Rodney P: good at videos

Northern Author has been good enough to upload his own compilation of rarities, guest spots and singles from UK hip hop veteran and legend (hell, they’re all veterans and legends in UK hip hop), Rodney P. His post got me noticing that mister P (no relation to Sean, Styles, Percy, Master, El-) has produced a string of entertaining videos on a low-to-middling shoestring, often featuring his buddies like Skinnyman and “people’s poet” Benjamin Zephaniah.

Here’s ‘Riddim Killa’, from 2004’s The Future, with a nice Warriors nod and some Cineplex larks:

Here’s Rodney and Terry Hall this year, featuring on Dub Pistols’ version of the Stranglers’ ‘Peaches’. I particularly like this one, with Rodney dropping effortlessly into a hilarious, leery white-van-man accent with more skill than Mike Skinner could muster. Me old mucker.

Here’s ‘Nice Up’, from The Future, with a kerrazy London cab concept:

His old group, London Posse, tended to stick to Wu-style low-budget mean mugging. ‘How’s Life In London?’ from 1993:

Buy a Rodney P record

Beirut: better than MIA and Radiohead

No Trivia, who thinks of something interesting to say to the internet almost every day, wrote a provocative piece about one of the best songs I’ve heard all year, the rrrrremix of MIA’s ‘Paper Planes’, featuring Bun B and Rich Boy. The original is the only really good song on her much-hyped Kala LP – sampling the best bit of the Clash’s otherwise stolid ‘Straight To Hell’, and combining playground rhymes with deadpan nonsense about “third world democracy”, cash registers and gunshots. The remix just adds a couple of nifty verses: Rich Boy sing-raps about an older woman (or possibly a car – these rappers love their metaphors!) in a style that’s somewhere between Nelly, lovers rock and southern soul; Bun B sounds like Bun B always does, which a lot of people like, and ends his verse by suggesting you “get your Robin Hood on, put some pressure on The Man”, which is a great thing to say, I reckon.

MIA (feat. Bun B & Rich Boy) - 'Paper Planes' (remix)

Brandon uses the remix as a jump-off point to air some strong reservations about MIA’s patronising attitude towards her ‘edgy’ and ‘marginalised’ collaborators (read: poor, and occasionally possessed of some strong opinions that she might not share). Fair points – MIA’s easy to expose as a liberal dilettante passing herself off as a visionary radical. Most of the time I can’t stomach her, any more than I can take the over-egged production and unalloyed, humourless unpleasantness of UGK, or the production-line shirtless southern rapper-dom of Rich Boy. But sometimes pop works best when it rides the fine line between exploitation and inspiration (or something) – “from Elvis to Eminem!”, as a Guardian music journalist might write – and the remix does just that. Trashy and transcendent, what?

I was planning to carry on in this pretentious vein and write something comparing ‘Paper Planes’ to Beirut’s new album The Flying Club Cup, another piece of work that gleefully robs from ‘authentic’ sources, this time appropriating Balkan folk arrangements, together with a heavily-romanticised vision of France. Nothing on the album stands out as much as the MIA song, but overall its Boho-schtick is much more successful, at points recalling GMS faves Menlo Park, or a cross between Neutral Milk Hotel’s more funeral songs and the gypsy oompah chaos of Emir Kusturica’s outstanding Black Cat White Cat. There are plenty of reviews out there. The ones that give it 8 out of 10 are about right.

Menlo Park – ‘Bicycle’ (from Greetings from Montauk, N.Y.)

Black Cat White Cat OST – ‘Bubamara’

Instead, I’ll direct you to the album’s website, which does something a bit magical. Each song has a video, in which we follow Beirut’s ‘Orkestar’ around Brooklyn, through bars, apartments, a garage full of ice cream vans, down to the river by night, and finally into a church, playing their ukuleles, fiddles, accordions and horns as they go. It’s not an altogether original device: the format simply expands upon French film-makers La Blogotheque’s guerilla-gig approach. Arcade Fire, who also bring the bells and whistles, made a similar one in support of Neon Bible earlier this year. Plus, if you’re put off by Beirut’s “I’ve been to Europe” aesthetic, you probably won’t warm to the inevitably romanticised Brooklyn that he roams here.

