Videos – Roy Christopher

May 18, 2015

Black Milk: Never Dated

Black Milk is both one of Detroit’s dopest producers and one of its best emcees. I’ve been saying for years now that, as dudes who do double duty in the studio, Black Milk and Cadence Weapon succeed where Kanye West fell off. That’s not to make it a zero-sum game. It’s just to say that when it comes to beat-makers on the mic, Black Milk is “here to save the game like a memory card.”

Black Milk was born when new wave music was at its very peak. To wit, The Police played New York’s Shea Stadium right around the time Milk was joining the populous of Detroit, Michigan. He started out in music loading in gear and then banging out beats for Slum Villiage. Influenced by the sounds of The Native Tongues, DJ Premier, J. Dilla, Pete Rock, and I dare say New Wave, his first solo joints, 2005’s Sound of the City (Music House) and 2006’s Broken Wax (Fat Beats) made promises that 2007’s Popular Demand (Fat Beats) and 2008’s Tronic (Fat Beats) delivered on. He’s since worked with Danny Brown, Canibus, Proof, Pharoahe Monch, GZA, KRS-One, Buckshot, Big Pooh, Bun B, Pete Rock, Guilty Simpson, Ruste Juxx, Black Thought, and Jack White, among many others. In addition, along with Guilty Simpson and The Mighty Sean Price, Black Milk is a member of the hip-hop power trio, Random Axe.

Album of the Year, so named because it dropped almost exactly a year after Tronic‘s release, is a mixed bag in the best possible way. Black Milk’s production thrives on a blend of jarring elements that ease the edges of each other. Case-in-point and one of my favorite Milk tracks, “Deadly Medley,” featuring Royce da 5’9″ and Elzhi, is a hectic blend of twangy, barely tuned guitars, insistent airhorns, big, booming drums, and some of the best lines of late (e.g., track underdog, Elzhi’s saying, “Pockets go green like it was Earth Day/ That’s why I blow cake like it’s my birthday”).

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Black Milk builds the best of both by boldly releasing instrumentals and touring with his live band, Nat Turner. His 2013 record, No Poison, No Paradise (Fat Beats/Computer Ugly), showed a deeper shade of soulful darkness. It’s more introspective but no less inventive. “I feel like that album was me reinventing myself,” he tells Darcy McDonald of Cult Montreal, “whether for the fans that already knew about my catalogue beforehand, or if you weren’t that familiar with my music, you were kind of introduced to a version of Black Milk that’s totally different from what I started out with. It’s a more personal album, a more conceptual album. So I think it was, more so, me reinventing myself as an artist, and definitely as a writer.”

Late last year, Milk released If There’s a Hell Below (Fat Beats/Computer Ugly), possibly his last solo effort for a while. “I’m about to jump into a Random Axe album with Guilty and Sean Price,” he says. “For the next year or couple of years, I’m gonna try to focus more on production and beats versus solo rap albums. So over the next year or so, you’re gonna hear some different artists over the top of my production.”

Black Milk and I were supposed to talk a few years ago, but I got the times mixed up and missed him. Phone lag. Maybe it’s for the best. In the studio or live on the mic, Black Milk makes music that exists outside of timezones.

March 23, 2015

Scanning the Skies for Daylight Deities

Belief in aliens is often used as a trope on television and movies to signify instability or insanity. The hundreds of accounts available consist largely of unverifiable evidence and arguments that are shaky at best. Many of the reporters of alien phenomena seek to find them. Their seeking is “wishful thinking” in the words of Carl Jung (1964, p. 69). Yet, in his one book on the subject, Jung (1978) admits that “a purely psychological explanation is illusory, for a large number of observations point to natural phenomenon, or even a physical one” (p. 132). “Something is seen, but we don’t know what,” he adds (p. 136). The witnesses fall into a few distinct categories: those prone to fantasy and self-delusion (of course), those who are awake and outdoors at odd hours (security staff and police officers), and those attuned to the skies (pilots and air traffic controllers). My dad is one of the latter:

Me: How long have you been working in air traffic?

Dad: 43 years total.

Me: Have you ever seen a UFO?

Dad: Not that I can document, but I’ve seen a couple of things I had no other explanation for other than maybe a reflection of light.

I want to believe.

The best way to prepare for the future is to keep an eye on the sky. That’s where everything else is not. Meanwhile, information pours invisibly across its friendly expanse, and it is up to us to absorb as much of it as our systems can tolerate. — Ted Mooney’s Easy Travel to Other Planets

The descriptions in the many reports I’ve read seem either embellished or evasive, imbued with insistence depending on how much the witness wants to believe. There’s just no way to tell if anyone has actually seen anything. The very designation “unidentified flying object” is so ambiguous as to be nearly useless. The Condon Report (1969), the culmination of all of the Air Force’s investigations into so-called sightings (e.g., Project Sign, Project Grudge, Project Blue Book, etc.), defines a UFO as follows:

An unidentified flying object is here defined as the stimulus for a report made by one or more individuals of something seen in the sky (or an object thought to be capable of flight but seen when landed on earth) which the observer could not identify as having ordinary natural origin, and which seemed to him [sic] sufficiently puzzling that he [sic] undertook to make a report of it… (p. 9).

In filing the report, one is saying that the sighting was “sufficiently puzzling” enough to file the report. It’s not so much defining what a UFO is as it’s defining what filing the report means. The Air Force either took the reports seriously enough or just received so many of them that they had to make them the subject of several official projects. Ex-Project Blue Book member Fritz Werner (not his real name) said in an interview that Blue Book existed because the Air Force “was getting too much publicity and there were too many people, other than official people seeing things and reporting them” (quoted in Randle, 1995, p. 58).

Some such reporters, as in the case of cults like Heaven’s Gate, build religions around their search for truth. Balch and Taylor’s germinal 1976 Psychology Today article “Salvation in a UFO” describes Heaven’s Gate members as “metaphysical seekers”: “Before joining [Heaven’s Gate], members of the UFO cult had organized their lives around the quest for truth. Most defined themselves as spiritual seekers” (p. 60).

In Heaven’s Gate: America’s UFO Religion (NYU Press, 2014), Benjamin E. Zeller concurs. In and out of other such groups before settling with Heaven’s Gate, the founders and members could all be described as seekers. Zeller’s study of his subject is through religious scholarship. Contra the media’s reports of Heaven’s Gate’s mass suicides in March of 1997, Zeller writes, “Heaven’s Gate emerged out of two theological worlds: Evangelical Christianity and the New Age movement, particularly the element of the New Age movement concerned with alien visitation and extraterrestrial contact. The movement’s leaders and members certainly drew from a broad array of influences, including secular ufology, science fiction, and conspiracy theories, in addition to their religious influences. Yet ultimately the group’s theology was a Christian one, as read through a New Age interpretive lens” (p. 65). The New Age aspect included the belief that in synchronized suicide, they were to board a UFO following the Hail-Bopp comet to salvation.

Where Jung saw the UFO phenomenon as seekers longing for a more complete life, Michael Heim (1998) sees it as “technology sickness” (p. 182). Heim (1993) posited Alternate World Syndrome (AWS): The switching between virtual and real worlds highlights the merging of technology with the human species, an extremely alien feeling we have yet to assimilate. It’s the ontological jet lag that comes from visiting or envisioning another, alien world. Heim (1998) writes, “The fascination and pain of the UFO phenomenon shows us only the first glimpse of our ultimate merger with technology” (p. 197).

From merging with technology to escaping the end of the world, The Secret Space Age (Adventures Unlimited Press, 2014) tells the story of a parallel space program bent on abandoning Earth before the Apocalypse. The book follows the controversy behind Alternative Three (1977), a film that supposedly shows the development of alternative settlements on the Moon and Mars. Written with the language and excitement of a senior thesis, The Secret Space Age is a fun romp through conspiracy theories of all kinds. It’s less about aliens coming here and more about our leaving. As Michael Heim (1998) puts it, “What a thrill to feel the tug of war on the thin thread of shared belief!” (p. 174). A tug of war indeed: Out for some person-on-the-street verisimilitude on the reported sightings at O’Hare International in 2007, WGN Reporter Juan Carlos landed a minute and a half with this seeker of truth:

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References:

Balch, Robert W. & Taylor, David. (1976). Salvation in a UFO. Psychology Today, 10(5), 58-60.

Heim, Michael. (1993). The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality. New York: Oxford University Press.

