All The Dirt That’s Fit to Print

Last night I convinced my wife we had to watch the new Mötley Crüe biopic The Dirt on Netflix . I think I might owe her two hours of her life back.   Now don’t get me wrong, when I was 10-15 years old I was a huge Mötley Crüe fan and even saw them on their Girls, Girls, Girls tour.  Both my wife and I read the book the movie was based on because let’s face it: The Crüe might be one of the greatest guilty pleasures from the 80’s we can all agree upon.

Having read the book and watched the trailer for the movie it’s not like we didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into.  The recent spat of successful “music-themed” movies like Boyz in The Hood, Bohemian Rhapsody, A Star Is Born, and the soon-to-be-released Elton John pic Rocketman (pretty much guaranteed to be a hit) has the public ripe for rock nostalgia.  Enter Mötley Crüe’s 80’s LA Glamy Cock Rock.  I am a sucker for most any music doc/movie/parody.  The problem is, The Dirt isn’t a parody but it certainly comes off like one. Kind of like Mötley Crüe themselves.

First, let me defend the Crüe for a moment.  Like them or not, they were/are a hugely successful hard rock band that sold millions of records, “fucked a lot of chicks”, and even wrote some music.  Nikki Sixx, the band’s leader/bassist/songwriter, has always seemed like one of those rock stars you kinda want to hate (and usually do) but if you met him you’d probably be like, “you know, he’s actually not that bad.”  And he did write some pretty solid pop-rock songs.  Even if you despise this band you probably already know some of the legendary rock star mythos that makes up a good chunk of the film: the Tommy Lee/Pamela Anderson’s Sex Tape (not actually addressed in the movie), Nikki Sixx OD’ing on heroin (twice) and dying-then-coming-back-to-life, Vince Neil killing someone in a drunken car crash (and only doing 15 days in jail) and having his young daughter tragically die of cancer, or Mick Mars just being weird (and having a horrible spinal disease and seemingly being the only one in the band with any sense of ethics or morals).  There is so much back story with this band they could have made an entire series about them.  Thankfully for us they didn’t, bro.

Now, let’s talk about the movie a little bit.  This is not really a review/critique of the movie itself because it was a “fun watch” but by no means a good movie.  Considering that the script was probably written in crayon the actors did the best they could with what they had.  Whether it be the bad lip syncing, the overly emotive Nikki Sixx storyline, Tommy Lee’s ridiculous bro-dude-ness, or the ever-so-sour Mick Mars, none of these guys are likable and certainly not characters you’d root for.  I suppose the one good thing the story has going for it is that the band play both pro and antagonists at the same time. Convenient.  Also convenient is how the movie quickly glides over the more scandalous elements of their story like Tommy Lee’s domestic assaults on various women/arrests, Nikki Sixx’s in-retrospect-maybe-I-did-rape-a-girl-once realization, or the trail of broken homes these guys left behind in the name of “rock and roll, dude!” (somewhat addressed via an interesting casting of Pete Davidson as an Elektra Records company lackey who’s only main purpose is to be cuckolded while trying to keep the bands career afloat).

There is nothing new here in terms of the biopic tropes: band forms, band has early struggles, band breaks through and hits it big, band lives the dream, the dream falls apart as a result of egos, drugs, money, band breaks up, band finally realizes how import the “family” is, band reforms and live happily ever after.  Sort of.  It’s not too far off from Henry Hill’s story that Good Fellas is based on except instead of slick gangsters the Crüe come off like a bunch of over-sexed narcissists.

It’s hard to forget in this day and age just how debaucherous the LA music scene was during the late 70’s – late 80’s.  Being that Mötley Crüe were one of the biggest bands to come out of that scene it makes sense that this movie would at least be entertaining and green lit for public consumption.  To many, bands today are too safe/PC, too “un-fun” and unwilling to embrace the rock star lifestyle.  “We need to put on a show” Nikki tells the band early on.  He’s not wrong, and they do put on quite a spectacle.  The show gets out of hand, both on and off stage, and watching the train-wreck is engaging enough until the moment you realize just how deplorable these guys are.  That is, if you can see past all the fake cocaine, booze, and heroin that is onscreen as much as the band members themselves.

Mötley Crüe live on in many peoples lives as a representation of what hard rock music was like “back in the day” when bands were fun and truly did live by the sex, drugs, and rock and roll ethos.  The problem is, in 2019, it’s hard to watch this type of behavior and not feel embarrassed for the now 50-something members of the band, or more-so, their kids.  In the early and mid-80’s when Mötley Crüe and Van Halen ruled the charts with their fun party rock style almost everyone was on board with it (after all, this wasn’t too long after Led Hammer of the Gods Zeppelins run as the most mythicized party band in the world).  No one in the band was thinking about how it was going to look when the bio pic came out 30 years later.  But maybe they should’ve.  Then again, if they did, then we wouldn’t have the joy of watching a behind-the-scenes peak into one of the most hedonistic and unintentionally funny (and tragic) bands of the era.

