By: Chris De Salvo, Chicago Sports Slant

Read Entire Article @ http://chicagosportsslant.blogspot.com/2008/09/ozzie-kickem-while-theyre-down.html

I have happily done so.

-Chris De Salvo, Chicago Sports Slant

TO CONTINUE READING THIS STORY VISIT: http://chicagosportsslant.blogspot.com/2008/09/yes-i-will-eat-my-words.html

Gnarls Barkley – The Odd Couple

Atlantic Records. 2008.

40 min. 13 tracks

01. Charity Case

02. Who’s Gonna Save My Soul

03. Going On

04. Run (I’m a natural disaster)

05. Would Be Killer

06. Open Book

07. Whatever

08. Surprise

09. No Time Soon

10. She Knows

11. Blind Mary

12. Neighbors

13 A Little Better

Finally, the masses have a record they can latch onto that’s all ‘Love Below’, and no ‘Speakerbox’ …sounds like a suburban dream right? The only problem with the scenario is this: the dynamic that this very capable, Atlantic duo are obviously catering to with this album, don’t actually like music… and they will hang them out to dry in a second.

I loved the first Gnarles Barkley album, I honestly listened to that album on repeat for an entire Chicago summer. I remember first hearing about this collaboration and being really excited. My friend spun it for me late one early morning back in ’06 and I was blown away by the first couple of tracks… when I heard that Violent Femms cover creep in I was done for – ‘what the fuck am I listening to here?’ you know?

And if anything, I was excited for their doubtless and rampant commercial success that followed soon after, but this sophomore release simply shows two obscenely talented guys just going through the motions.

It’s like they sat down with their last album and made a checklist of the things that attracted people to it. And as every track was being written they executed the list like picking up so many groceries… occasionally peppering the joint with a couple studio tricks here and there, just to make sure you’re not asleep yet. The whole thing just lays there on the wax and never even tries to move.

The great thing about ‘St. Elsewhere’ wasn’t just that nothing else sounded like it, but that they came to that sound naturally, almost accidentally. It was something that they stumbled on through the meshing of these two tried and true musicians. There was nothing planned… it was an event.

Both men have always stood out in every project they’ve been associated with throughout the years, as always innovative, and always experimental. From C.-Lo’s early work with Goodie Mob and Dungon Family to Danger Mouse’s cuts with the Gorillas (( as well as his ground breaking ‘Grey’ Album, which featured the genre defying, meshing together of the sounds of the Beatles with Jay-Z )) they’ve both had a solid reputation for trying out new things pretty fearlessly from very early in there careers, which is why I’m, if anything, confused at the lack of exploration with this last piece.

Sometimes when an artist becomes known for something in particular… a style, a type, a message, he or she often times feels an intense amount of pressure to fit themselves into that same box. Continued success oftentimes means sticking to the formula. But It can only lead to denying your impulses and that always results in stale work.

Unfortunately all this album has to offer is a weak attempt at recreating previous successes. The dance driven highs are boring and listless and the manic lows are cut and paste junior high journal entries.

None of it feels genuine… even the first single ‘Run’ is just filler. Very disappointing.

Dr. Manhattan-  (self titled)

2008 Vagrant Records

1.  big chomper, big chomper

2.  you put the I in team

3. dirty, scandalous, dirty

4.  claims should echo

5.  gunpowder:  a ballet

6.  the party’s opinion

7.  tracy’s buns

8.  to feel cozy surrounded by cats

9.  baton rouge

10.  minds like ours

11.  pepper

Dr. Manhattan’s self titled debut will be turning heads…  These small town Illinois boys (Wauconda?  Where the fuck is Wauconda?) have managed to cook up an album that stands head and shoulders above most groups coming out the gates.  If anything bigger industry will be watching these cats out of the corner of their eye just to see what the kids think is hip nowadays.  I got a chance to see them play when they opened for Murder By Death here in Chicago not to long ago, and they’re scheduled to be on the Warped Tour later this year.  They put on a hell of a show and had a lot of fun up there.  I expect that post Warped Tour, we can expect them to blow up with the younger pop crowd.  There won’t be many people who haven’t heard at least mention of the name Dr. Manhattan in passing.  This album certainly seems like the beginning of something bigger.

