was happening to him now
Uh, he said I would marry you
But I'm engaged to these aerials and varials
And I don't think this board is strong enough to carry two
She said "Bow, I weigh 120 pounds
Now, let me make one thing clear
I don't need to ride yours
I got mine right here"
So she took him to a spot
He didn't know about
Something odd in the apartment parking lot
She said I don't normally take dates in here
Security came and said, "I'm sorry there's no skating here"

It's drawn so well - the skater's trying to act all this lone wolf independent shit, and the girl calls him on it, matches him, and even though she only gets 5 lines, you can see exactly what the skater guy sees in her - her confidence, her assurance, and that she's more than his equal. And Lupe raps those lines harder than any other part of this song. She's such a strong character for such a short part of the song.

As for my other blurbs, I don't normally post sentences that get edited out - normally it's because I get too long-winded - but I do wish Will had left this in my Carrie Underwood review:

Seeming to operate under the assumption that country fans have a Pavlovian desire to reach for their wallets at the drop of a Jesus shout out, it is a blatant bid for red state sales that serves only to patronise the intended audience.

O.K., maybe I'd covered this already in my published blurb, but, still, I wanted to emphasize how insulting the Christianity references were in that song. It sounds like the writer read an op-ed on Bush's conservative Christian heartland and extrapolated that to mean that every single person living in a red state was a reactionary Limbaugh-esque idiot. Whatever political differences I have with folks in Republican dominated states, and that includes those hardcore Christian folks, I can't believe that you can push their buttons and get them forking out bucks for music they don't want. The worst bits about that Underwood track - which isn't that bad otherwise - are those parachuted-in God references, and, hell, if I was some devout Southerner or whatever I'd be pretty damn insulted that folks would think they could get me forking out my hard-earned that easy. There's a point where Exploitation music becomes exploitive, if you know what I mean.

Finally, if you know what's good for you, you'll get over to Nah Right, because they're on fire with the downloads right now - new Nas track, which is, oh my god, pretty fucking fantastic, and Lupe's Kick Push II, which I would also call pretty fucking fantastic if I hadn't already described the Nas thus.

Buy Art Brut's Bang Bang Rock & Roll from Amazon

Bite my shiny metal ass

Sorry for the lack of screw all week, guys. I've been distracted by annoying things like... uhh... life. Also, this.

I hope to have a couple tracks up for tomorrow, and I'm working on something special that I hoped to have finished by the end of the week. But that may have to be set back another week. Anyways, def check back soon.

Jonathan

Cause we paint the foil with the flame: smear the soda, taste butane

Hot damn. Double Conor post!


Bright Eyes - Lover I Don't Have To Love (Chopped and Screwed by the Saturday Club)

Bright Eyes - Gold Mine Gutted (Chopped and Screwed by the Saturday Club)


These are some things about Bright Eyes:

1. Listening to his records, I'm kind of noting some similarity between Bright Eyes and a whole lot of rap records. Now I don't want to overstate this - I'm not proposing some "Conor is a pimp" overarching theory - just talking stupid about some shit. But, especially on Digital Ash and Wide Awake, you look at the lyrics, and you got all these tracks about Oberst hanging out with friends, partying (or his indie kid version of partying, anyway), talk about how he's after fucking not loving ("Lover I Don't Have To Love" is "Bitches Ain't Shit," with extra emo, right?) and, of course, a whole lot of drug songs. Course, in Oberst's case there's the distinction that he's generally using, not dealing, but I'm still not sure there's that much of a difference given the intent. Like, say, pick which one is the Conor Oberst lyric and which one is the Shaun Carter:

"Cause we paint the foil with the flame/ smear the soda, taste butane"

"Mix the water with the powder/ turn the pot up, make a soufflé"

