This weekend marks thirteen years since the Ramones released their swan song recording, “Adios Amigos.”

The last few years of the Ramones’ existence almost played out like the final repetitive years of a creatively bankrupt TV sitcom called “Hey! Ho! Let’s Go!,” now reduced to paring down familiar notes to their broadest, most applause-garnering catchphrases. Joey and Johnny had been Ramones for 21 years by the time “Adios Amigos” was released, but they hadn’t spoken to each other in roughly a decade. Drummer Marky Ramone now wore a Ramones wig both onstage and off. Dee Dee Ramone had left the band shortly after they’d recorded the album “Brain Drain” in 1989, and been replaced by snotnosed former U.S. Marine Corp upstart C.J. Ramone for the band’s final three studio albums. (In Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain’s seminal oral history “Please Kill Me,” a burned-out Dee Dee explains his irritation with the band’s constant touring: “We had a roadie who weighed 300 pounds—his name was Bubbles, and he would dress up in a pinhead dress and pinhead mask. But he was so fat that when he would jump on the stage, the whole stage would shake, and the mike where I was singing would come banging into my mouth. I hated that damn song.”) [Read more →]

reposted from Life After Records

In this episode, the Chicago humidity not only inspires but influences the signature Horton sardonic commentary on all the tracks he features and discusses. He cites Weezer’s Red Album B-Side, “Ms. Sweeney” as “the best Weezer song in over ten years.” However, after a brief pause he slyly admits that that isn’t saying much, but that he’s a big fan of the “Green” album. He then talks about the greatest album opener of all time (Wire’s - “Practice Makes Perfect” from the album Chairs Missing). The rest of the episode is dedicated to what Horton considers to be summertime jams (Nick Low, Harry Nilsson, Everly Brothers, M83) ending on the 10-minute house epic, “There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart)” by Fantastic Plastic Machine. Download and enjoy!

For a while now, DJ People’s Champion had been running the DC monthly, Transatlantic. The premise was to have one live act sandwiched in between DJs. The night has seen the likes of Lismore, Time Machine, and The Glass, just to name a few. Sadly, DJ People’s Champion has since moved back to Berlin. All is not lost, however. DJ Stereofaith has taken over and renamed the monthly to Feedback. This Saturday marks the debut of Feedback and I’d have to say we’re pretty excited about this one. The headlining act will be Devlin & Darko, the famed Spank Rock DJs. The two have been busy on tour. They will be coming back fresh from Paris with Santogold. They will be touching back down, this weekend, on American soil in our nation’s capitol.

This will also mark the debut for Dmerit. Outputmessage and I will be unleashing new material that we have been working on for the last six months. This incarnation will be more elaborate than our regular dj sets, we’ll be performing a live setup featuring synths, vocoders, guitar, bass and a few surprises.

And of course, the gracious host, DJ Stereofaith will be opening up the event. He has a few exciting surprises lined up in the coming months for Feedback, and we’ll be sure to keep you posted.

Here is Dmerit’s most recent official remix that’s been getting some online shine. Enjoy.

“The Carter upgrade is something we’ve been talking about around here for a while now, along with our discussions of the rise of the cultural phenomenon, and self-proclaimed iconoclast, Lil’ Wheezy. Though some of us do remain unconvinced, he does serve us well as a polemic that we might use to question our here and now. This is particularly true in terms of the benefits or pitfalls associated with music distribution in it’s popularly preferred digital form. With a prolific artist such as Lil Wayne, and his seemingly endless output quickly becoming freely available, it allows his massive fan base a hand in the creative process. Wayne records songs but ultimately it will be his fans who create the album. This version below is by no means definitive, but offers up one possibility. Feel free to offer up tracklist suggestions in the comments”–r

Reposted from Life After Records

Tha Carter 3.1

So it’s inevitable that people out there in the Humanity 2.0 web of deceit are going to start creating their own custom versions of Lil’ Wayne’s “Tha Carter III”; between all of the false leaks of the album over the past year and a half to all the mixtapes, to the officially-released EP from late ‘07, there’s about a milli (pun intended - pun intended!) songs floating around. While it’s an outstanding record by any measure, and specifically one of the better rap records mainstream or undie of the past several years, there are some real clunkers on the final released version of “Tha Carter III,” so it’s only natural that alternate fan-created versions are going to start appearing. Here’s mine - let’s call it “Tha Carter 3.1,” with a mild nod to the Windows 3.1 that I grew up with.

[Read more →]

Last Thursdays at Marquis gets to be a bit fun for me, Triobelisk, and Outputmessage. We get to try out some new tunes we’ve been working on for the dancefloor, and this past Thursday was no exception. Right before his set, much like a kid who couldn’t contain a secret that he had been holding far too long, Triobelisk grinned and told me that he had a new tune. He and Celestronica (Modular/857 Collective) have recently worked on a Cut Copy remix together. But here’s the kicker, it’s done in the style of My Bloody Valentine! During his days in Frodus, he wrote a song called “The Earth Isn’t Humming.” He paid homage to MBV during the outro. Now nearly nine years later, he sampled himself to create a new tune. Here’s what he had to say about the track:

“(The song was) created in Ableton Live with an array of outboard analog signal processors located in copper pyramids deep in the complex of Triobelisk’s secret lair with Celestronica’s hologram image being transmitted inside of a perfect orb. Celestronica conducted and assisted in sample direction and controlled the mind of Triobelisk while he half-consciously adjusted nuances with the voice of Celestronica taking up half of his brain, as fragments of ‘Interview With The Vampire’ and ‘American Psycho’ filled her affinity.”

[Read more →]

Barney Rubble Co-Opts Black Musician Culture To Steal Breakfast Cereal

In 1955, Pat Boone’s first Billboard number-one single was a constipated white-bread cover of Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That A Shame.” (True legend: Boone’s producers talked him out of titling his version “Isn’t That A Shame” in his unremitting disgust for Domino’s improper grammar.) The man’s career flourished as southern Pentecostals instantly preferred his Baptist covers of blues-shouts 45’s by the likes of Little Richard, Big Joe Turner, and Nat King Cole; many of Boone’s versions even outsold the originals. But one or two things have changed in our cultural landscape since the mid-50’s: these days Boone continues to fume at young musicians’ disrespect for George W. Bush, while many of the rest of us are welcoming our first African-American major-party Presidential candidate in our nation’s history. Isn’t that a shame, Pat?

It would be easy to dismiss Boone’s 1950’s cultural dominance as primitive. Unfortunately, there has been a thief of more contemporary black American musicianship; someone almost as square and pasty as Boone, but more primitive still. To his credit, of course, he’s an animated caveman … not interested so much in Billboard chart dominance as he is in dazzling his next-door neighbor with the mystic allure of black artists’ pop-cultural awesomeness long enough to steal a bowl of Fruity and/or Cocoa Pebbles and running off into the sunset.

In his pursuit of Fred Flintstone’s all-too-attainable breakfast, Barney Rubble occasionally imitated white artists as well; he once notably crooned out a raspy number as pompadoured blue-collar hero “Rock Rockstone,” and on another occasion he sported a multicolored Mohawk and pogo’d around Fred’s breakfast table snarling “Shake it shake it shake it, shake it in your bowl” in an anarchic Cockney accent while Dino accompanied him on a stone-age keytar (this is true). But here are three major examples in which Barney’s cereal jones takes things to an arguably more racist level.

[Read more →]