With that in mind, to say that a simple, youthful energy carries this piece completely would be an understatement.  There’s whole chapters of the album that feel more like a collection of songs these guys have written over the last few years than a piece of work…  Take into account the literally nauseating track ‘Tracy’s Bun’s’.  God, what a waste of my fucking time that was.  I’ll never get those minutes of my life back again, there lost to the record of time and that’s how I actually chose to spend them…  listening to some kid sing a half-learned barely intelligible birthday song to his fucking girlfriend.  It was a piss poor move, that I would equate to standing next to a piece you’ve created as opposed to actually being that thing.  For instance if you write goofy songs for your ol’ lady on her birthday, then great, good for you…  why do you need the world to know that you write goofy birthday songs?  I would assume that it’s because it’s more important to the artist to been seen doing these things than it is the act of actually doing them, making it a waste of everyone’s time.   

There are a lot of pitfalls on this album, that’s completely undeniable.  But the moments of freshman mistakes you end up forgiving pretty quickly just on the merits of the ambition and fever behind the group of guys doing it.  I expect growth in some great ways if they don’t get too caught up in the attention that I suspect they’ll get from becoming the latest high-school hipster standard.  As long as they keep pushing themselves we should be hearing great things sooner than later. 

It’s an all around good rock album, and certainly worth putting on your checklist.      

• Adolescents and adults now spend, on average, more than 64 days a year watching television
• Only sixty-four percent of U.S. citizens age 18 and over voted in the 2004 presidential election, the U.S. Census Bureau reports.
• In the end, David C. defeated David A. by a 56% to 44% home viewer voting margin, roughly 12 million total votes: “I think that number is actually really misleading.”  David C. remarked humbly.  “Obviously within the bubble of Idol, it’s hard to kind of get a vibe for what’s going on.  But I definitely thought [David A.] was probably a little ahead of me if I’m being honest.  I attribute the finale vote discrepancy just to my fans being awesome.  I don’t really know how else to explain it.”
• Tables from a November survey also show that of 197 million citizens, 72% (142 million) reported they were registered to vote.
• Among those registered, 89% (126 million) said they voted.
• In reality only 70% of citizens were registered; and among them, only 86% voted.
• The United States Census Bureau clocks the current U.S. population at 304,203,902
• According to Telescope, the company that takes care of voting for American Idol, there were 580 million combined toll-free and mobile votes in this year’s Idol election.
• In the 2004 presidential election 122 million Americans in total participated.

Idol:  (1) An image or other object representing a deity to which worship is addressed.  (2) Any person or thing regarded with blind admiration, adoration, or devotion.  (3) A mere image or semblance of something, visible but without substance.  (4) A false conception or notion;  fallacy.

When it showed up on the scene, this new concept allowed artists of all kind to publicly and unapologetically do away with any kind of social taboo.  Nothing was off limits, and offensive was the standard.  This fed into literature in tons of forms, zines being one of the most popular…  (( I’m still a big fan of any kind of zine I can get my hands on.  I’d even offer up the idea that it’s the same thing as a website where oddball kids with too many opinions vent about shit. ))  it had an obscene effect on the visual arts, new styles emerging left and right to promote the music and the culture.

Andy Warhol and the like certainly made their mark, but along with their work album art and show flyers had become some of the most interesting visuals people had seen in a while. (( check out ‘Fucked Up + Photocopied: Instant Art of the Punk Rock Movement’ by Bryan Ray Turcotte or head here for an idea or two www.art-for-a-change.com/Punk/punka.htm))

The theater was affected as well, eventually giving way to an entirely new and dangerous chapter of the performance art movement where aggression and sexuality quickly became staples of the scene…  Not to say that Punk invented performance art. We could (( if we really wanted to )) trace the roots of Performance Art back to German Bauhaus’ work around 1919 or 1920, or certainly the Futurists, or the American born (( by former German Bauhaus )) Black Mountain Collage…  but while educated artists were applying formulas to routines, using storytelling and imagination to relate ideas and politics to their audience, G.G. Allen was right down the street cutting himself to ribbons while rubbing his own shit in his wounds.

This was the new form, dangerous and disgusting, but far from uninteresting.

