...but what's really going on behind those awesome shades?
You'll remember not a few months ago that when a certain mysterious half-Captain, half-Murphy burst onto the scene, an intrepid young reporter set out to uncover just who really was behind the animated mask behind these animated records. Unfortunately, my so-called "trusted sources" turned out to be what they call, in the parlance of modern journalism, mistrue.
And now, the cat is out of the bag: Captain Murphy is none other than the man himself, Flying Lotus.
...and, like, what's really going on behind that smile?
To say the least: HOLY FUCKING SHIT HOW CAN ONE PERSON BE SO GOOD AT EVERYTHING. It's like if in the 70's Martin Scorcese had come out one day and been like "Yup, I am actually Robert De Niro too"; if Snoop was also Dre; Kurosawa was Mifune; Kobe and The Zen Master, one and the same; or the singer from Blur was actually also every member of Gorillaz, or some insane shit like that. So to you, Flaptain Murphtus, I say, well played, good sir--or should I say "good Captain"--well played indeed.
But while the mainstream media is content to just regurgitate press releases and/or twitpics and call it a day, this reporter continues to be a fucking journalist, and, so-called "facts" be damned, intends to do his fucking job. Because while it's now just common knowledge Captain Murphy is Flying Lotus, the real question still remains:
...SERIOUSLY THOUGH WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE
Just who is this so-called "Flying Lotus," anyway? Sure, we know his name is Stephen Ellison... and what he looks like... and where he's from... and what he's been doing/is doing most of the time, but something tells me that we aren't getting the full story. Because no normal human could possibly be this good at both rapping and production! It's unprecedented! Which, to the trained journalistic eye, can only mean there is something more to the story than any old plebefolk could see--and plebefolks, I am not exaggerating when I say that what I've uncovered, well... this one could go all the way to the top.
So without further ado, here are some potential secret/true identities of Stephen Ellison aka "Flying Lotus" aka "Captain Murphy" aka "Flaptain Murphtus" aka... well, you'll see, after what they call the jump:
new york/new jersey not in the middle of a dry spell...
Allanah Myles - Black Velvet
Sorry for lack of posts lately--there was a hurricane which... got the internet... wet? Anyway, here is one of those songs you might have heard a lot on the radio (and/or in the background of your sultry yet emotional dream sequences) but don't actually know who it's by. Well, the answer, it turns out, is Canadians: written by Canadians David Tyson and Christopher Ward, and performed by Canadian Allanah Myles, who could very be off captaining the Reggie Cleveland All-Stars' karaoke team right now. But actually, her Canadian-ness is not incidental to the song--that kind of cross-border line-straddling permeates both the music and everything around it. Beyond the obvious bit of it being a Canadian eulogy of that American icon Elvis (which, ok, is not really that weird at all--even before the internet trampled all over the idea of the regional music scene, it's not like Canada was fucking Atlantis or something), the whole thing is very firmly a product of that strange, liminal time in which no one was quite sure as to whether it was the 80's or 90's yet.
Like, the production has that vaguely southern, pop country throwback twang that would come to erupt all over our faces like so like so much accidentally ingested floam*--but also those lovably ridiculous FM synth pads that it took ten years to realize don't actually sound like whatever the fuck instrument they were trying to imitate, a bassline that much forum wrangling has determined to be a synth, and that quintessentially 80's distorted guitar chorus--along with all those awesome (or, depending on your perspective, wanky) little guitar fills, which you would never, ever hear in a pop song today.