Heim, Michael. (1998). Virtual Realism. New York: Oxford University Press.

Jung, Carl G. (1964). Man and His Symbols. New York: Bantam.

Jung, Carl G. (1978). Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Mooney, Ted. (1981). Easy Travel to Other Planets. New York: Ballantine Books, p. 74.

Philips, Olav. (2015). The Secret Space Age. Kempton, IL: Adventures Unlimited Press.

Randle, Kevin D. (1995). A History of UFO Crashes. New York: Avon Books.

Zeller, Benjamin E. (2014). Heaven’s Gate: America’s UFO Religion. New York: NYU Press.

November 7, 2014

Clay Tarver: Gone Glimmering

I first came across Clay Tarver in the very early 1990s. His guitar playing drove two of my favorite bands back then: Bullet LaVolta and Chavez. The former was, like a lot of the bands of the time, a hybrid of punk, metal, and some third strain of rock that was brewing but had yet to boil. I noticed producer Dave Jerden’s name on the back of several CD jackets in and near my player: Mother’s Milk, Nothing’s Shocking, Facelift, Symbol of Salvation, and Swandive. Swandive (RCA), Bullet LaVolta’s last proper record, came out the same day as Nirvana’s Nevermind (DGC), September 24, 1991. They broke up not long after.

Clay Tarver

Tarver’s next band, Chavez, recorded two of the best records of the decade, both of which sound as firm and fresh now as they did then. Gone Glimmering (1995) and Ride the Fader (1996) helped Matador Records maintain a hand in the choke-hold on the decade-defining sound (The other hand belonged to Sub Pop). Along with Matt Sweeney’s lilting vocals, it was Tarver’s guitar that formed that sound. I’ve always considered him among players whose guitar sound is their band’s identity. Think John Haggerty, Bob Mould, J. Mascis, Steve Albini. Here, just listen to “Break Up Your Band” from Gone Glimmering (1995):

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I saw Chavez play in Seattle in 1996, and after the show I went to say “hi” to Clay. I shook his hand and introduced myself, then noticed that I’d interrupted a three-way conversation-in-progress. There were mildly annoyed dudes standing on either side of me. I soon realized I was standing between Greg Dulli and Donal Logue, two of Tarver’s old friends and stars in their own right. Dulli is the lead singer of the legendary Afghan Whigs, and Logue, though he’s done tons of other things, was the dad on Fox’s Grounded for Life (2001-2005) and currently plays Harvey Bullock on Gotham.

I recently asked Donal about Clay, and he had the following to say:

Clay Tarver is smarter and more talented than anyone I’ve ever met, but the super-human thing about Clay is he’s never been an attention-seeker or used any of his insanely unfair talents in some kind of narcissistic pursuit. He was the last word in any conversation regarding art or politics, but (and this is hard to articulate), he was never a dick about it. He was always just right, and his thinking was always at another level. High school all-state basketball star? I wouldn’t have known it unless his family told me. One of the best guitarists of all time? His own kids didn’t know he played guitar. No one has influenced me more than Clay Tarver. It’s impossible to describe Clay Tarver in a sentence, Roy, so I don’t even want to try!

Donal reiterated that the thing he finds so amazing about Clay is his modesty. “What really blows me away,” Donal said, “is how he avoided any kind of self-serving behavior, despite his gifts and talents.”

Silicon Valley

Toward the turn of the millennium, Tarver made the switch from music to movies and put together some outstanding and memorable clips in a place where it’s difficult to stand out. He directed the “Jimmy the Cabdriver” spots for MTV, which featured Donal as a greasy, fast-talking cabdriver, directed the ubiquitous “Got Milk?” commercials, and co-wrote the feature film Joy Ride (2001) with J.J. Abrams. He now serves as a consulting producer and writer for HBO’s Silicon Valley. Tarver recently signed on to script the sequel to Dodgeball for Fox, but he says that’s not likely to happen. He also owes Greg Dulli a phone call.

Roy Christopher: You’ve been on stage as a guitarist and are now writing scripts and producing. How do the two roles—one out in front of the crowd and one behind the scenes—compare? Which do you like better?

Chavez : Gone Glimmering Clay Tarver: Well, the first question is easy. Being on stage is one hell of a lot more fun. And not because you’re the focus of the attention, of all the applause, etc. To me, it’s more about getting some kind of visceral gratification for what I’m doing as it happens. It’s tremendous.There’s nothing like performing with a group, in front of people, where you’re kind of all in this special moment together. Writing is the opposite. Writing is all about creating that moment for others. Sometimes fool proofing it. It’s about craft and discipline and serious self-editing. And I suppose I enjoy the challenge. I do. Even in music, you can’t get on stage without doing the hard work of writing. But writing’s not fun. Look, I feel very fortunate to be doing what I do. I’m creatively challenged to the hilt. But I’d be lying if I told you I don’t miss playing whenever I wanted to.

RC: Man, the 1990s were a weird time for music. Looking back, it seems like genres were bending and blending in such odd ways. What do you like these days?

CT: Huh. I don’t know if I agree with you. For me, my favorite time of music was the Creem magazine days. Genres were all over the place. Any issue could have Cheap Trick, Aerosmith, The Sex Pistols, Blondie, KISS, Nugent, Elton John, Rick Derringer, and Bowie.

The 90s were more a generational thing to me. I was glad to be a part of it. But it was much more sort of straightforward. What am I into today? Not much new… Tinariwen… Queens… Still listening to a lot of Dennis Wilson and Glen Campbell… Love the Master’s Apprentices… Saw John Prine for the first time recently and loved it.

RC: Fair enough… Donal Logue and Greg Dulli are two guys whose paths have crossed yours at various times over the past twenty-odd years. Tell me about the connection among you three.

CT: Donal was my roommate in college. And he was Bullet LaVolta’s road manager and general best friend. He came on tour with us.

In Champagne, Illinois the day of the World Series Earthquake — 25 years ago last month — we met and have all been friends ever since. In fact, I owe Greg a call right now (he lives right near me), and he gets real pissy when I owe him one.

Donal and I later did the cab driver things. I’d gotten a job at MTV when I moved to New York to start Chavez. That’s actually how I became a writer. They wanted to turn it into a feature so I thought I’d give it a try. I figured if I ever wanted to direct more stuff it would be a good skill to have. The movie never got made. But it gave me my career.

It’s funny. I never wanted to be a writer. I was one of those guys who, when I finished college, was thrilled to never write another paper again. Now fucking look at me…

RC: Ha. Speaking of, you’re a writer and consulting producer on HBO’s Silicon Valley, which is hilarious and accurate as far as my experience in start-ups has been. Have you worked in that world at all?

CT: Nope. Never. But Mike Judge did a million years ago. He’s the creator of the show, and a guy I’ve done feature work with for something like 15 years. (A great musician, by the way. Sick stand-up bass player. A pro before he got into animation.) Also, Alec Berg (our show runner) has a brother who worked in that world. Between us we read, did research, went on trips up there. But we also have really serious advisers who help us. We’re in the midst of Season 2 right now… Really in the trenches.

RC: Awesome! I can’t wait to see where it goes next… Okay, having been successful in two different areas of entertainment, do you have any advice for those aspiring musicians or writers out there?

CT: Ya know, people always want to “break in” to music or film or whatever. But I always found that to be a weird phrase. I think you just do what you want and hope people like it. And now, more than ever, that’s possible. Music’s great because there’s no barrier to entry. You have instruments and guys and you just go do it. If people like it, there ya go. Film is obviously more expensive. But, Christ, there’s so many different ways to get stuff out there. People make shorts and bits and all kinds of stuff. And if it’s good, usually people will find it. I say just keep doing. Keep making stuff. Keep at it.

RC: I know you’re working on Dodgeball 2, but what else is coming up?

CT: I’ve got some stuff in the works. Dodgeball 2 doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen. But I’m hoping to keep at it with Silicon Valley. I have some pretty exciting feature things kicking around. And I’m even making a music-based TV show. But in truth, who the hell knows?

November 3, 2014

Keeping Records with Christian Marclay

John Cage once said, “…music instructs us, that the uses of things, if they are meaningful, are creative; therefore the only lively thing that will happen with a record, is, if somehow you could use it to make something which it isn’t.” (quoted in Block & Glasmeier, 1989, p. 73). As much as any legitimate Hip-hop turntablist, Christian Marclay has made a career of repurposing vinyl records. Exhibits that include rearranging record cover art into new pieces, lining a gallery floor with records for patrons to walk upon (and then playing those trampled records later), and of course manipulating records on turntables to create new sound collages have all been parts of his extensive body of work.