People have written a lot of about the communal experience of downloading the Radiohead album, listening to it and reviewing it at the same time as everybody else, amateur and professional. It certainly felt like a new way to experience music, but none of the chatter stopped my attention drifting after track three or four. Beirut’s gimmick, like their album, is better: instead of downloading or streaming the album while doing some work, the visuals forced me to stop, look and listen. Like a live gig shorn of all rock-performance clichés and presented in a style sympathetic to the music, the compositions, the instrumentation, and the human element were enhanced. If every band did this … I’d probably skip the videos because there isn’t the time. But if it occasionally forced me to give a little more space to an album, that’s only a good thing.

Beirut are still stuck in the dark ages when it comes to demanding a fixed price for their art. But 40 minutes on the web and a fiver at amazon should suffice.

Beirut – ‘The Flying Club Cup’ (final track)

BEIRUT - The Flying Club Cup from The Flying Club Cup
Uploaded by flyingclubcup

Menlo Park’s myspace

Buy Menlo Park

Buy Black Cat White Cat OST

Beirut’s Flying Club Cup Website

Don’t know much about fiscal policy

Puerile rap-rock outfit Radiohead have bent reality out of shape and turned revolution on its head by giving their new album away for whatever people see fit to pay. Maybe you heard.

It’s a great gimmick, so great in fact that they’ve got a mention on GMS. But, serious-minded reader, I’ve gone into this and, you know, one can go too far. First the Charlatans, then the Oasis and the Nine Inch Nails, and now the sodding Jamiroquai have suggested they’ll do the same. For morons like myself on the internets, this is purely bad news. If 1% of the rabid nonsense written about In Rainbows is to be believed, it’s about a million points double-plus good, and gets better to the power of jam doughnuts every time you listen to it. This means I’ll be heading to their website and repeat-buying it for incrementally large amounts in a perpetual self-orgy of altruistic gratefulness. And what’s more, if some sort of state regulator doesn’t step in, who’s to stop me forking out £1234.56 for the Diplo remix of Justice’s cover of the latest Of Montreal single because of a particularly breathless entry on neongogglespoon.blogspot.com? Or locking myself into an open-ended payment scheme to watch videos of R. Kelly swearing and wearing a false beard? Mo money, mo problems, like BIG said.

As a solution, GMS suggests we follow in the footsteps of nineteenth-century British statesman William Huskisson. No, not by stepping under a moving train. Shortly before he met his maker in the form of Stephenson’s Rocket, Huskisson masterminded the imposition of a sliding scale of duties on corn. Under this system, when the supply of corn to us British folk was good, and prices were cheap, the full tax would be in place. But in a bad crop, as the price rose, the duty would fall – hence stabilising prices for the consumer. Moderate, liberal and progressive in theory, disastrous in practice – corn merchants kept supplies off the market, and put out their poorest-quality grain, in order to force prices up and escape taxes, destroying the stability of the currency and popular faith in the justice of the market. Something similar happened with mid-western farmers and the gold standard with the onset of global competition and cyclical depressions in the later nineteenth century, but I forget how that went. Never mind, eh?

God bless the dead.

Though it didn’t work for Huskisson and his corn, that’s not to say it wouldn’t work for Korn, and for all of those cheeky pop-rock bands that people go on about. So here goes:

Let’s have a few firm markers. You can pick up The Bends or OK Computer for £4.50 at Avid Records in Oxford, and you should, because Avid’s a great shop, and those are great records. Avid has a sliding scale – if you buy 3 records, it only costs £10. So if you’re buying the two decent Radiohead records, you can get one of their crap ones for an extra quid.

Charlatans next: I picked up their best-of, Melting Pot, in a shop called Cash Converters for £3. That’s fair, as I listen to it once every three years, each time recalling that they had a few cracking singles, and were pretty consistent until Tim started thinking he was a country Curtis Mayfield. New Charlatans album, though? 65p.

Like Radiohead, NIN made two great records. There’s no further point in them. New NIN record: £0.00.

Like drinking air.

Oasis is where the sliding scale really kicks in. If oasis.com offered me £4 to listen to a 40-minute album, I’d agree. Per-minute, that equates to just above the minimum hourly wage, so I could choose whether to get on with some work, or do the hoovering, with it playing in the background. Multi-tasking.

Listening to a Jamiroquai album would count as work, due to the general unpleasantness involved. So dancingwankerinahat.com would have to beat my standard wage and offer me £10 for 40 minutes, or £15 p/h. Which would be alright, I reckon, because the guy’s shitting cash.

For the penny-pinched listener, hopefully, the impulses of aural pleasure and the need for cash would balance out: for instance, I might like to pay a little, often, for my weekly half-arsed but intermittently-entertaining Lil’ Wayne mixtape; in the long-term, this might cost the same as paying a lot, occasionally, for a rarer, more valuable commodity, like a My Bloody Valentine album, or a Radiohead song with a tune.