And at the same time, the video literally alternates between that classic 80's "leathery hairsprayed, band-on-stage bein' all fun and attractive and weirdly leaning all over each other" video trope, and that soon-to-be-established-as-classic 90's "girl in jeans just sort of hanging around steadicam shots of some house or cottage and like singing or something I dunno"** video trope. And while it might be reading way too into it to point out that the video begins with a shot of a record player in a video made just on the cusp of the CD/digital age, I am going to point it out anyway. 'cause, just watching them play, there's a kid of husky, alt vibe you get from watching them play the song that just feels kind of 90's. Maybe it's just coming from the attitude of anyone willing to combine all this contemporary, synthy, country-but-also-looks-like-hair-metal? shit with quasi-religious lyrics about mid-century Americana that may or may not be told from the perspective of old people--which was of course the very attitude that made possible the oncoming and surprisingly diverse alt-rock boom, or whatever you want to call it. Or maybe it's just that there's a rock band with a female member in it, the relative upswing in of which being other best part of said boom, because for the love of god is rock too mired in dudeness. I dunno. Whatever they got, their steaming badassedness either perfectly blends with or even transcends their cheesy production trappings in a way this actual, though fairly popular in its own right country cover never could.
*pop country fans, I kid! also, do you guys think Taylor Swift is like a pop country sell out? is there some sort of standard of pop country authenticity with which to hold artists to? if for some reason you are reading this, I am honestly just curious
**and if you think I'm somehow cherry-picking or exaggerating well then brace yourself and click here
Hi. How's it going? I know you get a bad rap, but I want to start off by saying, thanks for all the music! We all know you are far from perfect, and some parts of you--ok probably a lot--have strayed into full-on evil territory way more than any of us would have liked. But overall, I know that you have dedicated your lives to discovering and fostering and bringing us new and exciting music, and though I've never met you in person, I can only assume that anyone who would do that must be pretty cool. Which is why I would like to help you. So, inspired by a post by Lower Dens frontwoman Jana Hunter on the economics of the music industry that has been making the internet-rounds lately, here are a few thoughts that I think might help us all out.
don't let everyone think you're this guy
Since Spotify finally opened its, uh, doors(?) here in the US, I have seen many people jump ship from both piracy and purchasing to instead legally streaming all their music, and since it's all legal and stuff, it must be better for the artists, right? Well, Lower Dens frontwoman Jana Hunter has come correct with an in-depth examination on how the advent of streaming services (and the internet) has effected musicians' ability to actually make a living off their music, and it's not super pretty. I.e. the Spotify cut is tiny. But that's not really what I want to talk about. Because while Hunter covers a lot of ground on the economics of music, there was one thing that I found particularly interesting. When adressing the common perception that "Record companies rob artists of profit more so than streaming," she replies that:
A common independent deal is the 50/50 deal, wherein a label pays for everything up front, and then recoups (takes back via profits) their costs, after you which you and your label split the remaining profits. If your record costs $40k, and your record makes $100k, you get $30k. If Spotify paid you for an equivalent amount of plays on their paid subscription service, you’d get $1250.
Which is, like, good to know! Really! 50/50? Sounds like a pretty good deal for everyone involved. Were people less able to pull the "but all the moneys just go to the labels brahhhhh" argument, maybe they'd actually pay for more music. Or at least be less fucking self-righteous about it. But here's the thing: How the hell is anyone supposed to know this? The gist of Hunter's message is that with technology constantly reshaping the landscape of music industry, we, the listeners have to act as a self-regulating force that guides said shaping into something that is mutually beneficial for everyone involved. Which is absolutely true. But the fact is, the actual economics of the music industry have been basically hidden from us, the fans/consumers, for its entire history. Of course most people don't understand the the economic implications of what they're doing--because how could we beyond very general statements about the industry as a whole, which, who knows what that means? "Sales declining? Thats probably just like, manufactured pop stars can't sell 20 million generic albums anymore, right? Not the music real heads listen to right?"
"only sellouts ever made money anyway, man!"
In a followup post, Hunter sums up her message to listeners as follows:
A lot of people responded to 10/25 post and others with an almost confessional breakdown of their personal habits. “I spend x hours on spotify, go to x shows a month, and spend x amount on records,” and then drew various conclusions about their contributions to music. I hope that that sort of thing helps to put in perspective something about your relationship to music, and I’d really only respond to it by saying that if you don’t consider the flip-side, the musicians’ income, then you’re not seeing the end of that equation, and not getting a real picture.