Christian Marclay: Tone Arms

The punk movement was a liberating influence, with its energy, its non-conformism, its very loud volume of sound. Its amateurish, improvised side gave me the courage to make music without ever having studied it — Christian Marclay (quoted in Szendy, 2000, p. 89).

Like two of his more obvious forebears, John Cage and Brian Eno, Marclay is more artist than musician. Hew told Kim Gordon (2005), “I went to art school, not to music school. I don’t think like a musician” (p. 10). To wit, he’s worked in many other media besides sound. Readymades, collages, video, and performances all find their way into his work. “The more I worked with records,” Marclay told Alan Licht (2003), “the more I realized the potential of all the sounds generated with just a turntable and a record and started to appreciate all thes eunwanted sounds that were traditionally rejected: skipping, clicks and pops, all this stuff that people didn’t want. I started using these sounds for their musical quality and doing all kinds of aggressive, destructive stuff to the records for the purpose of creating new music” (p. 89).

In On & By Christian Marclay, edited by Jean-Pierre Criqui (MIT Press, 2014), Marclay adds, “I try to make people aware of these imperfections, and accept them as music; the recording is a sort of illusion; the scratch on the record is more real” (p. 42). He questions each medium itself in terms of itself. One of the most extensive explorations of his work, On & By Christian Marclay boasts pieces by Douglas Kahn, David Toop, Zadie Smith, and Roalind Kraus, among many others, as well as several artist statements and interviews with Marclay himself. It’s as good a place as any to start and an essential text for anyone already familiar.

Borrowing term “telegramophony” from Derrida (1987, p. 90), Peter Szendy writes of Marclay’s Telephones (1995), “The fact remains that Christian Marclay does not reject this ghostly, phantasmal telegramophony. He plays with it, trifles with it, turns it into the tacked-on plot of his story/ies. Of his stories without a story, abstract like the color charts of memory, but each time concretely arresting like a call that cannot be delayed” (p. 115). Marclay uses the broken metaphor, “Memory is our own recording device” (quoted in Khazam, 2000, p. 31), but his works can be seen as montages of broken metaphors. There seems to be something damaged or at least slightly off about the connections he makes and breaks. “For a fragment of the past to be able to be touched by the present,” wrote Walter Benjamin (1999), “there must be no continuity between them” (p. 470). This temporal discontinuity and its interstitial ghosts are the raw stuff that Marclay works with. Records, tapes, telephones—the fragmented ghosts of history are in there, speaking out and seeking their way out of the threshold.

Is history simply a matter of events that leave behind those things that can be weighed and measured—new institutions, new maps, new rulers, new winners and losers—or is it also the result of moments that seem to leave nothing behind, nothing but the mystery of spectral connections between people long separated by place and time, but somehow speaking the same language?
— Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces

Greil Marcus (1989) describes punk as remaining “suspended in time” (p. 2), an unfinished nihilistic revolution. And just as punk has a dubious relationship with Dada and the Situationist International, so does Marclay. Guy Debord‘s first book, Mémoires (1959), was bound in sandpaper to wreck the books filed next to it on the shelf. Noise-punk band White‘s “Life on the Ranch of Elizabeth Clare Prophet” 7″ record (1996) came bound in a self-destructive sandpaper sleeve. Christian Marclay released Record Without a Cover (1985/1999), which is just what its name implies, with the same thought in mind: This record will sound different every time you play it. Its slow decay will become a part of its performance. Leaving the record unsleeved and unprotected was an act of creative destruction.

“The loss of control in music is actually what interests me the most,” Marclay tells Russell Ferguson (Criqui, 2014), “The struggle between control and loss of control is so much the core of improvised music. Many artists have been interested in that threshold between determinacy and indeterminacy, and not just John Cage, but also Duchamp, Pollock, Burroughs, and others” (p. 76).

The exploration of the land between those lines now belongs to Christian Marclay.

———-

Here’s Marclay live on the October 29, 1989 episode of the short-lived music television show Night Music:

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References:

Benjamin, Walter. (1999). The Arcades Project. Cambridge: Belknap Press.

Block, Ursula & Glasmeier, Michael. (1989). Broken Music: Artists’ Recordworks. Berlin, Germany: Berliner Kunstlerprogramm des DAAD.

Criqui, Jean-Pierre. (2014). On & By Christian Marclay. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Debord, Guy. (1959). Mémoires. France: Allia.

Gordon, Kim. (2005). Interview with Christian Marclay. In Christian Marclay (pp. 6-21). New York: Phaidon Press.

Marcus, Greil. (1989). Lipstick Traces: A secret History of the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 4.

Szendy, Peter. (2007). Christian Marclay on the Phone. In RE:Play. Zurich: jrp/ringier.

Szendy, Peter. (2000). Le son en Image. L’Ecoute. Paris: Ircam/L’Harmattan.

October 11, 2014

Conjuring Infinity: The Dark Reach of Black Metal

At barely thirty years old, black metal is a relatively young musical genre. Its roots running back to such thrash acts as Celtic Frost, Venom, Bathory, and Slayer, it finally found fertile ground in Scandinavia in the late 1980s/early 1990s. This second wave, including such bands as Mayhem, Darkthrone, Burzum, and Emperor, is what most are referring to when they utter the words. As author Ulrike Serowy puts it, black metal is “music that touches the inmost depths, goes beyond words, music that conjures infinity” (p. 33). Dayal Patterson points out that black metal “will surely continue to innovate and evolve, and this should be celebrated” (p. 484). Serowy’s new novella and Myrkur’s new EP both show how far this style has spread since its spiked-leather beginnings.

Serowy’s Skogtatt (Hablizel, 2014), is the first piece of fiction to capture the spirit of black metal. It tells the story of a young man lost in a wintery forest, his car having left him stranded after band practice, a black metal black mass: “Together they create an invocation, ever and again, over and over they call on something for which they yearn, something they never the less fear.” His struggles in the dark reflect the struggles of black metal as a genre and of humans as a species: nature versus technology, humanism versus misanthropy, love versus hate, silence versus sound. The protagonist’s long, lonely walk in the woods gives way to the introspection so central to the appeal of black metal. The rhythm of the story is reminiscent of a song. It’s no surprise that Serowy also plays guitar.

With illustrations by Faith Coloccia and a logo by Aaron Turner, (both of Mamiffer) and an English translation by Samuel Willcocks, Skogtatt is a true metal artifact without ever directly mentioning metal. It’s the perfect bedtime read as winter approaches here in the West. It’s as scary as it is unsettling, as dark as it is daring, as mysterious as it is moving, an intoxicating visit to the cold land of death. Couple it with Cult of Luna’s Eviga Riket (2012), and you’ll have all-metal dreams.

Screaming is one of the rewarding parts about black metal, both to listen to and to do myself. It releases a fraction of the anger and hatred I have inside me. — Amalie Bruun, Myrkur

Myrkur’s self-titled debut EP (Relapse, 2014) alloys black metal’s core aesthetic (e.g., frenetic, tremelo strumming, blast beats, screaming vocals) with haunting female choral arrangements. Before becoming a model and a musician in other genres, Amalie Bruun grew up with this music. She told Wyatt Marshall, “I was born and raised on the northern coast of Denmark. I have written this music for years by myself in my house in Denmark. Black metal comes from my part of the world, Scandinavia, and has its roots in the Nordic nature that I hold so dear and also our ancient pagan religion of Norse Mythology and our folk music.” Patterson continues, “it should also be remembered that many of the most powerful efforts have come from bands utilizing conventional black metal frameworks and traditional ideologies…” (p. 484).

In the short film embedded below, Bruun explains, “I always dreamed about becoming a Huldra, an elf girl, a valkyrie, or the goddess Freja. There are these powerful women in Norse Mythology that have both an element of beauty and mystery, but they are also deadly.” That’s exactly how Myrkur sounds: beautiful, mysterious, deadly. My only complaint is that there isn’t more of it.

Here is a very short film about Myrkur featuring the song “Nattens Barn” [runtime: 2:44]:

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References:

Marshall, Wyatt. (2014, September 16). Shedding Light on the Darkness of Myrkur. Bandcamp Blog.

Patterson, Dayal. (2013). Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult. Port Townsend, WA: Feral House.

