The year was 1992, and the one and only Dr. Dre had just unleashed his debut studio album, The Chronic, upon a trembling nation. It announced the arrival of a producer extraordinaire and established the G-Funk rap subgenre in one masterstroke. The Chronic is considered essential

listening for hip hop aficionados and was even named #137 on Rolling Stone’s list of of the 500 all time greatest albums!

Now, like most rap records, it contains a healthy dose of salty language, and you might be inclined to turn down the volume when grandma walks in….

So, why do rappers use so many swears anyway? Well basically for 3 reasons:

1. It is essential to preserve the rapper’s badass cred.

2. It is an attempt to accurately reproduce the language of the streets.

3. It gives the listener (usually a 13 year old white kid in the suburbs) the feeling that he too, is a badass.

So whether you’re creepin’ wit your bro’s ho, or duckin’ shots from the po po, one thing is fo sho: the situation is more clearly described when rappers use the word “fuck”.

Now, the f bomb is all things to all people. Why not save some time and cut out all those unnecessary nouns, verbs and adjectives that clutter up an average rap song? Wait? What’s that? Someone apparently beat me to it!

A mischievous sound wiz known only as “Happy Hippo” hacked up the entire Chronic album leaving only the swears intact. The result was uploaded to YouTube by DJ Moneymaster and it can be heard in all its profane glory below:

Incredibly, the edit is available as a wav file at the following download location:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/mk2zdw2k1nm/The%20Chronic

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The band survives this scrutiny with music that can be frightening in its sincerity.

But out of all of the ‘Head’s gloomy tunes, could one actually stand out as the gloomiest? Yes! and frontman Thom Yorke singles out Street Spirit (Fade Out) from the album The Bends for this honor.

Yorke is quoted as saying:

“Street Spirit is our purest song, but I didn’t write it. It wrote itself. We were just its messengers; its biological catalysts. Its core is a complete mystery to me, and, you know, I wouldn’t ever try to write something that hopeless. All of our saddest songs have somewhere in them at least a glimmer of resolve. Street Spirit has no resolve. It is the dark tunnel without the light at the end. It represents all tragic emotion that is so hurtful that the sound of that melody is its only definition. We all have a way of dealing with that song. It’s called detachment. Especially me; I detach my emotional radar from that song, or I couldn’t play it. I’d crack. I’d break down on stage. That’s why its lyrics are just a bunch of mini-stories or visual images as opposed to a cohesive explanation of its meaning. I used images set to the music that I thought would convey the emotional entirety of the lyric and music working together. That’s what’s meant by ‘all these things you’ll one day swallow whole’. I meant the emotional entirety, because I didn’t have it in me to articulate the emotion. I’d crack…

Our fans are braver than I to let that song penetrate them, or maybe they don’t realise what they’re listening to. They don’t realise that Street Spirit is about staring the fucking devil right in the eyes, and knowing, no matter what the hell you do, he’ll get the last laugh. And it’s real, and true. The devil really will get the last laugh in all cases without exception, and if I let myself think about that too long, I’d crack.

I can’t believe we have fans that can deal emotionally with that song. That’s why I’m convinced that they don’t know what it’s about. It’s why we play it towards the end of our sets. It drains me, and it shakes me, and hurts like hell every time I play it, looking out at thousands of people cheering and smiling, oblivious to the tragedy of its meaning, like when you’re going to have your dog put down and it’s wagging its tail on the way there. That’s what they all look like, and it breaks my heart. I wish that song hadn’t picked us as its catalysts, and so I don’t claim it. It asks too much. I didn’t write that song.”

Jeez…For once, I’m all out of jokes…

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http://www.eternalmoonwalk.com

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Yes, the stage is a very small place indeed, only several square yards, and many an artist, in the throes of either sincere musical expression or affected posturing, lives life dangerously close to the edge.

From former presidential candidate Bob Dole to countless runway models and Miss USAs, it seems pretty clear that no amount of fame can keep you immune from the inexorable strength of that tyranical god–gravity.

Which leads us to the cringe-worthy videos below. I really don’t know why, but it is just hilarious to see famous people falling over!