And again, I say this is absolutely true. But again, maybe part of the reason no once considers the "flip-side, the musicians' income" is because that information is for the most part unavailable to us. I don't say this to attack Hunter or anything--on the contrary, her post goes into great detail on exactly this, which is exactly what I'm saying.
fans not privy to economic data
But the music industry, indie or otherwise, needs to do far, far better than a few stray tumblr posts by artists on how much money they make from selling music in different formats. Shit like this (warning, pretty violent 'cause it's the Boondocks) doesn't work, and actually exacerbates consumer resentment instead of building the listener-artist/label connection we need. Instead of vague platitudes or attacks, give us real data! People aren't stupid--I mean, this is the generation that's basically figured out how to topple the entire media industry. They can handle percentages. Listeners need to give far more consideration to the needs of the artists whose works they take part it. But understanding is a two-way street, and it is the musicians' and labels' responsibility to trust the people they depend on for livelihood enough to actually provide them with information on how their industry actually works. And don't just release it, publicize it! If someone is deciding on whether to buy or stream or download an album, maybe they could know exactly where that money goes, or how much it cost to make, or how badly the artist probably needs it to keep going. I dunno exactly, these are all just random ideas. But we need to try them, and many more, and we need to figure out a better level of economic transparency than the current standard of "none". Because it is only with a real understanding of the dynamics of their relationship with the music that consumers can begin to cooperate with artists in reshaping those dynamics into something that will better serve us all.
and hopefully we'll never have to worry about product placement
The world of weird big band music is sadly under-explored. Were you to venture in with your land roving satellite, you would find that something about having to keep that many weird players in some form of coherent sound all while playing weird compositions in weird ways creates a particular tapestry of of interplay that can only ever arise under weird these weird big band conditions.
Henry Threadgill is a living master of this. From the unsettling harmonies to the unsettling melody to the unsettlingly mingled acoustic and electric textures is formed something that simultaneously grooves, swings, skronks, and rocks out. When guitarists Brandon Ross and Masujaa come in for solos, they straight up shred, weird 80's style and yet it sounds totally natural. Along with his own mad sax skills, the Threadgill shows that ultimate bandleader accomplishment: making all this shit work together while still retaining the band's overall guiding/compositional voice. What more can you ask for?
If you are checking the Black Radio: Recovered EP as hard as I am (why aren't you?!) you may have come across the name Jewels, and wondered who that is. Well, Jewels, my friends, is the fucking fantastic producer of underrated as fuck group Sunz of Soul, who should all be checking immediately. "Life, Love" is a powerful entry in a long line of "gettin by and livin life" rap manifestos that have dropped over the years. Over a loping drums and a sample that toes the line between smooth strings and haunting woogity-woogity-woogity and back across every few bars, Black Mamba and guest Shawn Struggle spit tales of life. And look, there's that rarity, an actually good hook! Boom it in ya boom it in ya boom it in ya jeep.
Yeah, this had a music video. The 90's were a strange time for rock. One time, I actually heard this song playing on the radio at a Guitar Center, and wondered whether I'd ended up in an alternate universe where someone had grabbed rock by it's cock and pulled it permanently inside out--like how they used to think female reproductive organs were literally just inverted male ones (people were dumb as hell back then--I would google you a link but my stomach is not up for the results "inside out victorian genitals" will bring right now)--and instead of macho, crushing riffitude our priorities became this. Really, all the good alt-rock bands had that thing they replaced their fore-overbearer's primal and oft-putrid* "maleness" with--e.g. Nirvana's nhilistic roar, My Bloody Valentine's vocal-masking washes of distortion, Garbage's, uh, sexiness--but Shudder To Think's was one of the weirdest. For once deconstruction is an actually apt term; it sounds like they disassembled a rock song into its constituent pieces, strew them across the floor, and then duct-taped them back together with no rhyme or reason into some horrific monstrosity that just barely works, Sid-style.
