When there’s lightning, you know it always brings me down….
It’s the interview you’ve been waiting your entire life to read. A few days ago, David Itzkoff interviewed the infamous Insane Clown Posse about all this attention they’ve been receiving lately. He delves right into all the fun that’s being made of them by basically the entire internet.
And you know what? They’re surprisingly good natured about the whole thing. When asked about Saturday Night Live’s lampooning of the Gathering of the Juggalos, they responded:
Shaggy 2 Dope, Insane Clown Posse: How can you be mad at “Saturday Night Live”? That’s what they do. They make parodies. They’re funny. That’s flattering, that you’re a large enough player in the game that “Saturday Night Live” even recognizes you.
Violent J: It felt incredible – like, wow, man, we’re on the radar.
You kind of expect them to be all pissed and up in arms about being made fun of so directly. But again, when asked about SNL’s Thrilla Killa Klownz parody of “Miracles”, they come right back and play the high hand.
Shaggy 2 Dope: I remember back in the day when Weird Al Yankovic did “Amish Paradise,” off Coolio’s “Gangsta Paradise.” Somehow Coolio got mad. If Weird Al wanted to do one of our songs, I’d be like, “Hell yeah.” To me, it’s the same thing with “Saturday Night Live.”
Violent J: When they did it again, I called my mom about that. It’s awesome.
And then again, when asked about my favorite question of theirs, “Fucking magnets, how do they work?!” they come back with an entirely reasonable, if not exactly enlightened, response.
Violent J: I know the stuff isn’t really miracles. I think we might have misused the word miracle. I think that might mean something that has happened with no explanation. These things we mentioned in the song, they can all be explained. But what we’re doing is appreciating them. Even the infamous line, “Magnets, how do they work?” I mean, yeah, we know how magnets work. But they’re still incredible. You can push something across the table without touching it. And as a kid, I found that fascinating. I still find that fascinating. [laughs]
Shaggy 2 Dope: Come on, a rock that pulls metal towards it or pushes it away? Yeah, it has to do with the magnetic polar caps and [stuff]. But for real? Come on, man. You’re just holding a U-shaped thing that pushes metal away or attracts metal or something. The North and South Pole makes a rock magnetic, and if you touch a piece of metal with it, that becomes magnetic? That’s crazy.
Amazing. Fucking amazing. Giraffes?
Of course, then there’s this gem.
Violent J: Songs like “Miracles,” they’re not new to ICP. We don’t restrict ourselves to just making murder songs. When we’re talking to the Juggalos, it’s not always about chop-chop, kill-‘em-up, you know? We’ve always done songs that we attempt to be meaningful and deep over our career.
You owe it to yourself to read the whole article here: Fools’ Gold: An Oral History of the Insane Clown Posse Parodies
Last night I was at The Belmont Lounge for my friend Dumaine’s birthday party. We arrived just a little after 8 right in the middle of some sort of unsigned R&B/hip hop artist showcase which sounded like an open mic, but wasn’t. Dumaine and his fye-ance Erika had reserved a table in anticipation of the friends who would eventually show up. A smart move, I think. We spoke to the hostess and got her to seat us at the table. Apparently, the woman running the showcase had placed some record company folks, whatever the HELL that means, at the table with the delicately lettered “Reserved” sign on it. When the hostess did her job and moved the record company folks to seat us, this woman raised a hell of a stink.
Instead of doing the right thing and saying, “Hey, you know, I know you have this table reserved and everything, but I would love for these folks to be able to see the rest of the show from here since I’d love for my performers to make some sort of deal with them. Would you mind if they stayed here?”
You know what we would have said? We’d have said, “Of course! No problem. There’s only three of us right now and we’d be happy to share the table for the remainder of the show.”
But, no. She had to pull the passive aggressive card and give us stink eye all night and bitch to the staff and call us out on the microphone. We were polite and didn’t let her bother us, because, really, what’s worse for people who are passive aggressive than to reply to them with straight positivity and politeness?
We sat and listened to the second half of the show. After 2 or 3 7 dollar Brooklyn Lager bottles (I know, right, what the fuck), I’m getting lost in my own head a little as all this not-very-good R&B blares through the bar. Conversation was impossible with the volume, so all I had was my own brain. Luckily, at this point, we’re friends.
I recognized that every song we heard was about how much the singer loved someone and how they either wanted to spend their lives with the other person or how they were the most beautiful in the world or how they wanted to take them home and sleep with them or whatever. You get it, I think. It was all hyperbole and adolescent descriptions of love and relationships. Kind of silly, really. Not realistic at all.
I got to thinking that it would be really awesome to do a song in the same style where the guy basically told the woman that she was all right, maybe a little annoying, but that he liked fucking her. That he didn’t want it to get too serious since he really couldn’t see them in a relationship. That he thought she was ok, but not really that great and, in the end, he didn’t care too much about her and that she’d probably be better off with someone who respected her. All of it sung in that “I can’t just hold a single note” style of modern R&B singers that I dislike so much. It’s like constant vocal gymnastics that seems to me more often cover up the fact that the singer’s not really hitting the note they’re trying to hit. Instead of just singing, they’re masking that they can’t sing. But whatever.
On the way in to work this morning I was thinking about the song still when I realized that I already KNEW a song like that. Funny, right? It took me 12 hours to process that the song I thought would be so funny pretty much exists. Here it is.
[audio:https://www.theblacklaser.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/Our-Love-Would-Be-Much-Better-If-I-Gave-A-Damn-About-You.mp3|artists=Dag|titles=Our Love Would Be Much Better (If I Gave a Damn About You)]Now, the Dag track isn’t quite exactly perfect, but it’s pretty close. Do any of you brilliant people out there have any songs like this? Let’s start a collection!