In either case, pleasure, appreciation and expense could be budgeted. I could offset it piece-by-piece, by downloading and listening to every Jim Jones mp3 posted on nahright for a couple of months. Or I could do it in one fell swoop, perhaps by spending an hour in the dark thinking about Akon. Mmmmm, Akon.

Akon, meanwhile, is thinking about you.

The basic point being, Radiohead’s system gives the listener rights and freedoms. What listeners also need are duties and responsibilities. Huskisson's sliding scale would force them to evaluate their consumption of art, and to atone for it through a cash nexus. This would leading to a keener appreciation of the value of good music, and of the sheer fetid stinking offensiveness of Jamiroquai.

I haven’t really thought this through, it occurs to me, so if anybody’s willing to try, let me know whether it works out. Also, if anybody would like to explain why In Rainbows is any good, drop a comment, because I'm baffled and my head hurts.

Until then, let's sneak in '97 mentality:

1997>2007

Exhibit N

Radiohead - 'Lucky' (live at the Glastonbury Festival)

Previously on '97 mentality

advertising industry stays on point

xfm are playing the new radiohead album in full. of course, it's nonsense, as usual. half-way through, an ad break featured two adverts for hair-loss products. sounds about right.

Album review – Percee P – ‘Perseverance’

Indie rap imprint Stones Throw deserves credit for coaxing a debut album out of freestyling Bronx MC Percee P after three decades on the scene. The virtues of pairing him across a whole disc with tasteful beatmaker Madlib are more debatable: mister Lib takes inspiration on ‘Perseverance’ from the theme tunes of sitcoms that aired when Percee was starting out – all cheesy soul, Randy Newman piano licks and what sounds to these ears like a sample of Lindsay Buckingham’s ‘Holiday Road’, as featured on the soundtrack to National Lampoon’s European Vacation. The guest list shows more discretion and style – none of Diamond D, Prince Po, Chali 2na, Vinnie Paz, Guilty Simpson and Aesop Rock sounds out of place.

Percee P wisely ignores the halting, chopped-soul backing beats, delivering head-scrambling polysyllabic rhyme schemes as if he was still working with the fast drums, rumbling basslines and strangled jazz that featured on his early 12” releases. He’s understandably reluctant to narrow his range, covering as many bases as possible – nostalgic, aggressive, cerebral, spiritual, and so on. Occasionally this comes across as shapeless or stale – narrative songs imagining hip hop as a mistreated woman aren’t anything new, and nor are self-regarding trips down memory lane. More often, though – and especially when Madlib can muster some aggression – P’s verbal dexterity, self-belief and composure are enough to carry this welcome, if oddly balanced album. (B+)

More fun:

Unkut’s great T-Ray interview included some rare Percee P tracks.

Buy Perseverance

Stones Throw records

Two videos from Perseverance: ‘Put It On The Line’ has the best visuals:

‘Throwback Rap Attack’ is the better song:

Percee’s classic street battle with Lord Finesse – looks like they spent all day rhyming at each other. Rotten quality, thrilling scenes.

Part 1

Part 2

c.

One hundredth damn post. I still don’t know why I bother, and long may that continue. See below for the sort of thing that bloggers do on such occasions.

Kyuss – ‘100 degrees’ (live in San Francisco, 1994, original on Sky Valley)

The Game – ‘100 Bars: The Funeral’

Prague – ‘A Century Of Fakers’ (Belle & Sebastian cover, from A Century Of Covers)

Wilco – ‘One Hundred Years From Now’ (Gram Parsons cover, from Return of the Grievous Angel)

Blur – ‘End Of A Century’ (from Parklife)

Mekons – ‘100% Song’ (from The Curse of the Mekons)

Raekwon – ‘100 Rounds’ (from Immobilarity)

Termanology – ‘100 Jewelz’ (from Hood Politics IV)

Album review – iLiKETRAiNS – ‘Elegies To Lessons Learnt’

iLiKETRAiNS are what would happen if Alan Bennett’s History Boys put on a show to save the old clubhouse. Musically, they’re not exactly revisionists: Hope Of The States, delivered the same mix of formal attire, Morricone-bombast, and Radiohead’s sorrowful politics, but with a British wit and lightness of touch that pitched them as distant, moody cousins of the Libertines. Perhaps iLiKETRAiNS have learnt lessons from HotS’ miserable fate: their baritone vocals bracket them with more successful Joy Division interpreters like Interpol or Editors, and they achieve greater gravitas than either by rooting their cryptic set-pieces in dark and tragic historic events.