It is the this of rock songs
Here comes a part of a riff! Oh wait there's a downbeat! What the fuck it's a vocal! All just coming and going at wrongly timed intervals, the result of too small gears connected to too long pinions... or something. Throw in the seriously homoerotic video, and guitarist Christian Bale's** at first fairly straightforward sounding guitar solo made utterly weird by context until it evolves into a little buzzsaw of noise itself, and the next time you hear a normal song you'll wonder--just what the fuck is really going on under there anyway?
*seriously fuck that song **2:15 in the video. AND YOU THOUGHT I WAS JOKING
(apologies if you tried to read this before it got proofread... it is proofread now)
A Really Long Preface
People don't really listen to jazz. That is, a lot of people who should listen to jazz, don't listen to jazz. Oh sure, everyone has their brief flings with Miles Davis and John Coltrane or whatever; and lots of people even go further and actually continue to learn about and listen to all that stuff, but I'm talking current jazz--the fucking shit that is happening right now. And Rafiq Bhatia's "Strata" EP, released earlier this week, is a blazing spacecraft, pointing the way though hyperspace to what the thing called "jazz" can be in 2012 and beyond. Or maybe already is. What the hell is jazz anyway? Peeps toss around words like and "improvised" and "saxophone" as if that would define. Sorry but no. If you're interested you can read some really angry yet often on point shit by Nicholas Payton on the history of the word "jazz", and the not little controversy that followed, but right now I'd rather just get some kind of operational definition that encompasses its unique ethos and explains the connection between a large and sometimes disparate group of musicians.
When most people think of "jazz" today, they are thinking of the creatively, African-American based-musics of the 50's and 60's, and maybe the various strains that branched off from them the 70's, but that is pretty much as far as they go, though it does go much further. We got this kind of jazz--which is, for all intents in purposes, Jazz, so let's dispense with the qualifyingyness--when Bebop, with its emphasis on instrumental mastery, first splintered off from the rest of the jazz world. And while it might be an oversimplification to say that the goal of Bebop was to play some shit that white people couldn't play, I think that ethos has been and continues to be the defining factor of jazz to this day.
Jazz is: A. Rooted in African-American culture, and, B. Emphasizes the players' mastery of their instruments
And then maybe a more ambiguous corollary stemming from those two of: C. Striving to move forward. From Bebop, we moved to Cool Jazz, which on the surface would seem to be the antithesis of the former's lighting fast, fiery, competitive nature. But, after all, its pioneer, Miles Motherfucking Davis, was there for Bebop, and while he may not have drawn explicitly on its vocabulary, did draw heavily on its meaning, as did most of the jazz that followed. But mastery of the instrument. Before we can discuss this, lets just get it out of the way that mastery of the instrument does not mean playing really fast. I would just use the word virtuosity, which should mean the same thing, but unfortunately it's been pretty much hijacked to mean stupid shit like child prodigies, guitar speed record holders, and/or Yngwie Fucking Malmsteen, or as he is known in some circles, the most coolest motherfucker in the entire world. What constitutes actual mastery of the instrument is a little harder to define, and technical facility is definitely a part of it, but only in its ability to facilitate instrumental exploration. And when multiple people are making those explorations together, you get what I think is the ultimate part of or maybe goal of playing jazz: to be simultaneously creating and communicating in a new and unique musical language. While every genre (and form of art) consists of this kind of language forming/communicating thing, in jazz it is especially emphasized; its very form is set up to encourage and maybe even require it. Because of the unpredictable nature of the music, its song structures that are generally meant to facilitate variation and improvisation over plain recital, and the prevailing lack of lyrics from which to derive a song's meaning, the players of jazz are and must be constantly striving to find ways to create and convey feeling. You could say that the drama of jazz comes from the constantly morphing and evolving structure of the melody, harmony, and rhythm of the song itself. Aaaaaanyway, this language, the kind of shared though still differing schools of Jazz, reached kind of critical mass in the mid-to-late 60's (as did like everything else) with the electric experiments of Miles, the swirling mixture of dissonance and spirituality of John Coltrane, and the sui generis free jazz of Ornette Coleman, before splintering off in the 70's into stuff like post-Bitches Brew fusion, post-Trane Black Saint/Soul Note, a whole bunch of crazy and sometimes European free jazz, and eventually *shudder* smooth jazz.