However hot the girl is or howevermuch street cred the hardened rapper has, they are humanized in these moments which, thanks to modern technology, will steadily increase in YouTube viewcounts ad infinitum. If it were anyone else falling over, we’d be immediately concerned with their well-being, but for some reason, a celebrity’s physical “lowering”  to “the level” of “the groundlings”  is also an instantaneous social leveling which reveals a definite amount of envy mixed in with our adoration…

#1: Joaquin Phoenix falls off the Stage

Acclaimed actor Joaquin Phoenix made headlines after a bizarre Letterman appearance where his monosyllabic replies, bushy beard and budding rap career made him the butt of hollywood jokes. Some suspected a drawn-out publicity stunt, but this video shows Phoenix at one of his debut rap performances:

#2 Beyonce Falls off the Stage

The popular songstress ate it hard at this Orlando concert:

#3 Lil Wayne Falls off the Stage

Lil Wayne’s success is a sad commentary on the musical tastes of modern youth…but luckily the gods were so offended by his sonic outrages they snuck a karmic banana peel onstage….Wayne reportedly has $150,000 worth of diamonds attached to his teeth (not making this up) which surely saved the young rapper’s choppers from being knocked out during this spill:

#4 Metallica’s Jason Newstead falls in concert

Erstwhile Metallica bassist Jason Newstead has had a tough time of it. Recently replaced by Robert Trujillo and never quite able to step out of the shadow of original bassist Cliff Burton, Newstead had to endure being the “outsider” throughout Metallica’s most mainstream days. Here, falls onstage and hilariously continues playing as a sort of “i meant to do that” reflex:

#5 Jennifer Lopez’s Close Call

A conveyor belt + an elevated stage + J Lo anyone? But what sounds like the perfect storm for this post is sadly thwarted by the singer’s nimble recovery. (Although her massive gluteal cushion would likely have provided enough padding to prevent any injury…)

#6 The Jonas Brothers’ Repeated Falls

The Jonas Brothers’ saccharine-pop-rock stylings are clearly a form of noise pollution, and yet their clean cut looks and simple songs have fueled the unspeakable fantasies of a legion of pre-pubescent whitebread admirers.

As for falling onstage–the tween heartthrobs have done it so many times that a fan actually put together a compilation clip:

#7 Akon Oversteps His Bounds

Modern R&B juggernaut Akon’s voice  is as smooth as buttah. Unfortunately, so was the floor at at this concert:

#8 The Game Steps Up…and is Humbled

The rapper known as the Game appeard on the scene destined for success. He was after all, the product of the 50 Cent-Eminem-Dre hit factory, but his rhymes tended toward boasting about rims, his shoe collection and various shots out to mentors…

When watching this video, you could say the comeuppance of hubris has triumphed over streetwise braggadocio, but because the Game plays off the fall with just the right mix of charm and swagger, I wouldn’t call this one a total fail…

#9 John Petrucci’s Slide Guitar

John Petrucci’s soulless technical shred guitar work in Dream Theater has made him a fixture of the prog-speed metal underground. But his neither his lightning fast hands nor his metronome could have prepared him for the wiles of his arch-nemesis: a slippery floor:

#10 Mya Wipes Out

Faded R&B crooner Mya’s best performances may be behind her, but her behind’s best performances are clearly yet to come!

#11 Method Man Misses the Mark

Wu-Tang stalwart Method Man loses his balance, flails, then decides why fight it? He falls, yes, but it’s all good–his homies in the audience have literally “got his back”.

#12 Bonus Fall: Yes, A Horse!

The nauseating level of pretension at a fashion show is unquestionably the perfect location for a fall. But models tripping is passe…we need animals dammit! And here we have horse proudly strutting down the catwalk until…well, watch for yourself:

The best thing about this clip is how calm and collected the horse is compared to the hysterical onlookers. No embarrassed apology or awkward recovery here, just one chill, laid back steed…

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The vocals of many a death/gore band are a nearly indecipherable string of shrieks, snorts and belches which have earned songs featuring them the derisive nickname of “cookie monster” metal.