Serowy, Ulrike. (2013). Skogtatt: A Novella. Lohmar, Germany: Hablizel.

March 26, 2014

Veronica Mars: Take the Long Way Home

No surprise: Veronica Mars: The Movie plays to the strengths of the franchise: Veronica’s chronically conflicted convictions, Keith’s ever-watchful eye, Logan’s inability to avoid controversy, the stability of Wallace, Mac, and Piz, and the loyal support of its fans. Full disclosure: I am one of the 91,585 Kickstarter backers of this movie, I watched it three times in as many days, I am a card-carrying Marshmallow, so spoilers and gushing abound below.

Veronica and Logan take the long way home.

So, when the day comes to settle down,
Who’s to blame if you’re not around?
— Supertramp, “Take the Long Way Home”

Though the movie is fully enjoyable to the non-fan, there are plenty of nods to the nerds: the ever-charming Leo’s mention of Veronica’s supposed stint in the FBI, a reference to the trailer for the un-filmed fourth season of the show in which Veronica joins the FBI after college; the New York street musician playing The Dandy Warhols’ “We Used to Be Friends” as Veronica and Piz leave the NPR studio; a squeaky clean Weevil getting caught up in a seedy subplot; Piz getting in another dig at Matchbox 20’s “solo” Rob Thomas; sleepy-dog Clemmons claims that Neptune High has been boring since Veronica graduated; Corny pitches Veronica his homemade wallets, which of course he’s making a killing from on Etsy; when Veronica takes too long to return with drinks, the insinuation that she may have joined a cult arises; Piz and Veronica’s sextape resurfaces at the reunion, revamping both the salaciousness scandals of her Hearst College days and the relentless backstabbing of her high-school years. Not a single on-screen mention of Lilly Kane. Though she is mentioned in the script, the scene is shortened in the movie. Her absolute absence feels stronger than a brief cameo would have.

Veronica Mars

“I find it almost impossible to imagine Veronica Mars played by anyone other than Kristen Bell,” writes Rob Thomas (2006, p. 6), and he’d be hard-pressed to find someone who disagrees. The studio didn’t want Bell, but Thomas fought to keep her. “Had we lost that argument, there would be no show…” (p. 6). Her craftiness carries the movie as it did three seasons of the show. Movie critic Peter Travers (2014) writes, “Plot has never been the attraction in Veronica Mars… [I]t’s how she thinks that draws us in…” (p. 73).

The mystery in the movie is familiar ground for Veronica Mars: a single night of bad decisions buried by a long, elaborate cover-up that includes obsession, blackmail, and murder. As the golden-voiced Cliff would say, “I like this case, it’s tawdry.” Veronica’s unearthing the truth requires the usual hi-tech tools and toys, ill-gotten gadgets and police files, and the help of both friends and enemies. The prescient premise of Neptune, California, “a town without a middle class,” provides just enough social structure and economic disparity to guarantee what criminologists call an anomic ethics: The have-nots will do whatever is necessary to get theirs with no evident moral dilemma (Rosenfeld & Messner, 1997). This conflict view includes the local sheriff’s department, which having never been the beacon of legality has now found a way to leverage its place in the gaping space between the socioeconomic classes.

With such a gulf between the two classes and constant reminders of that gulf, crime is a political concept in Neptune, by definition in place to keep the privileged protected from the poor (see Bonger, 1969 and Vold, 1958). The sheriff’s department, now run by Don Lamb’s more inept younger brother Dan, mediates the disparity by offering protection and service, “to the highest bidder,” as Keith Mars puts it.

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Speaking of, one of the main aspects of the movie that I appreciate as a fan of the show is the consistency with which the characters are handled. Keith is still Keith, the protective father and righteous citizen we all know and love. Gia was present on the plot’s night in question, but she maintains her presence as mildly annoying but harmless. Though he was there as well, Dick is still Dick: aloof but innocent. Vinnie Van Lowe is mixed-up in the mayhem—of course—but not in a way that implicates him as anything other than sleazy as ever. Lamb is just like his brother—only worse. The bad guy is not a character from the show (expertly played by Martin Starr, who played Roman in Rob Thomas’s short-lived but well-worthy Party Down), so we don’t have to hate anyone we already adore from the original series.

Does it feel that your life’s become a catastrophe?
Oh, it has to be for you to grow, boy.
When you look through the years and see what you could
Have been oh, what might have been,
If you’d had more time.
— Supertramp, “Take the Long Way Home”

Upon first viewing, I didn’t understand why Rob Thomas insisted that the characters all end up about where they started ten years ago as opposed to having things go in an entirely new direction. As it turns out, a sequel had already been penned, but its story-line requires everything in Neptune be back to “normal.” The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line (Vintage, 2014), which was released today, picks up where the movie leaves off. Veronica is back in Neptune, plans for a big-shot New York lawyer gig scrapped for a return to the sun and sin of Southern California:

Now it’s spring break, and college students descend on Neptune, transforming the beaches and boardwalks into a frenzied, week-long rave. When a girl disappears from a party, Veronica is called in to investigate. But this is no simple missing person’s case; the house the girl vanished from belongs to a man with serious criminal ties, and soon Veronica is plunged into a dangerous underworld of drugs and organized crime. And when a major break in the investigation has a shocking connection to Veronica’s past, the case hits closer to home than she ever imagined.

“In writing an ongoing fictional creature I’m tugged in a couple different directions,” writes Rob Thomas (2006). “There’s the part of me that thinks Veronica should… get past her pettiness. She should learn how to forgive. The other part of me wants to keep her complicated. Difficult. Testy” (p. 148). Some writers and directors have a theme they tend to stick with throughout their work. Darren Aronofsky tells stories of obsession David Cronenberg’s films revolve around the body or the grotesque. Aaron Sorkin writes shows about the inner-workings behind the scenes. If I had to pick a theme for Rob Thomas, it would be getting pulled back in. His characters—Logan, Weevil, and especially Veronica—are always trying to escape their nature or their social milieus. Fortunately for us, they just can’t seem to stay away from trouble.

References:

Bonger, William. (1969). Criminality and Economic Conditions. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Davies, Rich & Hodgson, Roger. (1979). Take the Long Way Home [Recorded by Supertramp]. Breakfast in America [LP]. Santa Monica, CA: A&M Records.

Rosenfeld R. & Messner, S. F. (1997). Markets, Morality, and an Institutional-Anomie Theory of Crime. In N. Passas & R. Agnew (Eds.), The Future of Anomie Theory (pp. 207-224). Boston: Northeastern University Press.

Thomas, Rob (Ed.). (2006). Neptune Noir: Unauthorized Investigations into Veronica Mars. Benbella Books.

Thomas, Rob & Graham, Jennifer. (2014). Veronica Mars: The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line. New York: Vintage.

Travers, Peter. (2014, March 27). Kick-Start or Die! Rolling Stone, 1205, 73-74.

Vold, George B. (1958). Theoretical Criminology. New York: Oxford University Press.

December 10, 2013

Download, Spin, or Stream: Ten Records, 2013

Unlike last year, 2013 found me mostly listening to one strain of metal or another. With the embedded videos and off-site links on this page, I’ve tried to provide a way for you to hear a bit of each of these lovely records. There’s never been a better time to be a music fan.

Deafheaven Sunbather (Deathwish, Inc.): I’m not sure what else can be said about Deafheaven that wasn’t said during 2013, but let there be no question that Sunbather is the record of the year. In conception and construction, no other record came close to its heights and depths. As I wrote in my review of the record, even with a space seemingly cut out for them by a family of description-defying groups, Deafheaven is likely to work loose from any label applied to their sound. Neither the bands nor the fans come up with these categories anyway. If it moves us, we don’t care what you call it. In spite of their often caustic heaviness, there’s a pop sensibility in there that can’t help but shine through. Purists of all kinds had plenty of smack to talk, but Sunbather defies category and critique, rewards the repeated listen, and leaves behind the feeling that opposition only makes one stronger.

A Storm of Light Nations to Flames (Southern Lord): Late to these ears this year comes the latest from A Storm of Light. Nations to Flames brings together the best of the band’s abilities. The depth, breadth, weight, and ferocity of past outings are all here with a precision their peers often lack (See “All the Shining Lies” for one extreme example). If you still think of them as a side project, it’s high time to stop. Where so many others have stagnated in the past, A Storm of Light is burning new paths in the futures of heavy music.