 

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Star Man Fades to Black: David Bowie’s Brilliant Final Album

Amid the frantic beats, atmospherics, and saxophones playing tug of war on the title track that opens the new David Bowie album Blackstar, about halfway through the 10-minute track most of the sound clears and Bowie sings “Something happened on the day he died, spirit rose a meter and stepped aside; Somebody else took his place, and bravely cried.”

Released on his birthday and just two days before his death, Blackstar is dizzying and exciting and strange and oddly cool and I thought all those things even before he died. But now it’s a little more difficult to hear him wailing “good-byyyyyyye” as the reverb increases and the star man sounds like he’s floating back into space or heaven or wherever he was just visiting from.

Secrets are hard kept in the modern age, and yet somehow Bowie could spend months working on a new album with a small group of people and the rumors never leaked. He stunned the world in 2013 when he suddenly had a brand new (and quite rocking) album, The Next Day. It seemed amazing, even a few years ago, that a major artist could be at work and finished with an album without the world hearing any rumors or news about it (let alone a leaked copy of the actual album). It didn’t hurt that it was a well-received return to form, a rare feat a full 10 years after his previous album.

He came close to pulling it off again, but in 2015 it looks like he chose to give the world a few months’ notice that he’d employed a New York City jazz band to back him on a very diverse record to be released January 8, on his 69th birthday.

And just as we were in the midst of unpacking this complex and interesting new album, Bowie was gone.

The world mourns online and it is one of the bittersweet and ironic advantages of the internet: we can all be together when we’re all alone and sad about the passing of a true artist. And among the inevitable retweets of clueless teenagers asking “who tf was david bowie?” there were countless tributes and notes of sadness, as well as attempts at joy (like this, from Dean Podestá @jesuisdean: “If you’re sad today, just remember the world is over 4 billion years old and you somehow managed to exist at the same time as David Bowie.”) Others commented that Bowie left such a huge void, as if an entire color was now gone from the universe. (Here’s a great collection of newspaper/magazine covers mourning the loss.)

One thing made clear this morning: Even if you don’t care about Bowie, you know your favorite artist does very deeply.

— Steven Hyden (@Steven_Hyden) January 11, 2016

I wasn’t a huge Bowie fanatic; I liked pretty much all his hits, knew some of his albums, saw him in concert once, and I understood his significance and influence in rock music and popular culture. And I’m probably one of the people that loved his first Tin Machine album. But even beyond the music, Bowie made being “weird” or just being yourself (and shattering such labels as “weird”) something to aspire to. Funny that there was a time when a kid could get beat up for liking David Bowie. But we don’t live in a world like that anymore, thanks in part to David Bowie. It’s okay to be yourself. It’s okay to be different.

He didn’t just predict the future, he helped us get here.

Thanks a Bunch Bin Laden

Warning, this is long. If you only have the tolerance to read 140 characters or less you may want to skip to the end where you will find the TL;DR.

In the interest of self improvement I recently decided to take a digital photography course.  For the last ten weeks I have been learning the ins-and-outs of digital photography. While I have always had an interest in photography and picture taking I wanted to learn more about using a camera. More specifically I have wanted to make the jump from shooting on iAuto mode to shooting in the ever intimidating Manual mode. Just a few short weeks into the class, I was already more comfortable with shooting in Manual mode, so much so that my camera is never on any other setting, ever.

What are you taking a picture of there?

One of the fun aspects of the course has been shooting weekly assignments. Every week the instructor would give assignments and each of the students were left to their own devices to fulfill the requirements. First assignment, we shot flowers. The flower assignment was easy enough. How could it be difficult, shoot some flowers and share them with the class. Next up, portraits. Again, cake assignment. Snap some pictures of people’s faces. Boom, boom, boom. Done. After finishing up the first few weeks of the course I felt pretty confident in my abilities as an amateur photog. Give me a concept to shoot and I am creative enough to come up with something that will both fulfill the assignment and give it a certain flair to make it my own.

All was well as I made my way through the course work and then came the ‘Urban/Landscape’ assignment. Undaunted by the challenge I set out to capture some images that consisted of my take on ‘Urban/Landscape.’ How difficult do you think it could be? Shoot some pictures of buildings, water fountains, city parks and the homework is done. Right?