Occasionally the claims of history fail to excuse grating lyrics or leaden pronouncements. Their debut EP, ‘Progress / Reform’ felt more engaged, and showed more dramatic flair and musical panache. A lack of variation puts this album in a lower league than HotS’ impressive debut The Lost Riots. But in the long term, iLiKETRAiNS' commitment to sparking listeners' curiosity and sending the kids to the library, or onto wikipedia, redolent of the early Manics, may mean they can overcome the law of diminishing returns that blighted their peers. After all, there’s a lot of history out there. (B)

iLiKETRAiNS - 'Spencer Perceval'

Buy Elegies To Lessons Learnt

on Anon.

morning, blog readers! occasionally i can be bothered to have coherent thoughts about pop music and write them out in complete sentences. but a lot of the time i leave that to commenters, who are always welcome.

one of the most deft and devastating i've received came from 'anonymous' (seriously?), and concerned singing sensation will oldham's duet with scout niblett, 'kiss'. i repost it in case anybody missed out:

"Im surprised to hear Will Oldham singing with Scout Niblett who doesnt seem to have much talent for music or singing. Her annoying voice struggles desperately to sound like Chan Marshall but just doesnt seem to get there. Its also a joke that Scouts trying to mime her way into this southern bell indie lead in America when its so obvious shes just English. Will Oldham is also spreading his overly used talents in too many pointless places at once, which gets very boring after a while. I pass big time on the Scout, Oldham duet thing. A desperate plea to be heard with no regards for all the migraines it will cause."

i mention this because will and scout have made a video for said song, which i think is very good. you should watch it, but maybe with your fingers in your ears if you've been migrained by scout before. i wonder what anonymous will think. the floor is open.



incidentally, put 'anonymous commenter' into the wu-tang name generator and you get 'well-liked assman'. is this you?

i got tha hook up

No posts for a while around these parts. GMS was planning on going to pop concerts by Richard Hawley, Lethal Bizzle, Poison The Well, Gallows and the Decemberists, and then saying what they were like on the internet. But a combination of incompetence and the unfailing desire of “the Man” to keep me down has meant that I’ve repeatedly failed to gain admittance to the NEW LOOK BEER-SPONSORED OXFORD CARLING BEER-SPONSORED ACADEMY MUSIC VENUE GO ON DRINK SOME CARLING IT’S BEER. To quote the Game: “I hate the system. I hate all systems.”

Get out of my face, "the Man"

But never mind – comment is free and goes on unheeded. Weighing in this week:

Not a Blogger weighs up the prospects of XXL’s ten next-generation MCs. Wit, passion and accuracy ensue.

No Trivia dissects an excellent new Raekwon photograph – which is more interesting than most of XXL’s next-generation rappers.

yoinked from unkut.com

Daily Growl looks at two interesting new records: iLiKETRAiNS’ history-tastic post-Hope Of The States opus Elegies From Lessons Learnt and Jeffrey Lewis’ perverse decision to cover twelve Crass songs on 12 Crass Songs.

I likes me a bit of Belle & Sebastian, but not this much: indie mp3 looks at Bowl & Sebastian: Bowl Your Hand Child You Strike Like A Peasant.

Those crazy iNTERNETS CELEBRiTiES have done it again: ‘Cereal Is Dope’. They also posted outtakes, which are better, for my money, especially “When you wake up the next morning, get a fucking job!” and “Instead of being racist, make a fucking keg of cereal.”

Finally, my bro’ unhemmed wrote a post about the indie rock forays of the “I’m from Barnsley”-style poet Simon Armitage, and the smugly self-deprecating “I’m from Northern Ireland”-style poet Paul Muldoon. And got a comment from Armitage’s band-mate. Bonus!

Coming up on GMS, maybe

’97 mentality: can we reach Exhibit Z by the end of 2007?

Los Campesinos live – if the BEER PALACE OF SWEET DELICIOUS CARLING BEER lets me in.

The Oxford English Dictionary … of ROCK

"one of the benefits of global warming and international terrorism"

another cracking pop video from richard hawley, for his "breezy" new single, 'serious', off lady's bridge.



to continue our trend, this is directed by a semi-famous tv and film chap (shane meadows this time), and has a concept tenuously reminiscent of a nice bit of comedy nonsense (this time alan partridge, trapped under a cow on the norfolk waterways).