Cult of Luna Vertikal (Density): On Vertikal, Cult of Luna plays songs about cities composed with the weight of concrete. Not unlike their past few releases (i.e., Eviga Riket, Eternal Kingdom, and Somewhere Along the Highway), this one is the product of many minds working overtime. Unlike the rural themes on those records, the band worked inside the city limits this time partially inspired by Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927). The companion EP Vertikal II includes Justin Broadrick‘s essential remix of “Vicarious Redemption,” which is ironically and atypically half the length of the original track. Here’s their video for “Passing Through”:

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Wire Change Becomes Us (Pink Flag): Wire have been together for nearly 40 years, and they released one of their best records in 2013. Change Becomes Us is made up of reworkings of older, unrealized, and unreleased ideas from Wire’s classic, late-1970s era (cf. Pink Flag, Chairs Missing, 154). It’s also everything they do well in one place. It’s as punk as it is post-everything else, and proves why they’re one of the most influential bands of the late 20th century. If you don’t like “Re-Invent Your Second Wheel,” then we probably can’t be friends anymore.

Seidr Ginnungagap (Bindrune Recordings): Though their name comes from Norse religion, Seidr is as low-key as they are Loki. A subtlety that’s often missing from heavy genres is the mark here. With members from some of my other favorite bands (e.g., Panopticon, Wheels Within Wheels, Kólga, etc.), Seidr is more than a supergroup: They are a collective of seers, mapping new territories in consciousness and the cosmos. Ginnungagap is only their second missive, but it sounds like the product of eons. “A Blink of the Cosmic Eye,” “The Pillars of Creation,” “Sweltering II: A Pale Blue Dot in the Vast Dark,” and the title track churn and smolder like dying stars. This is doom on the largest possible scale.

Mouth of the Architect Dawning (Translation Loss): Along with the new releases by Deafheaven and Cult of Luna above, the new Mouth of the Architect was one of my most anticipated records of 2013. Dawning is a sprawling six songs, the least of which is still just under seven minutes long. While they get lumped in with the usual suspects of post-metal (e.g., Neurosis, Isis, Pelican, etc.), Mouth of the Architect’s sound is subtly different in distinctive ways. It’s metal and majestic, heavy and heavenly, gruesome and graceful, and difficult to describe in detail, but you’d be hard pressed to confuse them with anyone else.

Watain The Wild Hunt (Season of Mist/Century Media): In the battle of the most brutal, it’s hard to beat Sweden’s Watain. They just keep pushing further into the darkness. After last year’s Opus Diaboli DVD, it was difficult to imagine how much darker or heavier they could get, but they managed to mangle expectations like so much dead meat. Here’s the absolutely perfect video for The Wild Hunt‘s “Outlaw”:

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My Bloody Valentine mbv (mbv): My Bloody Valentine finally followed up on their genre-defying and defining classic, Loveless (1992), with mbv. Like Wire’s Change Becomes Us, mbv is an amalgam of old and new recordings, some reworked from rough drafts done during their demise in the mid-1990s. With nine songs total, mbv is a trilogy of trilogies. It hangs together as a whole, but one can easily discern three movements. Three floes in the waves. After 21 years, this was possibly the first record lauded as much for not existing as it was upon its release. One thing’s still for damn sure: No one does this sound better than My Bloody Valentine.

Light Bearer Silver Tongue (Halo of Flies): Light Bearer has been not-so-quietly building a body of work worthy of the most discriminate collectors. Silver Tongue is the second of a four-record concept called the Æsahættr Tetralogy. If feminism writ its largest could be an anti-religion, Light Bearer is writing it that large, chapter and verse.

Altar of Plagues Teethed Glory and Injury (Profound Lore): The last word from a band that deserved to be heard much more. Like their American peers Falls of Rauros, Panopticon, Wolves in the Throne Room, and Deafheaven, Ireland’s Altar of Plagues was pushing traditional Black Metal into new territories, and Teethed Glory and Injury is their best statement of purpose yet. R.I.P., A.o.P. Here’s the clip for “God Alone”:

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Others worthy of mention and attention: Portal Vexovoid (Profound Lore), Russian Circles Memorial (Sargent House), Nails Abandon All Life (Southern Lord), Lumbar The First and Last Days of Unwelcome (Southern Lord), Medicine To the Happy Few (Captured Tracks), Run the Jewels Run the Jewels (Fool’s Gold), Palms Palms (Ipecac), Vhol Vhol (Profound Lore), Wolves in the Throne Room BBC Session 2011 Anno Domini (Southern Lord), God is an Astronaut Origins (Rocket Girl Label), and Pelican Forever Becoming (Southern Lord).

November 14, 2013

Johnny Ciggs: Gritty City Cesspool [by Mike Daily]

“Music is pretty much the only thing that has ever mattered in my life,” says Johnny Ciggs, a major member of the Gritty City Family. I was introduced to this creative crew of rappers and producers by my man Tim Baker over at SYFFAL. He sent me the clip for “Hunnid Dolla Bills” by Fan Ran, Skweeky Watahfawls, and the dude Johnny Ciggs [embedded below]. I’ve been following the fam ever since. Johnny’s “Write Like the First Day” (featuring Fan Ran) off of his 21 Tracks About Malt Liquor, Fat Asses, and Other Ill Shit mixtape has been my go-to hype song for a minute now. Vee Aye All Day.

The following interview was conducted by my close friend and colleague Mike Daily with photos by Sirus the Virus. — Roy C.

Johnny Ciggs

Johnny Ciggs and the Gritty City Family from Richmond, Virginia are killin’ it. That’s what I heard from my professor Roy Christopher, so I followed up on it. I liked much of what I heard and saw. They rock shows, throw backyard pool parties and close bars—literally, as key members of the crew serve alcohol to make a living. The rawness is real. All too real, at times. In Fall 2013, I picked up a few CDs direct from Johnny Ciggs as he was passing through Portland on a road trip and conducted the following interview with him.

Mike Daily: I like the video that shows you guys bootlegging power from your neighbors’ house with the extension cord.

Johnny Ciggs: [Laughs.] Yeah. That was funny. We didn’t have the money to pay our electric bill for like two months. I was sayin’ to Sirus [the Virus], “We gotta pay that bill, man.” And he was like, “Yeah, I know. We should do that.” We just kept sayin’ that like every other day for two months. I woke up that Monday and my clock was off and I was like, “Why is my clock off?” For a while there–me and Sirus livin’ together—we were both makin’ no money at all. I can’t remember what song it is—I think it’s on Toilet Wine—I talked about splittin’ ramen noodles on the kitchen floor because we didn’t have any furniture and all we had was a pack of ramen noodles. I think the thought of bills—now that we’re makin’ a little more money—scares us still. We act like we’re still broke like that.

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MD: You said “makin’ a little more money.” Is that from music?

JC: No, I wish. We actually just got lucky and got a good bartending gig at a good bar in town. We were both servers for a while but we were barely scrapin’ by. We knew all the bartenders at a bar down the street and Sirus was lookin’ for a job. He got one up there and then got me a job up there. I don’t make much money off the music itself but I make money off the merchandise like t-shirts and hoodies. I don’t think it would be enough to live off of but it’s just nice to get a little bit, so we can buy supplies like the new mic we need, CD cases…stuff like that.

MD: Is that where it’s at now with music in general? Shows and merch over music sales?

JC: Yeah. Especially at the level we’re at right now. We’ve got a pretty decent local following. Instead of thinking that we’re owed something at the level we’re at now, we just want to get people to hear us, so we’ll go hand out CDs for free, hang out with people and find out what kind of stuff they’re into. We’re out around town all the time so we’re basically working on connecting our faces to the brand. We’d be foolish to try and sell our CDs for 15 bucks or something. That’s how you turn people away. We’re trying to bring people in. New music is everywhere. You have to give people a reason to care and separate you from the rest. Where music is at right now–where everything’s free and there’s so much stuff and the whole scene is watered down by the internet and everything–it’s really hard to ask—at least in my opinion—to ask for money, when you’re just tryin’ to promote yourself. I spent like 300 bucks gettin’ these CDs printed for the trip. I’d rather do that–that’s a few bar tabs. I’d rather just stay in a few nights here and there to get the CD out, you know, than spend 300 bucks for a headache.

MD: In that “Power Outage” video, there’s a BMX bike sitting there. Whose is that?