Never one to be outdone, the cookie monster himself can be seen in his metal video below

(featuring Bert & Ernie on drums):

A couple of bands have capitalized on these inhuman sounds by handing the vocal duties off to an actual animal! Enter Hatebeak, which I’m guessing is likely the only group in existence that is fronted by a parrot. “Waldo”, a Congo African Gray parrot takes the mic in wing and lets loose a stream of brutal, face melting vocals to a background of speedy guitar and double bass drumming. Hatebeak is an exemplar of the nascent “Feathergore” genre and the group has released a few albums including “Beak of Putrefaction”, “Bird Seeds of Vengeance” and of course, “The Thing Which Should Not Beak”.

Unlike a moody rockstar who trashes his hotel room and is always demanding, Waldo asks only for a handful of birdseed and that the newspaper in his cage be changed at regular intervals before he’s once again back on stage, ready to “rawk”. Clearly, for this bird, it is all about the music.

But Hatebeak had better watch out, for the competition is a bitch…literally. The grind metal band Caninus is fronted, by yes, you guessed it, a pooch! Well actually two. The pitbull terriers, and their owners (New York Band Most Precious Blood) have teamed up to create chaos that sounds like the hounds of hell!

Whew! This band is a beast!

Caninus exists partly to to raise awareness about cruelty to animals and to promote vegan causes. Check out the band’s site for more details.

Caninus official site:
http://www.pitbullgrindcore.com/

Hatebeak’s myspace page and above images:
http://www.myspace.com/beak666

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Remember those times when you heard a song and swore it sounded like another?

Well turns out you may have been right. Tunes often get recycled intentionally or unintentionally and turn up in another musician’s repertoire. It’s especially interesting when the song in question is popular or has reached cult status…..The following 4 songs are well known examples of “borrowing” which made these artists immortal.

Round 1: Nirvana’s “Come As You Are” VS. Killing Joke’s “Eighties”

The 1991 release Nevermind was a bold statement of angst and apathy that shook the music world to its very foundations. In one stroke, Kurt Cobain’s constipated moans and simple guitar riffage wiped away a decade’s worth of glam metal and eighties synth-pop. Plus, the album is really catchy and plays almost like a greatest hits collection. The song “Come As You Are” was the second single to be released, and contains a very distinctive riff which sets the mood of the song:

Maybe too distinctive? Several years before, British dance/punk band Killing Joke released as song called “Eighties” which contains an all too familiar riff:

Verdict: Yup, if you thought the similarity a little too strong to ignore, you’d be right. The members of Killing Joke claim that their song was ripped off, but they supposedly never filed a lawsuit for Cobain’s obvious “borrowing”.

Round 2: Jay-Z’s “Big Pimpin’” VS. Baligh Hamdi/ Abdel Halim Hafez’s “Khosara”

Think of the song Big Pimpin’ and what comes to mind? Oh yeah baby… the good life…a boatful of babes, gallons of Cristal poured out like so much piss, and debauchery on the high seas with none other than his royal Jigginess Jay Z!

Well, now think of the total opposite, because that distinctive melody that sounds like an Indian flute or a seagull being choked by strong hands is actually of Middle Eastern origin. Abdel Halim Hafez recorded composer Baligh Hamdi’s original song Khosara… and anyone can hear the obviously unchanged melody:

Verdict: Ok, this one is easy because no one is disputing that Timbaland stole sampled re-recorded Khosara for use in the album Volume 3…..Life and Times of S. Carter. The real issue is the possible copyright infringement that occurred. Jay Z, Timbaland and others have been hit with lawsuits regarding the song, but so far nothing has come of the matter…

Round 3: Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” VS. Spirit’s “Taurus”

Say it ain’t so! Could it be the most popular and successful song of all time is actually a ripoff! Is nothing sacred? Well I guess not…

The verses of Stairway are made of up a gentle set of chords which are required to be played by every beginning guitarist who walks into a guitar shop:

Now the band Spirit released the song Taurus a couple years earlier, and those same haunting chords clearly make their appearance.

Randy California, the writer of Taurus gave an interview to listener from which I’ll quote:

Listener: Speaking of Led Zeppelin, the guitar introduction to your 1967 composition, “Taurus,” is a dead ringer for Zeppelin’s introduction to “Stairway to Heaven,” released in 1971. Did they ever acknowledge their artistic debt to you? They must of known “Taurus,” having performed as your warmup band.