And then it got a lot less popular. I mean, look, This band opened for fucking Neil Young at the Filmore. The Byrds' Roger McGuinn drew inspiration from John Coltrane for this guitar solo; Chester Thompson could drum with Weather Report and Frank Zappa and even fucking Genesis; Rashaan Roland Roland Kirk would jam with Jimi Hendrix (and if I could take a time machine to any jam session in history this would no question be it). So what happened? Well, TO BE CONTINUED IN PT 2!
playing math rock and doing math are both things that are hard to do... it's mathy mondays!
Behold... The Arctopus - Canada
Behold... a bunch of very fractured riffs, bouncing off each other over a springy Chapman Stick bassline. Which is all well and good and weird and mathy, and surprisingly fun (though hazardous) to airdrum to. But if you're not in love, just get to like the 2:10 mark, because there shit gets magical. Out of pretty much nowhere, a serious taping riff takes us away, building up a bed of emerald, videogame skies until we're comfortable--and then back come those bouldery riffs, crashing down in percussive crests, followed by a digital-sounding guitar solo I wish was about 27 times as long, but digital like how Neo is digital; the sound of chiptune having sex with Eddie Van Halen. ...uhhh yeah and then back to riffs again; but honestly I'm mostly just in it for the nigh-godly middle part. This is the soundtrack to the most epic of bossfights.
lay low dontcha know (and if ya don't know... now ya know)
My Morning Jacket - Lay Low
Holy shitfuck its indie rock! Only, unlike a whole lot of that stuff, MMJ mastermind Jim James/Yim Yames can actually sing. Witness his gruff throat croons over a fat, wierdly accented Bonzo-meets-breakbeat; the riff, the whole momentum of the riff driving forward, stop, forward... Undoubtedly a southern-inflected anthem for chilling.
Well, for like two and a half minutes. Because what follows Yim's beautiful, tube-screamingly piercing hammer on lead is a fucking masterclass in the field of magnificent double lead guitar jam breakdown... ology. Not overly complex, technical, or pyrotechnic, but not blindly simple in that "basically just playing the melody" 80's pop sax solo way, either--no, this is the double guitar solo of two skilled, stylin' axemen who are actually listening to each other. Rather than just trading licks or shredding back and forth everywhere (which I love too, don't get me wrong), Yames and Carl Broemel work together, sending and harmonizing melodic bits and lines back and forth and ultimately building the whole into a crushing, head-banging climax of awesome worthy of the goddamn Allman Brothers.
Indie bands take note: annoying as it its ever looming, Clear Channel FM-approved boomer-spectre is, this is the kind of shit you can learn from "classic rock."
Ok, I was going to finally break out the totally insane tech death metal shit today, but this just isn't a totally insane tech death metal kind of morning, so we are going with something a bit more relaxing. River Man is in 5/4, maybe the chillest of the non-standard odd meters, and, while it's not the mathiest thing ever, that is pretty weird for folk music right? More importantly, it is great. The strumming pattern creates kind of a stepping motion, as the song's subject, Betty, either steps through or imagines exploring the river, which then flows around her in lush string arrangements by Robert Kirby (who arranged like every frickin British prog folk album ever) and Harry Robertson. Listen to this while walking around on a foggy morning in Cambridge, where Drake probably wrote a lot of this album; or just close your eyes, and pretend you're in Narnia. Sometimes math can pop up in the strangest places.
Also: two big posts comin, and a mix (which is proving to be annoying to upload intact), so stay tuned!
rock the boat, rock the boat, continue the rocking of the boat
Aaliyah - Rock The Boat (Shigeto Remix)
Shigeto comin through with this hauntingly beautiful chillibration of a tribute to Detroitian gone-to-soons Aaliyah and J Dilla. There's something about the shuffle of this one. As I am huge a sucker off kilter rhodes chords, pitch shifted ghost choruses, weird synth horns, and sustained string notes and reverb getting sucked in and out up by fat, sidechained kicks, In fact, so inspired was I that I am now making a mix of songs with similar qualities, which I will share with you, dear internet, later today, so stay tuned!