JC: That’s Pandemic’s. He rides that around town. It’s the worst bike in the world. I had to ride it to work one day. It’s terrible. The seat’s super low and the bike’s just tiny in general. It doesn’t ride like a normal BMX bike. It rides like no bike I’ve ever ridden before in my life.

MD: Does it have brakes on it?

JC: No.

MD: Do you guys skate?

JC: Not all of us. I came up as a big skateboarder. I’d ride skateboards ever since I was a little kid, and then startin’ when I was like 14, I really started gettin’ into it. I still skateboard here and there—mostly just mini-ramp. Not as much as I used to. My passion kinda died out a little bit probably like three, four years ago. A lot of my friends who skated left Richmond, and then the mini-ramp that I would go to all the time, a tree fell through it, and it was just kinda like, “What the hell now?” Skweeky [Watahfawls] was a sick skateboarder in his day too, but he doesn’t skate much anymore either.

Johnny Ciggs in the studio.

MD: That’s right around the time you must have started rapping.

JC: Yeah, so it just kinda worked out. I still like to skate when I can–it’s just hard to do. I work like 12 hours a day and then the rest of the time is all spent recording, writing, rapping or whatever the hell we’re doing.

MD: The first raps you made, how did you know how to make bars and choruses?

JC: Well, I’ve been a drummer my whole life. I started drummin’ when I was a little kid. I just understood it. I didn’t even really understand how to write bars necessarily at the time, but just like I do these days, I basically used every syllable as a drum hit–that way I would stay on time. My first verses would just round out to 16 somehow by chance. Sixteen is the basic length of a rap verse. It just kinda worked. It changed my writing once I realized how to count out the words by bars though. With that, I was able to write more cohesive verses and build my own formula on how a basic Ciggs verse should be put together. What gave me more trouble was taming my voice and getting a smoother flow. When it comes to hooks, I hate them. I can write them, but I don’t enjoy it. That’s Sirus’ department. He loves writing hooks.

MD: You said you favor flow over lyricism, but you do have some lyrical lines.

JC: Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, I do have the ability to get lyrical. The fellas always make fun of me when I start makin’ mythology metaphors and stuff like that. I just don’t want it to sound like rappers trying to sound overly lyrical. That just bothers me. It didn’t always but now it just really bothers me. I like there to be a little style. A lot of rappers who are trying to be too lyrical will come out with some seriously intelligent shit, but it will have no personality and will be the most boring shit you’ve ever heard in your life. I feel like there’s certain rappers—who I won’t name names—that could be great rappers. They’re already great, but they could be even better if they just dumbed it down a little. Not even “dumb it down”—that’s a bad way to put it. But just not try so hard and make it a little more natural. I don’t want to hear what a rapper thinks he should spit or what he or she thinks will blow away their listener. I just want to hear rappers spit what they spit. That’s all I do. The lyrical ability comes naturally to me. I worry more about rockin’ on a track. And the only way to really rock in my book is to have a nasty flow. Peace to Treach.

MD: Do you do storytelling, would you say?

JC: That’s something I want to get back into. I used to do a lot of storytelling earlier on. On my first mixtape [21 Tracks About Malt Liquor, Fat Asses, and Other Ill Shit, May 2012], there’s a few stories. What I’ve heard is my greatest track ever is “Street Stories,” where I tell two stories with a middle verse from the homie Che Broadway. I really like storytelling. I’ve just kinda gotten away from it on what we’ve been workin’ on lately. I’m plannin’ on gettin’ back into that. The album I’ve been tryin’ to figure out how to put together, I think I finally got a feel for it. There’s gonna be a lot of storytelling on that one.

MD: When you say “tryin’ to figure out how to put together,” do you already have the beats in mind? Do you have the concept for the words?

JC: I’ve got so many beats for this album, it’s ridiculous, but I still need more. With Gritty City, the thing is there’s no politic’in’ your way into it: You gotta get down with us. We’re all really good friends. We all hang out all the time. It’s just been a rough year. We just lost another member of Gritty City, Joe Threat—Rest in Peace. And it’s just, you know, with stuff like that, it’s just been… This was supposed to be the year where we were gonna do 16 releases, and it hasn’t worked out. We’ve still been doin’ a lot, but there’s been other stuff gettin’ in the way. I just want to do an album that reflects on the lifestyle and things I’ve seen—more than just the punchline rap and stuff like that. Which is fun, but I feel like people wonder where exactly everything we talk about comes from. I just want to more blatantly go out there and put it out there and talk about the life we lead, and reflect on that—get into my head about thoughts I have, doubts I have, the whole bipolar nature of my existence. I want this album to have more to offer and be more personal than my past releases. I feel a lot right now, I just gotta figure out how to say it. Don’t worry though. There will still be plenty of the classic Johnny Ciggs rawness on there, too.

MD: What do you mean by “lifestyle”?

JC: I don’t even know how to explain it without sounding like we’re totally out of our minds. We’re just fuckin’ crazy. [Laughs.] I’ll put it like my homie Seap One (R.I.P.) used to say before he passed: “Lemme tell you bout this life…” If anyone ever asked him what he meant, he would laugh and shake his head and repeat himself. Let’s just say we have a good time.

MD: You guys work full-time jobs and you’re prolific, making music every chance you get. That’s “lifestyle”, right?

JC: Yeah, that’s lifestyle. It’s just what goes on. We talk about the way things have happened in our lives and everything. We took the harder route, maybe you could say. We all have had our problems with just bein’ stupid kids and gettin’ in trouble. We’ve seen friends pass from drugs. Some people have recovered from drugs and now they’re doin’ this. We all drink too much and stuff like that. And just everything that goes along with that—the crazy women that come around. Just…whatever. I mean, I can’t even really explain it in a sentence. That’s why I’m trying to figure out how I’m supposed to do it—back to the original question—I can’t figure out how to say it. Fan Ran said it the best. He’s like, “What you gotta understand is 99% of people ain’t as crazy as we are.”

MD: How many guys are in Gritty City?

JC: There’s eight of us total, including Seap and Joe. Delta Automatik, Skweeky Watahfawls, Pandemic, Fan Ran, Sirus the Virus and myself. Those are the artists, but we’ve got friends all over the town like the Divine Prophets guys. Fan Ran is in Divine Prophets as well, which is an old Richmond group. I don’t know if you all have heard of them, but that was like the big Richmond hip-hop group, forever. And they actually just lost their producer this year as well: R.I.P. Chadrach. We hang out with those guys all the time. I don’t know if you heard in the songs, we talk about Main Street Mafia. There’s a strip in Richmond where it’s like the dive bar scene, and we all just hang out around there and get smashed and make rap music. That’s basically it. Then we also got extended fam like the homie Devious Kanevil, Oktober 9, The Fugitive 9 crew, which is family ties right there. We got members married to the same mob and shit: RT, BC Music First, Sleaze. There are a few rappers that show their face around the Gritty City house pretty regularly. We love all of them.

MD: How old are you?

JC: I’m 29.

MD: I first heard about you guys in a text that Roy Christopher sent me: “Check out Adam Zombie and The Gritty City Family (especially Skweeky Watahfawls and Johnny Ciggs): Richmond, VA is killing it.”

JC: [Laughs.] Skweeky Watahfawls is my favorite rapper. That dude is hilarious. What you gotta understand about Skweeky Watahfawls is: Skweeky Watahfawls is the biggest asshole on the face of the earth. He’s a douchebag, asshole, drunk piece of shit, and I love him. But he’s a fuckin’ dick. That’s what’s so funny…I feel like people appreciate him for his lyrics, but if you know that guy personally and you listen to some of the stuff he says, it is just the funniest shit you ever heard in your fuckin’ life. This is another one that’s just unexplainable in words. He is hilarious, his wit is incredible, he’s super smart and then on top of that, he’s just a fuckin’ dirtbag so it’s just like a perfect mix. He’s like a comedic rapper, in my mind. When me and him write together—we work on a lot of songs together—we’ll go line for line, just tryin’ to make each other laugh. And if we laugh the whole time we’re writin’ it, then it’s gonna be a good song. But back to the original question, yeah, Richmond, VA is killin’ it. There is a lot of good hip-hop happening and I’m honored to be able to say that I work closely with most of my favorite rappers in town. This city will be on the map here soon. Just wait.

MD: Does Skweeky have a solo album?

