Day: February 18, 2009

"You say the work is not good but see how much you're talking about it?"

...is not an argument! Sometimes it takes a lot of words to explain why an artwork is bad.

Wikipedia nerds tell it like it is:

The [Seattle] geography of [Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Posse on Broadway"] is quite specific, going north up Rainier Valley on Rainier Avenue S., then east to "23rd and Jackson," a major intersection in Seattle's traditionally black Central District or "CD," then cruising east to Martin Luther King Jr. Way S. where "the set looks kinda dead" so "we need a new street," then by "23rd and Union" (still in the CD, but northeast), and then to Broadway. "The college" is Seattle University near the south end of the Broadway commercial strip, from which they drive to Taco Bell at the north end, which "was closed" (a local joke, as that particular restaurant has a never-lit and wholly inaccurate "Open 24 Hours" sign built into the wall) so they "go back the other way" to Dick's Drive-In, a local fast food institution and, according to the song, "the place where the cool hang out."

Simon Reynolds on whether there will be a revival of mid-'80s bands. Don't know any of the ones he's talking about (from '83-'86 or current soundalikes). I switched to stations playing hiphop and classical in that period. To me the mid-'80s is the Smiths, pop-wise, which I didn't hear until '89 or so. This comment from "Chewtoy" made my ears perk up, though:

1983 - 1986 was the period of what NME's Chris Bohn (a.k.a. Biba Kopf) called "Hardcore", which was not so much a distinct style but an attitude. It included Nick Cave, Sonic Youth, the Butthole Surfers, Lydia Lunch, Henry Rollins, Flipper, Hüsker Dü, No Trend, and the complete roster of the Some Bizzare label and its K.422 sublabel: Einstürzende Neubauten, Test Dept., Psychic TV, Coil, Foetus, The Swans, Wiseblood, The The, Marc & The Mambas, Dave Ball, Cabaret Voltaire.

And then there were a whole bunch of experimental groups lumped together under the terrible misnomer "Industrial", such as Nurse With Wound, Current 93, Death in June, Zoviet France, Laibach, Greater Than One, Controlled Bleeding, Die Form, SPK, Lustmord, Muslimgauze, Bourbonese Qualk, the Anti Group, Severed Heads...

1986/1987 saw the emergence of the more danceable Electronic Body Music with bands like Front 242, Skinny Puppy, Nitzer Ebb, Renegade Soundwave and Meat Beat Manifesto.

Ahhh, that I can follow.

Update: A few of Reynolds' references are ringing a bell. Portion Control I learned about from the Mutant Sounds blog. I can't who remember who recommended the Wolfgang Press to me back in the day but I'm fairly I certain I never heard them before the YouTube video Reynolds links to. (It's not very good.)