The Boy Who Cried Roots

The Roots' Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson and Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter. Photo by Chago Akii-bua.

At some point, “The new Roots album is really good” became a cliché we’ve been taking for granted since the release of their fourth album, things fall apart, in 1999. They’ve since dropped six more gems, some better than others, but all so consistent and at times stunning in their quality that we’ve just become immune, desensitized, and unappreciative. Oh, yea… The Roots have a new album. I heard it’s really good.

Every other year I find myself telling this friend or that about how great the new Roots album is, stressing its brilliance and begging to be taken seriously… feeling like the boy who cried wolf, except I’ve never lied.

Their legendary live shows, their solid canon of classic studio albums, their recent high-profile gig as house band for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon… the bar has been set pretty high. And yet with each new release, as they continue to sail over that bar and raise it higher and higher, we shrug our shoulders and nod our heads and put The Roots on our year-end best-of lists and that’s that.

Since 1999’s things fall apart spawned the hit “You Got Me,” the Roots have quietly blessed us with a run of albums that could rival others entire careers, starting with the wildly eclectic Phrenology (what I call their White Album in how experimental and psychedelic it is) and continuing through The Tipping Point, Game Theory and Rising Down. These four albums over six years seemed to come and go, pure genius being ignored right out in the open.

Then in 2010 came How I Got Over, a late-career classic. A “mature” hip-hop album that was still a banger, it was universally hailed as a masterpiece (and yet still probably shrugged off as “another great Roots album”). With their killer collab album with John Legend, Wake Up!, released on its heels that same year, I assumed How I Got Over might be their last album for a quite a while…  And then at the end of 2011, bam!, they hit us with undun. And once again, they’ve outdone even themselves.

As the press releases and subsequent reviews have said, undun is “an existential re-telling of the short life of one Redford Stephens (1974-1999),” a loose-narrative concept album told in reverse about the death of the fictional struggling everyman from the hood. It starts with the flat-line beep sound of his death and then goes back to tell the story of ghetto inevitability.

After countless listens on repeat, I don’t see (or hear) it as “told in reverse,” as much as it seems circular. You can come in at any point and pick it up. It’s like a classic movie on cable, like Goodfellas, where no matter what part is on when you find it, you feel compelled to watch the rest even though you know how it ends. And when the instrumental suite that closes the CD ends…. it starts again with the flat-line beep, and before you know it you’re circling around for another turn with this all-too-familiar American tale of desperation and destiny… like the endless cycle of lives trapped along the poverty line.

To catch a thief, who stole the soul I prayed to keep
Insomniac, bad dreams got me losing sleep
I’m dead tired, my mind playing tricks, deceit
A face in the glass, unable to admit defeat
All that I am, all that I was is history
The past unraveled, adding insult to this injury
I’m fighting the battle for the soul of the century
Destiny is everything that I pretend to be
Look, and what I did came back to me eventually
The music played on, and told me I was meant to be awake
It’s unresolved like everything I had at stake
Illegal activity controls my black symphony
Orchestrated like it happened incidentally
Oh, there I go, from a man to a memory
Damn, I wonder if my fam will remember me

That’s the very first verse we hear from Black Thought. If I decided to quote any more of his brilliant one liners and verse-long portraits, it would fill this whole post. Just go read them, or better yet, submerge yourself in this record and hear a lyrical master at work, in both writing and delivery. His basic style/flow may have been birthed by the legendary Rakim a generation ago, but Black Thought absolutely belongs in any type of “Top 5 MC’s of All Time,” list/argument you want to make. He might not have the cultural impact of Tupac or Biggie; He’s been around for close to 20 years on record, but he’s not quite a pioneering legend like Chuck D or KRS-One; he’s not as flashy as Nas, Eminem, or Andre 3000. And while he’s undoubtedly benefited from the beats, production and leadership of ?uestlove, it’s also possible that Black Thought’s “legacy” is diminished cuz we just hail them as The Best Hip-Hop Group (by a mile) and we never quite give BT his due. Taken for granted once again.

On this latest album, Black Thought is so concise, as plain spoken yet creative with his wordplay and metaphors as ever. Anchored by a revolving door of guest MC’s led by veteran Roots role player on the mic Dice Raw, Black Thought gets the most out of every line, no words are wasted, every rhythmic turn and lyrical phrasing complementing the beat as if it was actually part of ?uestlove’s drum kit.

One of the most interesting recent quotes I read from Black Thought was about his serious approach to the writing:  “Everything you hear me saying on this record is at least the fourth or fifth draft. I would write a verse and then rewrite it and rewrite it. I don’t sit down and write a song, and then slam down the phone like, ‘We got another one!’ and pop some champagne. It’s like if someone’s writing a novel: You write a series of drafts.”