Strong Arm Steady & Statik Selektah come correct with some classic cruisin in convertibles with your crew on those hot summer afternoons bumpin boom-bap shit. What is there to say about a song like this? Just three veteran MC's who know exactly what they're doing; Mitchy Slick's blunt slickness, Krondon's burning gravel throat, and Phil Da Agony's scattershot shout, complementing each other perfectly as the smooth, stringy beat. Neither genre-defying nor overly defined;not overly derivative, but still pretty precedented; not an apex, but one of many quiet little everyday pinnacles, not GoAT but just... damn good. And while that praise can sound faint it is anything but; as much we like to talk about the ruthless, reckless innovators blazing their boundary-shattering trails throughout the turbulent yet stagnated world of music/art/the actual world, how we sometimes forget: exploring familiar grounds need not diminish their value or enjoyment. Especially when its this shit. Aw yeah. Dude comin' in hard on the third verse. Have we heard it all before? Sure, kind of. But who gives a fuck? It's all in the title.
mathy mondays wasn't scared of the shogun, but the shogun was scared of them...
"Living In The World Today (GZA transcription)" - Steve Lehman Octet
Adders, subtracters, multipliers, and dividers, witness the Steve Lehman Octet, explorers of spectral harmony, which is not a thing I totally understand other than that it sounds hella cool, injecting scalene subdivisions into the dance of the Liquid Swords on their crystalline cover of the GZA's "Living In The World Today". Transmuting the RZA's weirdly truncated flute/vibes sample into actual vibraphone and this crazy hitch-of-a-beat thing that, lead on by drumming leviathan Tyshawn Sorey's 5th dimensional clock-tick hihat "timekeeping", threatens to give your neck some seriously confusing repetitive strain injuries. Replace rap with arabesque sax, stir, and run the hell away before it explodes. Do you want more?!!!??! Check the album. Even more? Check Fieldwork, the Cream (ie supergroup, also featuring Sorey) of modern jazz If rappers had any balls, they would rap over the groove at the end. If you think jazz is dead, then know that at least it lives on a fucking flesh eating zombie. And not those lumbering fleshheads, but the James Gunn, 2004, Dawn of The Dead remake kind of zombie. The ones that can chase you until you die.
Not the trillest shit, but definitely in the running for the chillest shit!
...err sorry. But this was my go to song for when I couldn't pick another sunday jam. Making great use of that Dilla knock on the beat, muzak-of-the-coolest-elevator-in-the-world strings and guitars, a kickass neck swaying bridge at 2:18 that somehow makes , and those smoov, smoov vocals that somehow make the often awkward, almost R. Kelly-esque lyrics totally work. Now go bump this shit 'til love starts getting made.
I have basically been looping this song all week, because 777-9311, by The Time, is one of the ballsiest pieces of funk--and maybe song--ever. First, you've got the one, or the absence of it. Where most funk draws its, uh, funk from the first downbeat of the bar, but here we just have this batshit crazy linndrum thing, which hits on like every other beat to create one of the most unique, syncopated grooves out there.
Then stemmping from that, we got some faintly kaleidoscopic guitar strumming (I dunno what chords those are but they are sweet), a rubbery baseline that, if you sat there for an hour trying to learn like I did it before giving in and looking it up, you'll find is actually twobasslines, one slap, one synth, which, voiced really close together, but actually totally different, and some classic Prince synth stabs. Plus, the chorus , instead of just dividing up the beats evenly across the lyrics "seven seven seven nine three one one", holds the three extra long, then sings the more awkward, three syllable "eleven", because that is just a little weirder and more awesome. And, Prince even manages to shred it up at the with a three minute guitar solo. Would any hit song ever have that now? (or be 8 minutes long, for that matter?). Also, all the parts of this song, are written, produced, and played by Prince--with the sole exception of Morris Day on lead vocals--so, all non-Prince musicians, good luck with your life.