California: Well, if you listen to the two songs, you can make your own judgment. It’s an exact… I’d say it was a rip-off. And the guys made millions of bucks on it and never said, “Thank you,” never said, “Can we pay you some money for it?” It’s kind of a sore point with me. Maybe some day their conscience will make them do something about it. I don’t know. There are funny business dealings between record companies, managers, publishers, and artists. But when artists do it to other artists, there’s no excuse for that. I’m mad! [laughs]

Listener: Well, take comfort in the fact that you’re the true author of one of the most instantly recognizable guitar riffs in rock history.

California: Yeah, right…

Verdict:

There is just too much closeness in sound and timing of the release to ignore. Though Stairway is way better than Taurus, it owes its father a tip of the hat at least…(and a buttload of royalties….)

Round 4: Green Day’s “American Idiot” VS. Cho Young-Nam’s “Dosiyo Annyung”

American Idiot, the single, was released in 2004 to kick off the Green Day’s album American Idiot. The “punk-pop opera” was a melodious middle finger aimed squarely at “the man” and it showcased the band at the height of its powers.

But what’s that I hear? Is it a Korean businessman singing some Green Day karaoke after one to many shots of soju? No! It is Cho Young-Nam’s “Dosiyo Annyung”

Verdict: There’s no question here that the chord progression is nearly identical. A western listener (me) would go so far as to think Dosiyo Annyung is the Korean version of American Idiot. But undeniably, Cho Young-Nam’s song was released a full 3 years before Green Day’s. Does this mean GD are plagiarists? Well, no one knows, but the progression (chorus: C#5, G#5, D#5, G#5) is extremely common and made up of simple power chords (resonant partial chords commonly found in rock and metal guitar) so the whole thing could plausibly be a coincidence…

The moral of the story? Great artists steal! And stealing is good! And even if they don’t steal, there are only a finite number of notes and arrangements of those notes in the audible spectrum and duplication of patterns is inevitable! Where is part II of this post?! I haven’t compiled it yet! But stay tuned!

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Find a friend with explosive diarrhea, punch him in the stomach, and deftly catch the resultant  on a few black t-shirts. What do you get? Yes! The latest crop of illegible metal logos! AC’s first illegible metal logo post was really popular, so I thought I’d compile a second list of the finest, splattery examples of the art form.

Drawn from the cartoonishly twisted world of extreme metal, goregrind and related genres, these band logos try their best to hide their names from the viewer–after all, only sell-out bands have names that you can actually “read” or lyrics you can actually “understand”…..

Xasthur

Wolves in the Throne Room

Waking the Cadaver

Vomitory

Summoning

Sublime Cadaveric Decomposition

Spermswamp

Senthil

Nightbringer

Nagaroth

Methadone Abortion Clinic

Korgonthurus

Katharsis

Gutrot

Goat’s Ass Trumpet

Embryonic Depravity

Bosque

Bloodbath

Bestial Summoning

Abyssmal Nocturne

Be sure to check out Illegible Metal Logos Part I

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Can a Band Plagiarize Itself? This is the question posed to Nickelback, a Canadian quartet perhaps second only to Creed in the level of derision received by a sizable segment of rock fans.

The reasons cited range from the band’s image to their reliance on predictable, poppish creations that seem too well crafted for the mass market.

Nickelback’s biggest hit, This is How You Remind Me, reached the top of the charts in 2001. In 2003, the band struck gold again with Someday, a radio-friendly song which fueled the howls of the band’s detractors on account of its suspiciously familiar progression and structure.

A clever sound wiz mixed the two songs to prove this point, resulting in a hilarious exposure of NB’s underlying sonic formula.

The left speaker plays one song while the right plays the other simultaneously.

Here is the appropriately titled: This is How You Remind Me of Someday:

For comparison, below is the video for Nickelback’s This Is How You Remind Me:

And Someday:

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This one is an oldie but a goodie.

Led Zep’s Stairway to Heaven has been a core staple of classic rock for decades. The song and its famous solo frequently tops all-time popularity lists.