It was Nihilism off the page.  It was bigger than just the ideas of the philosophy.  It was in action and running laps around artistic concepts, doing and saying without any kind of social limitation…  the second that a normalcy or standard was established within the scene, someone was right there to question it and throw it away.  It was like an open challenge to fist-fight the work of every generation before this one.  No genre of expression was spared and the landscape of both pop and underground work is dramatically different today as a result.

Most people trace the initial uprising, into the public eye back to the year 1977…  there’s no real way to ever know for sure because, as like most artistic movements, we can only really trace the work, not the ideas or concepts…  but ’77 is the pretty universally accepted foundation for the movement time-wise.

Now take into consideration that I wasn’t born for another six years…

Now get over it…

Depending on your affections for the style, you may think that this gives me no right to have any kind of bold perspective on the movement as a whole, but sometimes being on the outside looking in is the clearest vantage point, and regardless of when I was born I’ve paid my dues and I’m still around…  all the kids that thought me in-genuine are either out of it or dead…  and good riddance to ‘em – (( ritual, scenester cock-measuring shit out of the way?  Good. ))

I was around thirteen years old when I picked up my first punk rock album…  I think maybe it was The Dead Kennedy’s  ‘Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables’.  The floodgates were opened and everything was off limits.  It was like I didn’t really even have a choice in the matter, it was a lot more like it chose me.  And like most people who’ve spent their lives as fans of this music, that second right then, when I picked up that album, was the beginning of a long long love affair that probably won’t ever really be over…  it’s been well over ten years in fact and it still isn’t.

I still love the scene.  I still love the music.  I love all these crazy fucking people that I’ve met along the way and all those cats that I’ve befriended who I would have had no real reason to ever meet outside of the music.  The comradery is like nothing else…  The fraternity…  It’s been an amazing and steady part of my entire adolescent and adult life so far…  hard to imagine my life without it actually

That’s why we have to kill it.

Or, rather, if you don’t have the heart of a Kevorkian, just look the other way and let the fucking thing die on it’s own…  The very concept of punk-rock, the philosophy of the movement, was and is temporary.  It’s nihilist outlooks can’t live forever and eventually exhaust themselves.

A shocking way of dress is in no way a shocking way of dress after thirty fuckin’ years…  It’s retro.  This abrasive dirty sound that was at one time the most offensive thing on the market has been so saturated with industry and marketing and management, it’s now the undeclared standard for any angst ridden pre-teen kid with an am/fm radio.  The cruel reality is that Punk was swallowed whole by pop-culture and is now just a fucking joke…  An utter joke.

I’d rather admit that the movement is dead, painful as that is, than continue to hang my head in shame as I watch this ungraceful, staggering into old age:

Van Gogh was dead at 37, though it’s universally accepted that his most important work came in his early to mid twenties.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was dead at 44…  actually a couple of years longer than he was expecting himself to hang around:  “Drunk at 20, wrecked at 30, dead at 40.”

Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison, and Kobain all checked out at 27.

Tupac was 25.

Both Buddy Holly and Darby Crash were only 22.

A person’s ability to hear higher and lower frequencies begins going downhill very quickly after the age of 30.  The sweat glands that we have inside of our ear canal start dying off one by one and because of the lack of moisture, earwax becomes drier and harder to extract from the body and an eventual buildup results. This leads to obstructed sound waves.  In addition to this, the eardrum itself, like most of the rest of the aging body, becomes a bit more flaccid…  it becomes looser and is less receptive to vibrations.

Mozart was dead at 35.

When a movement or an idea based out of artistic sensibility stops being inventive or renewing then what’s the fucking point?  Rehashing this punk style, attitude, fashion, or sound over and over and over is the antithesis of why you were originally attracted to that style, attitude, fashion or sound…  am I the only one that this makes sense to?  It’s self defeating and in my head it’s dead on the table…  been dead for years.

So here’s the question that we have to ask ourselves now:  what happens next?  Where do we go?  What limits does an artist test when they’ve all been broken down before you even had the chance to show up to the party?  ‘cause if there’s one thing that you can give to the Punk movement it that it was effective, but that doesn’t mean that we should sit here imitating and paralleling for the rest of our fucking lives.  I offer this:  we as modern artists, post-punk if you will, have nothing left to prove.  That’s been done for us.  It’s now a fact that Piss Christ is gallery worthy [ Check out Damned in the U.S.A. a BBC documentary on Andres Serrano’s controversial photograph ]

…the artists’ rights to do and say whatever the fuck he wants are protected…  and this went down in 1989.  Almost twenty years ago.

