were gonna play some funk so loud, were gonna rock n roll the crowd
the coup rocked space gallery of portland, maine pretty damn hard july19. for those of you not fortunate enough to be up in the spot, let me tell you about the awesome time i had!
lets begin with openers. three white folks rapping and a dj that looked like nick lewia, hows that for openers? i feel i should not indulge too much in ridiculing this part of the show and actually there are some cool things about a hip-hop scene in portland. i suppose. there were at least 2 songs herein that were kind of catchy and entertaining but the lyrical payoff of the most prominant mc, kenmore, was pretty solid cornball. i wonder if i'm just too close-minded but i feel a twinge of transitive embarassment when a white man raps about struggles in africa. or directs audience attention to problems in "iraq, afganhistan, africa...everywhere!"
there were two female rappers who guested in the opening set and they both demonstarted a stricter adherence to rhythm than ken. and i'm pro girl-rap if only to see where it goes. i dont mean this in a condescending way, its only that i am wont to generalize in matters of popular culture. what i mean to say, and ladies listen up, is that female rap seems to be a sort of fallow ground. i know i may be ignorant and should be called on my shit. also i know that this attitude relativizes the talent of females by placing them in the novel category. what a cute rapper your girlfriend is mr. kenmore!
gender issues are cool to me. i try to be aware of my attitudes. whats funny is that i think i'm sort of overcompensating sometimes. or rather that my appreciation of female artists is a little disingenuous as it stems from a latent desire to prove that i'm a thoroughly modern and thoughtful guy. this is not to slag chicks in rock/rap but only to slag vw who unconsciously thinks he's pretty rad for listening to joni mitchell. but, on the other hand, joni mitchell is pretty rad. just trying to keep producer and receptor totally seperate. and i'm cool with recieving. is this getting weird? this gets weird, can i turn pro? probably not. there's really no hope for true understanding between genders. there is no hope for humanity. AHHHHHHHHHH
actually its mostly cool, if anything there's no hope for me
sleep easy
back to the pg, thats program...
back to peg, and it will come back to you
so the opener was killing time and kind of not rocking my face. this is to be expected and, in my experience, a lame opener is good for a show. when i saw deerhoof we (audience, including 7 good friends of mine...you know who you is babies) watched some kind of lame animations (made by a LADY) and then a whack troupe of modern dancer-poets (LADIES...so poetesses i guesses) and it was so decidedly un-rocknroll that when the 'hoof set up and launched i was out my damn mind with antici...pation-fueled bliss. oh wait i done lied. some of my friends had the foresight to skip the opening acts in favor of beer and food at apartment housing. that may be foresight but i like to think i had a better overall experience being made to wait around and slog through such drivel to become so burning yearning ready to have my face melted that when it happened (and it HAP-P-ENED) i damn near creamed my jeans. also i like to think i enjoy things more than even my friends as a rule, cause i'm kind of a douchebag. that was not true of the time i saw stephen malkmus, when i think we all had pretty much the best-boss time.
so then after giving props to space and portland and a lot of mcs (in the final song) kenmore and dj dr. no (not dr. know and thus the cause of some disappointment) peaced. then we waited. we bought some beers and chatted amicably. i was accompanied by my brother and dave, we met phil and ran into a friend adam who graduated khs. we discussed openers and made fun of the recent nickelback/hoobastank show that no one attended (none of us that is, that show did sell out...though wasn't it really sold out from its inception...) dave suggested that fans of suck-rock should be called "hoobabacks" fans of suck rock are a perpetual amusment to me. seriously, who actively seeks out this type of schlock? dont they feel like they're limiting themselves? i can't think that someone who listens to this derivative, industry-polished bullshit wouldn't rather just crank some zeppelin. of course they probably do. so knowing that a heavy rock group is capable of blister-bashing through communication breakdown and funking up with the crunge why would you listen to the same acoustic verse, electric chorus, gritty whine/strident whine formula of nickelback? maybe there are some real genre exercises on the deep cuts of this band's albums. (funny that copping genre exercises elevates a band to greatness in my rock-geek criterion...no, not funny, sad, pathetic...psh whatevs whos gonna argue with my wild belief that nickelback sucks and led zeppelin rocked) this being the case i often settle. knowing that the beatles made records why would i listen to the raspberries (this question was actually posed by a good friend and so i use it) but suck is, i think, on a sliding scale and raspberries are not to beatles like nickelback is to zeppelin. in fact i dont hear much zepp in nickelback i just use the example beacuse what hard rock is not zepp influenced? similarly appreciation and imitation is sliding and situational. when the raspberries cop some beatles-y vibes its more homage than biting because the tunes are sweet. beatles is not the best example but the most notable. i say this because the beatles style that the raspberries imitate is early beatles which is itself pretty derivative. oh wait, is all popular music indebted to the past? wow still the beatles had, i think, a pretty big effect on the pop landscape so lets assume that the raspberries had some beatles records and listened to them.
also lets talk about the damn coup.
then the band took the stage to tune up. yes a band comprised of guit, bass, and drums which put to rest some discussion of how the coup would rock in the live setting. i assumed pam the funkstress would handle the beats by way of turntablism, dave envisioned a straight up boots lecture. i think the band made the right decision in coming along. i'm almost certain of it.
now it gets hard to do this justice. this points out that i'm a poor writer. condescending, snarky prattle? good to go! conveying a genuine feeling of music-high elation? i'm stuck. of course you really just had to damn be there. as if the long waiting, packedtomax, sweatyrestless crowd really needed any further amping a stout man ran onstage to scream "from OAKLAND CALIFORNIA...THE COUP!" guess how we reacted... the surprisingly slight boots riley ran onstage as the band began pounding a heavy reading of "everythang" now you try to get even a crowd of portland hippies and hipsters to sit still as boots shouts "everybody get the shit started, this is your muthafuckin party!"
naturally this begs the question of whos party it actually was/is. its hard to imagine that boots wrote these lyrics for this type of crowd. we were into it and he was into it though so whats my problem? i wonder if i wonder/worry too much about authenticity in ones reception/appreciation of music. let it be well known that during the show i was not for a hot second worried but rather jumping up and down, grinning like an idiot and shouting with boots "stop flyin old glory man cut it down, if ya job aint payin right shut it down!" and i dont fly old glory and i quit my job so at least in these respects boots and i are kind of right on. i'm not going to stop listening to hip-hop and i'll go to see the coup again if i get the chance but its important to me to be consciouss of the fact that the band were the only black people in the space. in a lot of ways that totally cool, mostly i feel this way. howevs, i wonder about the amount of culture-envy that draws me to hip-hop and especially militant leftist shit. just something to think about.
next they played "we are the ones" and here's where i was totally sold on the band. the record employs a heavy, synth bass riff but from a band it was rolling over the audience, trouncing our brains into a punch-drunk funkiness. or something to that effect. maybe its less subtle also but the band really beat it up on the chorus and this type of ham-fisted dynamic will indeed get a crowd worked up. i was worked up. so why do so few hip-hop albums employ a live drummer? maybe there's a fear of treading into the very sketchy terriroty of rap-rock. this show boldly strode into this land and with middle fingers extended to haters and limp bizkit fans alike.
on "i just wanna lay around all day in bed with you" the band also gets props for extending this rap-ballad into a guit-shredding jam. perhaps it was the earlier misunderstanding or the substantial dread-locks but the guitarist seemed a head of the class pupil of the dr. know school of rocking a guit-piece. he could adeptly augment bass and vocals with funky strumming, punky riffing, or get the shit started with balls-out screaming metal solos, fret-tapping and string-biting included.
there was one slight disappointment to the set. after the superb encore "ghetto manifesto" (set to the hook from so fresh, so clean) boots did a song for his daughter. this in and of itself is cool and i'm sure if i had a child i would give them props but why is it that songs about children are always so sappy? (one dispicably hopes that eric clapton's son is crying when eric gets to heaven at having been so fucking lamely eulogized) i would also call out beautiful boy but lennon's sentimental hokiness actually gets me a little choked up, so i'm a heartless bastard but there are routes to some sort of heart within me. boots took verse time to remind his daughter to brush her teeth after every meal, which is not only a dumb thing to rap about but a pretty unreasonable expectation. who brushes after lunch? and dont get me started of the merits of shouting out to dentistry. and please dont get started on me for using the phrase dont get me started...it was only a matter of time, i'm writing a blog damn it.
also let me just say how much i really appreciated being at a show where people would really get into the music. maybe i've hung around with too many crowds of bostonian scenesters who feel the idiotic need to stand around all hipper than thou like they can't think of one thing more pedestrian than moving (more on assholes later in this post). basically everbody dancing in the moonlight is what i consider a fine and natural sight.