One day, someone discovered that a reversed portion of the song contained an apparently satanic message! If true, then it would be an example of backmasking, i.e. deliberately embedding a reversed message. However, the other option is far more likely–that the whole thing is just a conincidence.

Zeppelin’s guitarist Jimmy Page is a known fan of the occult and he had a strong interest in the writings of Alestair Crowley, so many feel the creepy and cryptic words are legit…What do you think?

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In his first book, the New York Times bestseller This is Your Brain on Music, Levitin explored the fascinating intersection of neuroscience and music. This book was a primer on the ways in which music and the human brain interact, bringing together a large amount of cutting edge research, much of which Levitin was himself involved in.

The World in Six Songs sings a similar tune, drawing upon anthropology, sociology, psychology, and neuroscience to show both how music evolved over centuries of human civilization and how it evolved us.

Levitin led an extraordinary life before reaching the hallowed halls of academia. He brings much of his past as both a musician and producer into his book giving it a unique perspective that straddles two very different fields. A cognitive psychologist by training, Levitin runs the laboratory for Music Perception, Cognition, and Expertise at Montreal’s McGill University. He had previously dropped out of college to pursue life as a musician, and once he achieved a measure of success came back to academic life, earning his Ph. D.

The World in Six Songs is the latest in a series of books that chronicle and correlate neuroscientific discoveries, bringing a somewhat obscure field to a wider public audience. These books, the most recent of which include Jonah Lehrer’s Proust was a Neuroscientist and Oliver Sacks’s Musicophilia aim to explore a subset of this genre: the convergence of science and art on the playing field of the mind. Levitin’s place in the scientific community is similarly built on a foundation of art: “I’ve come to see art and science as occupying two ends of a continuum that wraps around on itself like a circle, so that the two meet at a common point.” Unfortunately, the lofty goal of relating the two that Levitin sets himself in writing this book proves to be a bit out of reach.

Though engaging for the most part, The World in Six Songs runs into major difficulties in almost every section. Levitin’s approach to writing introduces the topic anecdotally to gain the readers interest before exploring neuroscientific research findings and examples from life that corroborate his central argument. However, Levitin often meanders a bit too far in his anecdotes which, though unquestionably drawn from an interesting life, are only incidental to the main thrust of the book.

In the chapter on “Friendship” songs, Levitin describes his personal journey through sixties and seventies antiwar protests. He spends nearly twenty pages depicting his feelings as they related to the larger antiwar zeitgeist that took over many Americans at the time. This account is emotionally charged as Levitin finds long-sought closure (while standing in a hotel room where John Lennon himself had staged a protest) for the unnecessary deaths of important figures like Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, the Kent State massacre victims, as well as his own grandfather. While fascinating, this section of the book is only thinly related to Levitin’s six song thesis. He makes his point that protest songs brought people together in the friendship of a common goal, but uses an excessive amount of autobiography in lieu of science.

In fact at several other points in the book, it is as though Levitin takes his idea too far by drawing vast, evolutionary scale conclusions from more straightforward songs about heartbreak. While discussing Marvin Gaye’s “Heard It Through the Grapevine,” Levitin describes how the subject of the song whose girlfriend is cheating on him is actually encoding a useful adaptive message to the species: “it is maladaptive in the long run for a male…[to be] tricked into sharing his resources with a child that is not his.”

Though Levitin bandies about ideas of how music affected evolutionary thinking, this is not always revolutionary thinking. The sum of his arguments doesn’t lead the reader to a new way of looking at human nature and music, but rather provides a few interesting conversation pieces. Though fascinating, his personal stories seem more like padding than support. His correlations between evolution and music come off as more speculation than reason. In fact, much of the book seems like mere homage to a lifelong iPod playlist with only infrequent attention-grabbing science.

Though his aim may wander, Levitin’s writing style is always clear and concise. His anecdotes are interesting on a personal level and the scientific discoveries he explores are easy to swallow even if his thesis isn’t. His enthusiasm and admiration for his subject are so palpable that the reader will certainly feel an intense liking for Levitin the musician-scholar, and will eagerly wish him success – the next time around.

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