In each case, the drug talk exists to reinforce the aura of the artist as glamorous and outside the regular strictures of society. With Jay-Z, and other crack rap, the idea is to establish him as successful, in command and not bound by the law, because that archetype has become a predominant force in hip hop. Oberst talks about crack for the same reason, but for different ends - it's the notion of being fucked up and damaged, and hence romantic and alluring and dangerous. Really, that's what so much emo is (not that Bright Eyes is really emo, but he shares some of the common themes) - it's exploitation music - teensploitation or romance-ploitation or whatever, and when it's done well, it has the same allure as good exploitation cinema. Bright Eyes gets fucked up and shuns meaningful relationships and collapses into despair because that sort of drama can be fascinating. Avril Lavigne does it too, proving that there's nothing stopping teen pop jumping on a good idea. Same as The Clipse and Jeezy and all ruthlessly push drugs that destroy their neighborhoods - it's all in the name of the drama.

(Of course, that's just what the music is for. I'm not saying there is no reality in crack rap or indie/emo heartbreak rock, just that the reality it has is used for dramatic ends.)

2. Alright, so Conor wants a lover he doesn't have to love. His advice - "take it easy, love nothing," - and yet, he gets called "the new Dylan," for things that get rappers branded misogynistic. Sure, as a function of the genre Oberst's lyrics have a more obvious streak of paranoia and self-loathing in his aversion to romantic relationships, but you get rappers doing that to. Take something like Eminem's "Superman" where his reasons for only wanting a woman for sex come down to his inability to live up to what others want from him (I can't be your Superman) and his previous romantic failures (the reference to Mariah). Same with Mike Jones - listen to "Scandalous Hoes," and it's impossible to avoid the conclusion that Who Is doth protest too much. He really sounds like he's been burnt bad before, and now he's got trust issues. Neither rapper really presents his misogyny as something with positive emotional connotations, like Bright Eyes, they use women as a defence mechanism, and hope that the women they use are similarly fearful of intimacy. Then again, there are artists who are just disdainful of women for the hell of it (though, of course that's no reason to dismiss the music out of hand - I don't see why art must necessarily be didactic), but as is so often the case, things are more complicated.

3. Bright Eyes had that teensploitation thing down early. Making good teensploitation music isn't about being a teenager - Blink-182 were doing it well into their 30s, as was Brian Wilson. It's about being able to effectively sound like a teenager, and you listen to Lifted and earlier, and Oberst is ridiculously good at that. His obsessive detailing of events (like the girl kissing him in the attic, which he mentions on at least two different songs), his sort of naff and sort of endearing grand statements on the way things are ("Bowl of Oranges," "Let's Not Shit Ourselves (To Love and To Be Loved)"), his transparent extended metaphors, his in-jokes and messages to friends, "Tim, I heard your album and it's better than good," from "Nothing Gets Crossed Out." It isn't so much the thoughts of some dumb kid as it is a representation of what it's like to be a dumb kid with thoughts like that. Of course, at the time Oberst was a dumb kid, so things get kind of complicated.

4. But even his latest stuff has really great lyrics, though he's abandoned a lot of the clumsiness. Take the imagery on "Gold Mine Gutted," where he sings "the smoke came out our mouths on all those hooded sweatshirt walks." It's just fantastic - entirely real and completely involving. Obesrt isn't the new Dylan, fuck that shit. Oberst is just Oberst.

5. I was listening to a DJ Screw mix the other day, and I noticed that one of the thing's that really contributes to Screw's remixes being so far ahead of everyone else doing this chopped and screwed shit is the actual medium - putting it all on cassette tapes degraded the sound quality to give everything this slightly muted sound, which is because there's a greater range on CDs than on cassette. I don't know whether that was intentional, but having that dull muted edge to the music just adds to the syrupy, throwed feel you've already got because of the time shift. So I ran the "Lover" remix I did today through a filter to take the highest frequencies out. Don't know how it went, but I think it does sound a tiny bit more woozy. I dunno, what do y'all think?