Yet despite all this, it's not in that "wooooamg weird beat" mathy kind of way that you feel or move to this song--it's just 100% pure funk. If only more musicians were exploring this kind of shit (or were secretly Prince), the world would be better, funkier place.
Also, as a bonus, here is another ballsy ass Prince protege song that is actually written/produced by Prince (though with other musicians): the extended version of "Glamorous Life" by Shiela E. Ok it's mostly just great, and really the only particularly ballsy parts are the absolutely wacko (for a pop song at least) sax solos (credited to Larry Williams, a dude who clearly knew what was up in the 80's) but you kinda gotta love it.
...
Also: are these youtube embeds working for people? or are they too awkward/slowing the page down too much? I could always try to find some other way to embed audio
Prologue (song at 0:26 if you're not up for Rick Ross and/or Ciroc):
1
Humans argue all the time about the value of music videos, and whether or not a good video can ever truly become part, and ultimately alter the fabric of the song itself (well, at least the kind of humans who read blogs all time). Like, without its inseparable and fucktastically amazing video, would anyone really give a shit about some Korean rapper? More importantly, should they? (...if you were still wondering the answer is yes).
But regardless of all that shit, this reporter would like to put us on a totally different track of internetified zeitgeistotronic-arguo-discussion as to exactly what a music video has the power to do.
2
Music videos,and the shots in them, exist on a spectrum. One one end, you have music videos that is pretty much just a bunch of shots of the musician/band. Closer to those old school promotional videos bands would sometimes makein the 60's and 70's. [1] Often these will just be footage of them performing live, or in a studio, or just a room or something.
On the other, you got the crazy "music video-y" shit. What. Don't give me that; you fuckers all know what I mean. And while I didn't exactly research this claim, I would say this probably grew out of the explosion of resources and popularity of the music video world that started in the 80's. Sometimes these are just absolutely spastic malarky, but generally they tell some kind of story that is somehow tangentially related to the song. [2]
3
Oh god that got tangenty. Anyway, I just want to talk about the stuff on the former side of the spectrum. The most basic, and perhaps important aspect of the music video. The thing a standalone song actually cannot do. And that is to show you what the damn band actually looks like.
And it shows you how they move.
4
The Gunplay video up there is, minus some, uh, funky editing, is pretty simple. Dude standing there rapping. But it's the way that dude is standing there rapping that makes him, well, Gunplay. The sneer, the hilarious way he rolls his eyes and looks up to see how gods grace is--hell, I could write you a fucking essay just charting the positons and movements of his hands (double barrel gunz at 1:32 ftw)--him losing his shit on the molly lines and then coming back down to name drop fucking Amar'e Stoudemire (which leads me to believe Gunplay hasn't seen a Knicks game in the last year)
5
Most rap videos (especially from the 90's [3]) are like this. Pretty basic. Which really works for the genre, and not just for budgetary reasons, since the charisma/perceivable swag of the rapper is often the most important aspect of the music. After all, there's a reason that even with with all the money he's been gettin' from the fuckin start that could conceivably be blown on some crazy Hype Williams shit, Rick Ross still makes videos where he just stands around rapping (okay and sits a lot, but it is Rick Ross we're talkng about.)
6 We'll get off rap in a second, but here's just a few more examples. Ab-Soul's hilarious manifesto "Gone Insane" generally makes me dance around, shake my hands, make silly faces, and just generally bob around all drunken master-style. But when I played it for a friend, I could see he just wasn't feeling it--wasn't moving to the weird, fun, funky rhythms of Ab-Soul himself. [4] "It's better if you see the video" I found myself saying. And that's when I realized, all that weird shit I do when I hear this song listed above? You know who else does that? Fucking Ab-Soul himself:
It's not that the song is actually made better by the video, or that it's worse with out it, but that by allowing us to see how Ab-Soul himself is physically affected by the music, we can just gain a different and maybe better understanding of the song that we wouldn't have had otherwise.