JC: He’s workin’ on it. We’re about halfway through. He was livin’ at my house before Seap was livin’ there and we were workin’ on his stuff pretty heavily, but then he moved and got a different job and things just changed. There’s been a lot of shiftin’ around lately. It kind of got put on hold but it’s gonna be real sweet. It’s good. He’s almost got more of like a Beastie Boys sound on it. Where other guys do more like hardcore and soulful hip-hop, his has got a few rock samples on there and things like that, but it just really works with the way he raps, so it’s good. It’s called Cocaine ‘n Demons. Keep your eyes peeled for that one.

[Note: As I was wrapping up the article, Johnny Ciggs said in a voicemail message: “I know your boy Roy Christopher and you had been askin’ about me and Skweeky Watahfawls and everything. I don’t know if y’all care but me and him in the past couple weeks started an album together. We’re about halfway done with it and just wanted to give y’all a heads up on that. It was actually kind of influenced by y’all though so we thank you for the compliments. We decided to run with it, do somethin’ together, so hopefully y’all will like that when it comes out here in the next couple of months.”]

MD: A friend of mine said that he considers himself one of a thousand rappers out there. I was really surprised to hear that because I think he’s a great artist. Do you think like that?

JC: You mean sayin’ that I’m just one of a thousand guys all tryin’ to do it?

MD: Yeah.

JC: I don’t really consider myself that way and I don’t consider really anybody in my group that way. I had trouble explainin’ the whole lifestyle thing, but it’s like…what we bring to the table is more than just like, you know, “Yo, I’m an MC, look how dope I am at rappin’.” It’s more than that. A huge part of it is really just personality. We’re not gangsta rappers and definitely not anything like all those club rappers out these days. We’re not doin’ that. We’re not really followin’ any sort of mold. We’re just touchin’ on what feels right, and I really do feel like it’ll help us stand out in time. There are thousands of other rappers out but a lot of them dudes are just boring. Even a lot of those “real hip-hop” rappers out these days are wack as fuck, even more wack than the music that they supposedly hate. We can rhyme, man. That’s one thing I know for sure. I’d put my team up against anyone. We are hip-hop, even when we’re drinkin’ bottles of Bud and listenin’ to hair metal. We’re original and anyone who crosses paths with us realizes it. We’re about to release some “day in the life” videos and cribs episodes and shit. We feel like we’ve done enough music–now we’re tryin’ to show people who we are. We don’t just make this shit up. People ask us, “Where do you come up with this shit?” I’m like, “I live it at my house. I just sit back and watch, if I’m lucky enough that night to not be directly involved. Some total fuckin’ weirdos come through there. And what happens next… It makes for some good rap music.”

MD: What’s it take to stand out now?

JC: I don’t know. Just somethin’ original. I don’t even know if what I do is actually original, but it’s fun and I never stray from being myself. Because of that, the product is what it is. I feel like our music is good on its own but I really do want to start puttin’ more faces to the names—gettin’ some more videos out there. Not just music videos. We’ve got video footage from the past three years of us just hangin’ out. I’ve got a video comin’ out that’s a day in the life of Joe Threat and Johnny Ciggs. Every day that we were able to hang out—like probably three days a week—he and I would get up, get some food, maybe go check out the swap or whatever, and then do a track, and then we’d go out to the bar and close the bar. It was just these crazy, super eventful days that we were doin’ every time he and I kicked it, for months. We were like, “We should videotape this.” So we did a day where we just basically videotaped ourselves all day on just a standard day that me and him would have. Just little things like that. I’m tryin’ to find ways to make us stand out as a crew of characters–not just another group of drunken rappers. Everybody’s funny, everybody’s got their own works, everybody’s got their own style. Everybody’s a general in their own way. The world must know about it.

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MD: How long has Sirus been writing?

JC: I don’t know…two years; three years? He started rapping because he was staying on my couch for a while and I was recording myself all the time. Next thing we knew we had some songs together. I’ve been rappin’ three-and-a-half years, so no longer than that. Sirus is like my best friend. I’ve known him for like 10 years. We used to beef over graffiti way back when we were livin’ a couple neighborhoods apart from one another. I like his stuff a lot. He’s got some real funny verses, which fits his style perfectly. When he first started rappin’, he didn’t even understand how to ride a beat. I’ve got Sirus verses that are just all over the place. He just stuck with it and now his shit’s nasty. I love seein’ that progression. He didn’t even ever really wanna be a rapper—-he just did it for fun–and he’s still havin’ fun with it. He’s made incredible progress. He’s dope now. He’s among the Virginia elite.

MD: What’s the story behind your track “Hunnid Dolla Bills”?

JC: It’s a beat that Fan Ran originally gave to somebody else and they never did anything with it. We were just sittin’ around my house—me, Skweeky and Ran—not really doin’ shit, and Ran was like, “You guys wanna write to this beat? I really like this beat. I wish that somebody would do somethin’ with it.” So we wrote to it. It was funny because Skweeky…that was when he first started workin’ with us, and that’s totally not his type of beat. He was like, “I can’t write to this shit.” He’s more into faster boom bap-type beats. He did it anyway. That was the second verse he did with us. He had just moved to Richmond. He killed it, too. Me and Ran came real correct on it and it just became a monster of a track. That track was a total accident and it’s our most popular joint. It blows my mind.

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MD: How popular is it? Did it get a lot of downloads?

JC: We don’t even have it up for download. I need to do that. We did that video just for fun. It was this hot-ass day. We were all hungover as hell and we went out and shot a video for it–just havin’ fun. That video… I haven’t checked it for a while, but it’s got 1500 views, which is probably the most views we have on any of our videos. Which I know is nothin’ in the grand scheme of things, but you know, I’ll take it. That video was the one that those guys at SYFFAL did a write-up on, and that was the first time we saw anybody from out of town talkin’ about our shit except for some people that we had met personally, but that’s different. They said they got it through that dude Roy Christopher. I don’t know, I guess people just like it. Alaska and Blockhead did a write-up of the pool party video, which had us all crackin’ up. Blockhead called us “suburban whigs,” and we were dyin’! It was funny as hell. That video was actually shot in our backyard in the city, where we live. I know who Blockhead is—that’s cool. He didn’t give us the best review, but at least he said somethin’… Even though his facts were mad twisted. Shout to SYFFAL.

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MD: Blockhead? The producer of Aesop Rock’s early stuff?

JC: I guess.

MD: I wrote to Roy Christopher and said that I wanted to get some Gritty City stuff on CD, but it seems that isn’t how you’re rolling for distro, unless it’s local. Roy wrote back, “Those guys don’t have money to make CDs!”

JC: [Laughs.] We have ways of making CDs but yeah, a lot of times it’ll be like just a few. And then we’ll get money together and do like a hundred copies of whatever’s newest. We got our little hustle for how we can get that cheap, so it works. But the only one we’ve ever done professionally was the Delta [Automatik] CD, the first one [The Resume]. We saved up for that for like two years, and then we realized gettin’ it professionally printed was expensive as hell and not worth it. So we’ve just been doin’ our own packaging now. Because like you said, it’s just a local thing. There’s no reason for our shit to be shrinkwrapped. Half the time when we’re givin’ out CDs, I’m givin’ ‘em to someone at a bar. They say, “I’m gonna listen to this on the ride home!” And hopefully they do. Drunk people don’t need to be unwrapping shrinkwrap while driving. But yeah, it doesn’t need to be like that anymore, because it’s all digital now, which I hate to see because I’m a collector of music myself. I don’t download anything, except I’ll download my own stuff just to have on my iPod or whatever–if I even remember to do that. I’ve got like one or two of our CDs on my iPod. It is really sad to see that that’s goin’ out, but nobody really seems to care except for me and I guess you and maybe like five other people I know, tops. But no, it really is too bad. I like hard copies. Like I said, I’m a collector. I’ve got thousands of CDs and records that I’ve just been collectin’ my whole life. I refuse to not release hard copies.

MD: Can you name some stuff that you’re stoked that you have in your collection that you revisit and listen to for inspiration?

JC: Wu-Tang Clan’s like my favorite group ever. Them or Mobb Deep were both like neck-and-neck. I think Wu-Tang’s got the upper hand. I could go on forever, man. LL Cool J is the greatest rapper of all time. AZ, Nas, guys like that are right up there too. Cam’ron is my shit. I got so many hip-hop CDs, it’s out of control. I recently revisited Motley Crue stuff. It had been a couple years since I really got into them. I love Motley Crue–up until the late ‘80s. I lost interest, let’s say, after probably their fourth or fifth CD, if it even goes that far. The stuff that people don’t realize I liked, which kind of makes people laugh, is I absolutely love Luther Vandross and R Kelly. I just can’t help it. Bobby Womack, Poet 1 and 2. Awesome. Barry White. Marvin Gaye. He’s great. Dokken, Van Halen, ZZ Top. It doesn’t stop. Music is pretty much the only thing that has ever mattered in my life.