6. There we go. This has been my Bright Eyes post.


Meanwhile, check out this week's Singles Jukebox, complete with writing from our editor, Mr William Swygart who does pretty damn fantastically, even if he liked that weak-ass Go Home Productions track. Also, check my Chris Daughtry blurb, which I am damn proud of because I talk about Dipset for most of it, which makes, I think, the third blurb I've written with a Dipset reference, even though none of those have had anything to do with them. I mean, come on... Cam and Juelz and all are far more interesting than American Idol's rock guy.

The Whitest Boy Alive really should have came in top, though.

Anyways, check back y'all... I should have another double post coming in a day or two.


Buy Bright Eyes' Lifted, Or The Story Is In The Soil, Keep Your Ear To The Ground from Saddle Creek

Buy Bright Eyes' Digital Ash In A Digital Urn from Saddle Creek

June 12: Screw the Queen's Birthday Holiday

Her very lowness with her head in a sling
I'm truly sorry but it sounds like a wonderful thing

The Australian government is sick, and, much as I don't like him, I am not talking about John Howard. Our head of state is unelected, unrepresentative and beholden to a foreign power. Our government is weakened by the conflation of the representative and executive roles of government. The archaic conventions that provided necessary checks and balances such as the Westminster system of ministerial responsibility are rapidly deteriorating in the modern political environment. It is pure good fortune that Australian government runs as smoothly as it does, and it does not run smoothly enough.

Regardless of the depth of constitutional change requried for Australia, for the sake of its pride and self determination, Australia deserves to be free of the freeloading, class-beholden, anti-democratic institution that is the monarchy. This Queen's Birthday, dream of Australia's freedom. The Queen Is Dead, boys.

Australian Republican Movement

Screw coming tomorrow.

SLOW DOWN IDIOT SLOW DOWN

Thom Yorke feat. Big Boi - And It Rained All Night (Chopped and Screwed by the Saturday Club)

Thom Yorke - And It Rained All Night (Original Version)

A'ight, so first time ever (as far as I know, anyways) the chopped and screwed version is out before the record is official released. Of course, Thom Yorke's The Eraser has already leaked like a motherfucker more than a month before its July release date, and if you haven't heard it, then get yourself into the internets, dammit. I've heard it through a few times, and it's sounding pretty good. I'll be buying it when it comes out, anyways. I'm sticking with my original impression of it being like "The Gloaming" x9, but that's a good thing. Just Thom doing the whole skittery electronics and wailing vocal thing. It sounds a bit... claustrophobic, maybe? Like he really is stuck all alone with no band and no Phil Selway to bring him sandwiches or anything. Just him and his machines.

If I were to pick a single, it'd be "Black Swan," but my remix is of "And It Rained All Night," which is pretty great, too. The thing about screwing Yorke - and I've tried out a few of the tracks on the record - is that his voice is so high and all the beats so frenetic that there's a lot of opportunity to let all yawn out real wide. Nice. And Big Boi is on it, because... because it's a rainy night in Georgia, or something. Actually, I'm hoping some one close to Radiohead will get them into the studio with Timbaland, an event that would be so awe-inspiring that the continued non-collaboration between both parties is only bearable because it would be impossible to expect something so amazing to actually happen. But Timbo, Thombo, it can! Pick up the phone. Or, Radiohead, at least cover "Cry Me A River."

Earlier in the week, the current edition of the Singles Jukebox went up at Stylus, with an accompanying podcast, so go peep that shit. Real life was intruded on me last week, so I only did four tracks - T.I., Marit Larsen, Stylophonic and The Streets. But if I'd said more, I also would have told you that "Maneater" is good but not "Promiscuous Girl" good, and that the Vines track isn't really that bad.

Also, I've got to declare my complete addiction to Anthony Miccio's Bunch of Crazy White People, in which he ranks every Billboard Modern Rock #1 up to 2005 in order of preference. His preferences are completely nuts, but it's still a great read. Also, I think I like it because he says nice stuff about some tracks that I like that get a bad rap.