Cause look, we don't always appreciate a song right away. Sometimes its just not to our tastes, but sometimes you're just missing something. And Movement such an innate part of music (cue faux-anthropological bullshit about dancing around fires or whatever) that often, you'll find, just seeing the artist flopping around to the music coming from inside them is what ultimately unlocks whatever its going to do inside you. [5] Like, maybe you find Danny Brown kind of annoying. But when you see the dude, you might realize, oh, this dude is entertaining as fuck.
7
But actually, onto the non-rap! Take for example, this Shiina Ringo song, "Yattsuke Shigoto" (which apparently translates to: half-assed job). Just casually listening to it, you might get a pretty standard RAWK vibe, albeit with a pretty interesting bassline and some good singing. But watching the video:
The song title translates, from what I can tell, to "half-assed job", which makes sense. Here is a badass badass mofo rocking the kimono, wailing away, but all through that impenetrable air of not giving a fuuuuuck, so that when some sort of emotion/energy does break through--peep the crazy eyes at 1:30--it punctuates the feeling/attitude of the song in a constantly developing way, leading up to those brief flashes of crazy at 2:28 and 2:33, and culminating with the creepy whites-of-the-eyes-only-stare at 2:40. Oh, and not to mention breaking out the fucking fan at 1:57?
The point of all this is not that I am kind of in love with Shiina Ringo [6], but simply that the way musicians movements and expressions develop over the course of a song can tell us its story in a different, kind of primal way we couldn't have experienced otherwise.
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Not to belabor the point here, but the same kind of thing happened to me with Swedish pop-gician Robyn. I wasn't a huge fan of this song, that all the other hamsters were constantly bumpin, but then I saw the video, and well:
CALLLLL YOUR GIIIIRLFRIEEEEEND
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Ultimately, I guess, what I am trying to say is while you can't judge a book by it's cover, sometimes a cover can help you find a new way of understanding book. And it's not even just videos--some things that have made me understand and even love music I hadn't been into at all before include: the album cover, an interview with the artists, seeing it used in a movie, blasting on a highway, hearing it headphones in the rain, listening in a different city, watching people dance it in a club, hearing it LOUD, watching a friend react to parts of it I'd never noticed, hearing a cover, actually playing on an instrument myself, hearing a live version, and most of all, reading what others have to say about it. Reading reviews, reading criticism; traveling back in the day with reading Ellen Willis, Studs Turkel, and Lester Bangs, an interneting it up today with AMG, Dark Forces Swing, or Passion of The Weiss.
My point is this: whether you like something or don't, look around. Discover about it. [7] Unlock as much as you can.
Math: it ain't just that rock shit. Before the more oddly metered parts Fusion became, well, this, bands like Herbie's Mwandishi Sextet were coming up with weirdly funky planetscapes like the above. Built around the repeating bassline/bass clarinet riff in god-knows-what-time signature, these dudes stir up some seriously cosmic shit--which, maybe I'm just weird, but listening to anyone funk it up in like 15/8 or whatever (wikipedia says 15/8) for 13 minutes straight, complete with requisite weirdo analog synth blasts, is just fucking fantastic. It's too bad everyone stopped exploring this kind of sound after like a year, but I guess it must have been pretty difficult to sustain. But you know what? Fuck that--music is definitely long overdue for a mathy ass Kozmigroov revival.
Dat bass! I just heard this shit for the first time last night, very loudly, and having that blasting gyroscope of a bassline churning beneath a rotating cavalcade of strings, weird little guitar jibberings, oohs, ahhs, and, of course, french accented singing was enough to send any hamster scurrying off to the internets to hear it again, and again, and again... The song was apparently written by the bassist, Phillipe Lemongne, who unfortunately seems to be on nothing else, much to the detriment of funk. Now I am going to check out the rest of this album, Mambo Nassau, 'cause that shit was recorded in the Bahamas. EDIT: Also, does that crazy ass skittery drumbeat not prefigure that Low End Theory skittery drumsteez? (and contemporaneous craziness like this)
