December 2012 Archives

CHOOSE SIDES! MC Hammer’s Gangsta Rap Masterpiece “Pumps and a Bump”

Dec 032012

This ought to be easy. All you have to do is pick one of the two options laid out below, from one-time children’s action figure model and occasional televangelist MC Hammer.

As always, it helps your cause to list a reason or two for your preference.

Version A: Lots of gangsta ho’s eagerly shakin’ they booty — but be warned: the price of admission to Hammer’s pool party is never being able to un-see the MC’s wedding tackle, barely restrained by his tasteful, zebra-striped banana hammock. Believe me, he makes darn sure you never forget it.

Version B: No tits, no ass, and no Hammer-wang. But much better choreography!

So what’s it going to be? A or B?

I look forward to your responses.

HVB

Chooglin’?

Posted by ladymisskirroyale

Dec 032012

Keep on chooglin’!

Periodically, Mr. Moderator likes to use a vocabulary term that I don’t fully understand: “chooglin’.” In my best, earnest Honors English Student way, I’ve been doing research and trying to understand this term. I’ve been listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s song, “Keep On Chooglin’.” I’ve been looking on the web. I’ve been cross referencing musicology sources. I have been trying to overlook the definition included in the Urban Dictionary.

So…I’m understanding it like this: a rhythm like a train, a steady shuffling beat, a sexual swagger. But listening to the songs included in the WFMU list of other choogglin’ music, I’m left with even more questions. Is the emphasis on the 1 and 3 beats, or the 2 and 4? Does the tempo matter? Is this music that makes you want to shake your hips (Charlie Rich style)? There are certain songs that have a sort of train-tempo that I’m a complete sucker for (“Yin and Yang the Flower Pot Man” by Love and Rockets, “Snail Head” by Throwing Muses), but are THEY chooglin?

Help me, dear members of the Hall, to understand this term.

…So That By Confronting the Pain, We May End It: Charlie Rich

Posted by hrrundivbakshi

Dec 022012

Any therapist will tell you that a necessary step in reducing psychic pain from a traumatic event is to confront it, head on — or at least to acknowledge it happened, by describing it if possible. That principle forms the root of this, the first of a series of posts in which we gather together in a healing circle to group-confront an egregious example of poor Rock behavior that might otherwise leave us scarred.

I am a huge Charlie Rich apologist. Like my fandom for Rory Gallagher, I admit my desire to like his music is almost greater than the amount I actually like it— so I am thrilled when I discover a bit of audio or video that bolsters my opinion that the Silver Fox was a true country music maverick, a magnificent pop songwriter, and a closet Southern soul master of the highest order. On the flip side… well, when I found the video clip you see here, I felt a new level of pit open up in the pit of my stomach. It did more than humanize Rich: it cast him out of the musical heavens at the white-hot burning end of God’s own flaming sword, branding him charlatan.

I have been transfixed by this video since discovering it. I know it captures a performance when Rich was at the pinnacle of his fame — also a time when he was least happy, and most prone to hitting the bottle. (Oh, how I wish there was a clip out there of the CMA awards ceremony when Charlie, presumably stoned out of his gourd, set John Denver’s award for country music male entertainer of the year on fire.) And, Charlie Rich fans, please spare me your explanations about how the Silver Fox was a balladeer, and not an uptempo performer. The plain and simple fact is that this video destroyed a part of my soul. I need your help confronting it. I need your help discovering all the ways I’ve been hurt by this performance of “The Dance of Love” from 1975. So, tell me: what’s hurtful; what’s painful; what’s just downright wrong about this performance?

I look forward to your responses, and I look forward to this opportunity to bond and heal together.

HVB

Does Al Stewart Regret “Year of the Cat”?

Posted by cliff sovinsanity

Dec 012012

Early ’70s folk is one of my biggest “rock blind spots.” Hoping to better understand the movement I did a little reading and Googling. I was prepared to come across the usual suspects (Fairport, Pentangle, etc); however, while researching into the British side of the scene I learned that Al Stewart was a significant player of the times. Was this the same Al Stewart who I only knew through the plushy lite-rock hit “Year of the Cat”? A little more digging revealed that Stewart tried to distance himself from the success of the song as well as the Alan Parsons produced albums of the late ’70s .

Rueful??

His return to a purer folk style later in his career would find little favor with record buyers but for his die-hard fans. For his live shows he would either drop it from the set list or open the show with the song.

He isn’t the first artist to find success with a song they would rather forget or was not representative of their “true” sound. Yet, I feel he shouldn’t have to disown something that certainly pays the bills or brought attention to his other albums. On that note the stuff on Time Passages, despite its execution and decent melodies, sounds horribly dated.

If it was your song could you live with “Year of the Cat”?

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