In a recent blog posting on his site, David Byrne (you know who he is, and if you don’t, please hit Apple-W or Ctrl-W right now) discusses some of his methods for collaborating with some of the most popular musicians of our time. St. Vincent? Check. Fatboy Slim? Check. Brian Eno? Check. TV on the Radio? Check. Seriously, it’s like a cool-kids listing of their iPod.
I am, personally, a big fan of collaborative efforts. As a filmmaker and a writer, I always prefer to work with other people. I find it easier to get things done when I’m responsible to another person. I also find that the process of just sitting and talking something out really helps me think of it in a new way. It’s like, by talking, I get to run it through a different part of my brain that processes the ideas differently than I can just by sitting and thinking or by outlining or making notes or whatever. In fact, that IS what is actually happening on a biomechanical level, but please let me maintain my self-delusion that my insides are a ball of glowing white light and not blood and guts and bone.
I also like that by working with someone else, you have to sort of bend to their desires and impulses and learn to fight only the battles that are important to you. Does Mikey W think the scene in the bar needs x, y, or z element? Do I disagree? Say I do, is it a battle worth fighting or should I save my efforts for something that is more important to me later? I do this all the time in the edit. You have a client or director who wants one thing and I want another. Sometimes I’ll go with their changes, but sometimes I’ll fight for what I think is a stronger cut. And I think this is an important part of that process and, typically, ends up with a better cut that either one of us would have come up with own our own.
It is interesting then to read when David Byrne, an artist who I respect a lot, echos these sentiments.
Why collaborate at all? One could conceivably make more money not sharing the profits — if there are any — so why collaborate if one doesn’t have to? If one can write alone, why reach out? (Some of the most financially successful songs I’ve ever written were not collaborations, for example.) And besides, isn’t it risky? Suppose you don’t get along? Suppose the other person decides to take the thing in some ugly direction?
Well, as I said earlier, one big reason is to restrict one’s own freedom in the writing process. There’s a joy and relief in being limited, restrained. For starters, to let someone else make half the decisions, or some big part of them, absolves one of the need to explore endless musical possibilities. The result is fewer agonizing decisions in the writing process, and sometimes, faster results.
Another reason to risk it is that others often have ideas outside and beyond what one would come up with oneself. To have one’s work responded to by another mind, or to have to stretch one’s own creative muscles to accommodate someone else’s muse, is a satisfying exercise. It gets us outside of our self-created boxes. When it works, the surprising result produces some kind of endorphin equivalent that is a kind of creative high. Collaborators sometimes rein in one’s more obnoxious tendencies too, which is yet another plus.
Neat, right? You can read the rest of the article here:
David Byrne – 03.15.10: Collaborations
And, because it’s great, here’s one of my favorite Talking Heads songs from what might be the best concert film ever made. Take that, The Last Waltz!
In a day when there were only two cores—hard and grind— and before anyone crabwalked their way through a music video, before there was a scene for which there could be hair, before anyone auto-tuned the clean vocals in their songs, Morbid Angel released an album called Domination. The year was 1995 and I was 13 years old. I had been listening to Morbid Angel for some time at this point. I owned 1989’s Altars of Madness and 1991’s Blessed Are The Sick, but it was their third album, 1993’s Covenant that was the important one. I have no idea how many times I’ve listened to this album, but it must be in the healthy triple digits. The count was probably into the triple digits when Domination came out in 95. It was right up there with Vulgar Display of Power and Chaos A.D.
I listened the living hell out of that record. In case you are somewhere around my age and are unfamiliar with Covenant but you were around to see Beavis & Butthead, then you might recognize this video.
Pretty killer song right?
I know it is.
And then Domination came out and for some reason I thought they’d gone soft on me. I was disappointed with the album and it never really enter heavy rotation the same way that Covenant had. The songs were weak and soft. They basically made a fucking pussy ass country record I thought. I felt betrayed, so Domination was lodged into the back of my brain as Morbid Angel’s failed mid-career attempt at selling out.
Then a few weeks ago, I decided I’d give their “new” record a shot. Of course, this was early 2010, 15 years after its release. Morbid Angel had released three records afterward, yet in my head, for whatever reason, Domination was still the “new” one. Weird how that happens.
And, wow. Was I wrong in my opinions of the album. Domination fucking SLAYS. Perhaps you’d be interested in hearing the song that pretty much convinced me that Morbid Angel had gone soft on this record? Here it is.
What the hell? Was I serious? Something in me thought that this wasn’t heavy enough? “Where The Slime Live” is an amazing song, yet 13-year-old Joe thought it was total pussy crap. I was an idiot! In all likelihood I still am!
In case the sample wasn’t enough, here are a couple more tracks from the record I had dismissed as not heavy enough.
[audio:https://www.theblacklaser.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/01-Dominate.mp3|titles=Dominate|Artists=Morbid Angel] [audio:https://www.theblacklaser.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/05-Nothing-But-Fear.mp3|titles=Nothing But Fear|Artists=Morbid Angel] [audio:https://www.theblacklaser.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/10-Inquisition.mp3|titles=Inquisition (Burn With Me)|Artists=Morbid Angel] [audio:https://www.theblacklaser.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/11-Hatework.mp3|titles=Hatework|Artists=Morbid Angel]Yeah. I know. Totally soft right?
I think I’ve proven myself here. If you’ve got some old records around that you maybe didn’t get into the first, give them a listen. You might be pleasantly surprised by what you hear.