i got a radio installed in the van recently! so i listen to a lot more radio music in maine. i heard gorillaz on the alternative station and it struck me as funny that the alternative kids kind of need their hip-hop cut with damon albarn. isn't there enough new hip hop that could be considered "alternative" and thus flossed on said station? is it neccessary that a sweet/high/white voice be included to make this style palattable? but, on the other hand, would it be just too homogenizing if there weren't some genre rules for radio to play by? (when will a station be created out of my music collection exclusively, and then through a super-computer calculate fresh new jams for me to get into?) what does this say about a band like gorillaz? what are they doing to our culturally defined categories? is it responsible? are they aware of the fuzzy ground they are maddeningly all over? and yet they are far from the first. beastie boys will always be "alternative" friendly. is white rap (or white-endorsed rap) alternative by nature of its questionable authenticity? why should it get multiple station props? is this deserved? am i making too much of this? asking too many questions?

oh, guess who needs to shut the fuck up? (president?jon bon jovi?sanborn?vw?) its pitchforkmedia, again. these snotty brats cant wait for another mars volta album to rock right out so they can sigh, comb their collective hair and reassure the public how pedestrian it is to play guitar on rock records. of course the new song on myspace is no l'via or roulette dares but, as is the custom of omar rodriguez-lopez with respect to a guit-piece, it rocks with a studied abandon. it brings some funky layers of guitar, spanish spitting, obtuse english phraseology...in short all you really need to get right down. and for those who cant get around, let alone into some ambience on a rock record (i admit some sections of de-loused are excessive) this one limits it to a brief interlude of choppy noise bookended by almost (almost) cheesy shredding. c'mon pitchfork, you bunch of pussies, this is the most focused attack the volta has employed since tremulant! great viscera eyes! long live the mars volta!

so i'll be peacing out to colorado for a piece, probably not too much bloggery for a piece...who cares?!