Pre-order Thom Yorke's The Eraser from Amazon

Daft Punk is screwing at my house

Daft Punk - Something About Us (Chopped and Screwed) by the Saturday Club


I'd like to talk seriously for a moment folks.

We've made a lot of fun of Europe this past week. Hell, it's been Eurovision-time at Stylus; you'd have to be crazy not to make fun of a continent that puts that sort of show on. But Europe, even though Donald Rumsfeld thinks it's old and Tony Snow says it hasn't been hot since 1974, has a proud musical tradition that does not involve trolls. It involves robots, actually. Punk robots of fantastic daftness.

I'm vaguely thinking about chopping and screwing Daft Punk's entire Discovery album, it sounds so good slowed. If I get time. Today's track, "Something About Us" sounds super sexy and chill screwed, sort of like a drunk Frenchmen trying to seduce you. I am possibly a bit concerned at the long instrumental sections - I really wish I had an a capella of Pimp C's "Comin' Up" to throw on there, but unfortunately... well, I don't. And slsk ain't helping. But even without that, pour up a big white cup of purple drank and enjoy Daft Punk screwed. Lie back and think of Europe.

And the best thing about screwing "Something About Us," is that it is instantly the best thing ever created by slowing Daft Punk down. A remixing truism: if your only competition is Swizz Beats, you win the championship without showing up for the game. Because "Touch It" fucking sucked.

(T.I.'s "Bring 'Em Out" is the one exception to this rule.)

Europe, this is for you. Cheers.


Buy Daft Punk's Discovery from Amazon


(I, of course, stole the image, drawn by Farley Katz, from Nick Sylvester's infamous Pitchfork review of Daft Club)

Got Milians but I need me a dime piece

Should have mentioned this a while back, but this week's singles jukebox is up. I'm pretty glad I didn't have to do that Sandi Thom track - I listened to it after the article went up, and yeah, the panel is right on the money this week. That thing is just plain nasty.

This is what I had to say about Rihanna:


Rihanna – Unfaithful
When Rihanna’s lack of personality makes dancehall sound staid and causes suspicions that a song as great as S.O.S. isn’t as wonderful as it should be, she should be kept as far away from ballads as humanly possible. “Unfaithful” treads similar musical ground to Britney’s “Everytime,” but Rihanna is no Britney, and even with a so-so beat kicking the track along, she can’t excite. There’s a murder metaphor that sounds disturbingly close to being literal buried somewhere here, however, not even homicide can make Rihanna interesting.
[3]


The Shrimp has new Christina Aguilera/Premier, so y'all should check that out. I've listened to it twice, and I'm still not sure what I think of it. It actually sounds exactly like what I'd expect a Primo-produced Xtina track to sound like - a whole lot more than I thought it would. I was expecting something more... well, less blatantly Primo. I expected him to make himself a bit more anonymous, because really, this sounds absolutely nothing like anything else in R&B right now. It heads a bit in the Crazy In Love/1 Thing direction, but Primo makes Rich Harrison sound as crisp and electronic as the Neptunes.

Serg at So Many Shrimp is outraged at the whole thing ("If pushing tired ass rappers wasn't enough (that Big Shug joint was pretty stale) now he's trying to fuck with corny pop stars,") but I can never work up disgust at the whole credible artists working with pop stars thing. I mean, Christina's had some good tracks (Dirrty, Fighter, Can't Hold Us Down,) and if Primo is keeping R&B fresh and interesting, then I'm all for it. See, this is why I'll never be down with all the true heads.

Still, I gotta agree with Serg on the Jurassic 5/Dave Matthews hook up. That's just fucked, that right there. At least Christina's done some good shit. But why would anyone be surprised at it? Anyone who's been to a J5 show knows it's totally granola and bierkenstocks already.