Like a great American novel, I hope that after all the accolades and Grammy nominations and glowing blog reviews, we all remember this incredible album, this snapshot of a society crumbling… with too many people “face down in the ocean, and no one’s in the lighthouse,” and too many others too busy watching the throne.

Compared to it’s predecessor, undun is sonically stark, but still extremely effective. Musical storytelling that paints pictures behind the stunning verses. If they’d never sent out the blurbs about this being a “concept album,” we still would have picked up on the cinematic vibe. It’s like the kind of movie that makes you fall in love with movie making again. And while this particular one has sadly played out in American streets over and over again, undun will still be worth revisiting and repeating for years to come.

Undun is not just “another great Roots album,” (though it is that). It reminds you that albums are an art form and luckily artists like the Roots are still making them.

My Brush with Death, A PSA for All of You

So far, today has been interesting. Just to catch you up to speed, the furnace in my apartment has been having trouble with the pilot light in that it won’t stay lit. As a favor to my landlord I offered to work from home today and let the repairman into my place and so he complete the repair.

When he arrived I showed him the furnace and told him that I think the thermal coupler was probably the culprit. After offering my analysis regarding the cause of the furnace’s state of disrepair I was quick to tell him that he shouldn’t take my word for it since all of the knowledge I possess  regarding boilers can fit on one side of a cocktail napkin.  James, the repair man, gave a couple of attempts at lighting the pilot light and low and behold my diagnosis of the problem turned out to be correct.  I love it when I sound handymanly.

If you want a small part of your soul to die…

then watch this.

You just couldn’t turn away from those vapid, pubescent succubi, could you?

Souls don’t come back, asshole. No refills for you!

Sheer Athletic Prowess

Behold this shit!  People try to act like I got no game when it comes to some motherfuckin’ round ball. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

In an effort to shut the mouths of all the naysayers I am putting this display of basketball greatness on the internets for the world to see.  Yeah that’s right, I am taking this shit global son!  Let all of the doubters be told the truth through motherfuckin’ ones and zeros.

I present to you…

A Yelp Review

I give this post 1.5 stars. No where is there any mention of side boob.

Living in a society that allows individuals the right to express themselves is something our country’s founders felt was inalienable. One thing that the internet has provided the masses is a chance to express their opinions, thoughts and beliefs.  On it’s face the concept of providing a platform for everyone to share their voice is a positive thing.  In the virtual world of the internet both the like minded and ideologically divided can come together and engage in debates freely and without fear of reprisal from those with opposing viewpoints.

As I previously mentioned, on the surface this is a good thing.  However, as inherent as the likes of Jefferson and Franklin believed free expression as a good thing, I have to say I am not so certain.  It is one thing to debate politics across the ether of the internets in hopes of convincing your ideological counterpart to change their mind, but where I draw the line is when it is no longer debating but simply commenting on something for the sake of being able to re-read the words you wrote in some sort of publication.

What could I be talking about?  Simple, yelp.  This website represents everything that I feel is wrong with giving everyone a voice.  If you are not familiar with yelp.com feel free to give it a go and read some user reviews about service-based businesses across the globe.  Looking for a quiet place to grab a cocktail in Lisbon, check yelp.  Are you dying for some great seafood and you live in Des Moines, Iowa?  Go ape shit all over yelp because apparently there are folks in Des Moines that feel that Waterfront Seafood Market Restaurant in West Des Moines is the shit.  Don’t believe me, google that shit because at least one individual there believes that the CLAM chowder and coconut SHRIMP is fantastic.  Why the CAPS?  Maybe it is because I have difficulty believing clams and shrimp being served in a land locked state such as Iowa are all that fresh.

I am totally up ended

Contributor’s Note:  Yes I have been drinking so if there are spelling and grammatical errors well then you can lick the sensitive area between my scrotum and penis.

Allow me to say that I usually do not post this late on a Friday night.  Tonight is an occasion that I will make an exception.

Earlier this evening I visited my favorite watering hole and as it turns out I happened to offend one of the servers that works there.

At this point I sort of want to keep my anonymity but, fuck it.  The bar I  frequent is a bar in the Washington DC neighborhood of Mt. Pleasant.  Tonic is the bar and anybody that knows me knows that you can find me there on some nights. It is close and if I feel like drinking I don’t have to worry about how I get home, it is two blocks from my apartment.

For the most part my visits to Tonic are relatively uneventful. However, tonight I managed to offend one of the servers. The issue at hand revolves around a comment I made.  In typical bar type discussion I made the following statement, “Michelle Malkin needs it up the two hole.”