MD: What stuff do you currently have your eye out for?

JC: Fred the Godson. He’s the nastiest rapper out right now–new rapper. That guy… I slept on him forever. My roommate would play his stuff and I just didn’t even really listen–I don’t know why. And then the other day when I was in L.A., they had a Fred the Godson and the Heatmakers CD. The Heatmakers I’ve always loved—-beats they made over the past probably like 10 years now. And I was like, “Alright, I’ll buy it. It’s only six bucks. Whatever.” And I just loved it. And then I went and revisited the mix tape that Sirus had been playin’, and it’s just nasty. That guy’s just real clever. He’s got good concepts, good flow… He’s a good rapper. That’s who I’m checkin’ for these days. I just got the new Alchemist and Prodigy CD—-Prodigy and Mobb Deep–and that’s a great CD. Besides that, when it comes to new hip-hop, I’m not really checkin’ for too many besides Raekwon. Raekwon is the king of rap music and no one notices for some reason. No one is doin’ what Rae does. He’s everywhere and he’s not showing any sign of slowing down. But yeah, rap ain’t offerin’ me much else these days. I’m not tryin’ to hate on anybody. I’m just listenin’ more for old soul and hair metal. [Laughs.]

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Bonus Track: The Sickness of Seap by Seap One: “Seap One’s one and only album, the album that released a couple weeks before he passed—The Sickness of Seap–is on there and that album is fuckin’ bananas. It’s a look into his life, his problems, his shortcomings. It’s a pretty sad album but it is beautiful at the same time. It’s an album about depression, drug use, jail, wishing he could do certain things and stuff like that. It was an honor to be a part of that one. I didn’t know we were gonna lose him right after that but the whole process was great and it was awesome workin’ with him.”—Johnny Ciggs

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Contributor Bio:

Mike Daily is a novelist, journalist, zinemaker, spoken words performer and co-creator of the Plywood Hoods freestyle BMX team. He lives in Oregon. Daily is at work on his third novel, Moon Babes of Bicycle City, which will be published by Portland’s Lazy Fascist Press.

November 10, 2013

Shooting Starlets: Girls Gone Wildin’

The transition from adolescence to adulthood is rarely an easy one. As we watch Miley Cyrus shed her youth in real-time, I am reminded of a young Drew Barrymore, coming out of rehab for the first time at age 13. The movies Spring Breakers and The Bling Ring represent the grown-up debuts of beloved childhood Hollywood princesses, Selena Gomez and Emma Watson respectively. The two films are also similar for their adult themes and media commentary. No one would say that a refusal to grow up is endearing, but resistance is fertile. There’s nothing quite as cool as youthful nihilism — especially when wielded by young women. Live fast, die young: Bad girls do it well.

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The similarities here remind me of when in 2007 the Coen Brothers and Paul Thomas Anderson both did adaptations—both camps tend to write their own scripts—of stories set in West Texas. No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood are companion pieces in the same way that Spring Breakers and The Bling Ring are, but here the ladies are the ones with the guns.

Spring Breakers‘ heist scene might be the best few minutes of cinema I’ve seen in years. Brit (Ashley Benson) and Candy (Vanessa Hudgens) rob the Chicken Shack restaurant with a hammer and a squirt gun while Cotty (Rachel Korine) circles the building in the getaway car with the camera (and us) riding shotgun. Our limited vantage point gives the scene an added tension because though we are at a distance, it feels far from safe. Much like the security camera footage of Columbine and Chronicle, and the camera-as-character of Chronicle and Cloverfield, we receive a crippled information flow while experiencing total exposure. Their mantra: “Just pretend it’s a fucking video game. Act like you’re in a movie or something.”

Alien (James Franco) arrives as the girls’ douche ex machina, an entity somewhere between True Romance‘s Drexl Spivey (1993), Kevin Federline, and Riff Raff, the latter of whom is supposedly suing over the similarities. He bails them out of jail after a party gone astray and takes them home to his arsenal. What could possibly go wrong?

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Selena Gomez does the least behaving badly, but her role as Faith is still a long way from Alex Russo or Beezus. As she tells her grandmother over the phone,

I think we found ourselves here. We finally got to see some other parts of the world. We saw some beautiful things here. Things we’ll never forget. We got to let loose. God, I can’t believe how many new friends we made. Friends from all over the place. I mean everyone was so sweet here. So warm and friendly. I know we made friends that will last us a lifetime. We met people who are just like us. People the same as us. Everyone was just trying to find themselves. It was way more than just having a good time. We see things different now. More colors, more love, more understanding… I know we have to go back to school, but we’ll always remember this trip. Something so amazing, magical. Something so beautiful. Feels as if the world is perfect. Like it’s never gonna end.

Spring break is heavy, y’all. “I grew up in Nashville, but I was a skater, so I was skateboarding during spring break,” writer/director Harmony Korine told Interview. “Everyone I knew would go to Daytona Beach and the Redneck Riviera and just fuck and get drunk — you know, as a rite of passage. I never went. I guess this is my way of going.” Ultimately the movie illustrates Douglas Adams’ dictum that the problem with a party that never ends is that ideas that only seem good at parties continue to seem like good ideas.

Speaking of bad ideas, Sophia Coppola’s The Bling Ring, which is based on a real group of fame-obsessed teenagers, is full of them. Not since Catherine Hardwicke’s Thirteen (2003; which features Spring Breakers‘ Hudgens) has a group of teens been so overtaken by expensive clothes, handbags, and bad behavior. This crew of underage criminals uses internet maps and celebrity news to find out where their targets (e.g., Paris Hilton, Audrina Partridge, Megan Fox, Orlando Bloom, et al.) live and when they will be out of town. Once caught, they seem more concerned with what their famous victims think than with the charges brought against them [trailer runtime: 1:46]:

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It would be remiss of me not to note that two of my favorite composers, Cliff Martinez and Brian Reitzell respectively, put the music together for these movies. The mood of Spring Breakers is mostly set by Martinez in collaboration with Skrillex, Gucci Mane (who’s also in the movie), and Waka Focka Flame, among others. The Bling Ring features a mix of Hip-hop, Krautrock, and electronic pop that reads more eclectic than it actually sounds: Sleigh Bells, Kanye West, CAN, M.I.A., Azeailia Banks, Klaus Schultze, Frank Ocean, and so on. Discounting the importance of music in creating the pressure that permeates these films would be an oversight.

Though these films are both cautionary tails of an extreme nature, they prove that caution isn’t cool. Youth might be wasted on the young, but our heroes don’t concern themselves with consequences.

October 31, 2013

Mayhem to the AM: Eminem Goes Berzerk

I turned my head for a minute and Eminem dropped this single “Berzerk” from his forthcoming record. The song illustrates everything I love about Hip-hop. It’s not that I miss the era he’s referencing here (I don’t), it’s that he’s referencing things: All kinds of things. Mathers’ use of allusion is masterful, and it’s one of the reasons I study rap in the first place.

Eminem’s sense of humor and of himself is firmly intact. “Berserk” boasts guest shots from and references to “So Whatcha Want?”, Royce da 5’9″, Rick Rubin, Billy Squier’s “The Stroke,” Public Enemy, N.W.A., Kendrick Lamar, Ad Rock, and Kid Rock. It’s a celebration of roots: from rap and rock to the city block [runtime: 4:20].

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More than anything else, Em gets his Beastie Boys on here. Because they, more than anyone else, encompass all of the things going on in this song. Rubin employs his standard formula, which he once described as “reduction” rather than “production.” It’s heard on early LL Cool J records like “Rock the Bells” (1985), Run-DMC tracks like “Rock Box” (1983), “King of Rock” (1984), and the Run-DMC/Aerosmith collaboration “Walk This Way” (1986), and reprised on Jay-Z’s “99 Problems” (2003). But the Beasties’ Licensed to Ill (1986) is the best exemplar. Rubin stripped everything down to just the boom bap: 808s, John Bonham drums, big guitar riffs, and the noises and voices of the boys. The result was resonant and irresistible — and it still works.

The new record, The Marshall Mathers LP2 comes out next week.