Da Weeks What Wuz

March 19, 2006... Saw Def Jux's travelling road show recently. Def Jux, for dem what don't know, is an independent record label specializing in underground or "backpack" hip-hop. No, I don't know why they call it backpack hip-hop. Maybe it's because 92% of the people in the audience are white.

I wasn't really all that impressed by the show. For one thing, motherfuckers had us lined-up outside in the cold until well after 11 p.m. Note to motherfuckers: when there are, like, twenty-three artists on the bill, and the show starts after 11 p.m., that shit is gonna run past my bed time and I'ma get cranky... Plus, the sound was muddy as shit. I like a good rapper at least as much as the next guy, and with Aesop Rock in da Opera House, we had one of the very best ... but I couldn't make out a word he said. Worse still, the backing tracks were reduced to a endless series of dull thuds.

Aesop Rock - Daylight

Anyway, one rapper on the bill did impress me. He had a face and limbs of rubber and could--and often did--switch between a whisper and a scream in a billionth of a second. For the most part, dude backed-up a beefy fellah named Cage, who was okay, I guess, but when dude took center stage hisself things got real inneresting. Dude was hyperkinetic and a pleasure to watch, but, even better, his backing tracks were, for lack of a better word, wimpy. Liza Minelli and Joel Gray came to mind, though it might just have been the top hat and neck tie...

As I watched the audience look on in stunned silence, clapping dutifully, but definitely not lustily, I got the distinct impression that this rapper's uncoolness was calculated to annoy. The audience was being baited, like at a Crucifucks or Fear show. It made me laugh out loud.

Dude ended his set by saying "You've been a very generous audience. I hope you all go home tonight and fuck yourselves."

Problem was, I had no idea who he was. The Master of Ceremonies would come out between acts and yell "Yo, Toronno, make some motherfuckin' noise!" and mumble something about "Saka wawa ginza!" Then an anonymous duo would take the stage, yell "Yo, Toronno, make some motherfuckin' noise!" then mumble something about "Saka wawa ginza!" and do they thang. One-hundred percent anonymously.

When I got home, I went to the website of Hip-Hop Canada to see if I could figure out who that rubber-faced rapper was. What I found instead was a discussion of plans to replace Regent Park, the oldest social housing project in Canada, with a new, higher-density, mixed-income neighbourhood.

Some commentators thought it was a good idea to try to mix families with different incomes in the same neighbourhood, for the same reasons I enumerated in my January 10 post. Others thought it was all a ruse to sweep poor people off valuable land so that it can be redeveloped. One person posted a link to a website for an as-yet-unreleased documentary about Cabrini-Green, an infamous social housing project in Chicago that is also being razed to make way for a new mixed-income neighbourhood. The film is called Gangsta City and it sounds like it's gonna be a good one.

The Juan Maclean - Give Me Every Little Thing

Anyway, one thing led to another, and, at about four in the morning, I found myself getting acquainted with detroitblog, a blog about all things Motor City. It's fascinating stuff, particularly the urban spelunking posts, where the writer ... accesses and photographs the interiors of abandoned buildings. If you dig Infiltration and the whole urban exploration thing, you'll want to check out detroitblog.

The only downside to the site is that readers are not allowed to comment, so every time the writer gives the city's political leadership the verbal cut-eye and you feel like responding with a "Yeah, but," well, you're outta luck.

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New Wave: Crime Against Humanity

March 12, 2006... You might not think that a person could make the case that New Wave was a crime against humanity by using the music of Z.Z. Top, classic southern rock trio, to illustrate. You would be wrong.

ZZ Top - Arrested for Driving While Blind

Sure, sure, I know, Z.Z. Top were second string. They never did anything that Jimi Hendrix and a bunch of other, dead coloured fellows hadn't done before and better. Still, they did it well for a while. I mean, how could anyone who loves the sound of an electric guitar blaring out of an overdriven amplifier not love the song "La Grange?"

Sure, sure, I know, Billy Gibbons was never more than second banana as a guitarist. He used three or four tracks of guitar in most songs to fill out the sound. Still, it was just little Billy, his 'lectric geetar and an amplifier turned up to eleven and smoking.

Eventually, drummer Ozgood Zbeard came into his own, too. Check out his playing on "Heard it on the X" or "It's Only Love," for example.

ZZ Top - Heard It on the X(cerpt)

After a while, though, things began to change... 'Round about 1980, Billy, and/or the record exec rakes that pull his strings, discovered The Police. (You know, the Police: Stewart Copeland's band. The one Andy Summers played in.) Suddenly, it was no longer just Billy, his 'lectric geetar and an amplifer turned up to eleven and smoking. Nope. It was Billy, his geetar, a rack of effects pedals and, presumably, somewhere, an amplifier.

ZZ Top - Pearl Necklace (excerpt)

No de-do-do-do de-da-da-da-doubt about it: even songs about "girls" doing the "Tube Snake Boogie" or wanting a "Pearl Necklace" couldn't mask the emasculation of the band's sound. But worse still was yet to come.

ZZ Top - Legs (excerpt)

Rock bottom for Z.Z. Top came in 1983 with the release of Eliminator, an album named after an excretory organ. With its guitar tracks and drums buried beneath throbbing, focus-group-approved, synthetic beats, Eliminator was purpose built to appeal to the mentally retarded children of the MTV generation ... and make the aging greybeards in the band billionaires in the process. Ironically enough, the biggest beneficiaries of this calculated ploy may not have been Z.Z. Top at all, but instead punk bands like Bad Brains and Black Flag, into whose tattooed arms dross like Eliminator drove many former rock fans.

Anyway, that's what I think. And I blame New Wave.

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