We have a responsibility to dismantle the forms themselves just like every other generation previous to this one…  only now we have no power to fight against, we have no one holding back our artistic vision.  There’s no power to rage and shake our fists at…  at least not in an artistic sense.  And unfortunately for some that means that we have to accomplish this with invention, intelligence, and talent.

You have to ask more from your musicians than four power chords and an attitude…  and we have to expect more from the theater than obscenity for the sake of it, demanding that the audience fill in the blanks for half assed attempts…  insisting that if they don’t understand the work, then it’s because of their lack of artistic sensibilities not the artists’ inability to communicate an idea …

that shits out and dead already.  I’m glad these extremes were tested and the artists won in the end, but don’t mistake it for what it is:  it’s a gift.

Now we have to figure out what to do with it on our own.

Learn what we can from the work that came before us and invent an entirly new chapter…  Separate and important in it’s own rite.

In the prologue to the Canterbury tales Chaucer wrote:  ‘…if gold ruste, what shal iren do?’

1. Intro
2. Big Money
3. Hood Thang
4. Hoe Nigga
5. What We Smoke, What We Pop
6. How I Came Up
7. Twerk Dat Thang
8. 100 Or Nothing
9. DXS Talk (Skit)
10. Money Gettin’ Mission
11. Hatin’ On Me
12. Blame It On Patron (Feat. Juicy J)
13. Come On Then
14. Wanna See Me Fall
15. Another Level
16. Any Day, Any Time
17. Outro

Here we have another caustic release from Frayser Boy, triple-six’s main antagonist.  As you probably figured, if you’re any kind of fan of DJ Paul and Juicy J.’s past producing work, the themes here don’t stray far from the mark.  Always aggressive, and always a thug to the tee Frayser Boy delivers a full on affront.

I was actually expecting a bit of storytelling on this album…  being recently caught up in and out of court, I was hoping that Frayser Boy would want to get some things off his chest.   The Memphis rapper recently pleaded guilty for aggravated assault.

There was an apparent incident in a Kroger’s parking lot and a handgun was pulled…  claims surfaced from Frayser Boy’s camp that he was framed and that because the alleged victim was white that he was being taken advantage of by the Memphis judicial system.  Maybe all this is true, who knows, I sure as hell wasn’t there so I don’t feel like I can judge it either way, but despite the fact that he told Memphisrap.com that he crafted ‘Da Key’ with “a lot of realism and thought…” instead of talking about these apparent injustices (i.e. the actual definition of  realism and thought.) the gritty southern gangsta opts rather to stick with the meaningful and cutting anthems - ‘Big Money’, ‘Twerk Dat Thang’ and the socio-political, intellectual landmark ‘Hoe Nigga’

This album is exactly what you think it is: Drugs Money and Sex (( that’s not a D.M.S. reference…  for that, check out the H2O review. )) if that’s not you’re thing then this isn’t your album.  Great beats, great production, and an the always consistent Frayser Boy is hard as nails as expected, but if you’re looking for anything more than cutthroat hustling and maybe a new ringtone keep on headed down the road.

1. Genesis
2. Let There Be Light
3. D.A.N.C.E.
4. Newjack
5. Phantom
6. Phantom, pt II
7. Valentine
8. Tthhee ppaarrttyy
9. Dvno
10. Stress
11. Waters of Nazareth
12. One Minute to Midnight

Dance isn’t my thing… I’ve never really given a shit about the genre, and I haven’t paid any attention to it at all outside of a few records here and there. I say this so that y’all know that I have no fucking clue what I’m actually talking about here, and that may make my opinion null and void when it comes to these guys so take it or leave it… but if you haven’t already, do yourself a favor and pick up this album immediately.

What I do know is that it’s never a good thing, regardless of genre, when a band’s debut album draws comparisons to another group’s music so consistently that their names become synonymous… in this case it’s Daft Punk, but I guess if you’re gonna remind people of another group it’s not such a bad draw, and fortunately for this French Duo, not only do they have D.P.’s manager (which, I suspect, may have something to do with the rampant, but positive comparisons.) but now they’ve got D.P’s fan base as well, plus a few younger rave kids who probably wouldn’t be privy to it otherwise.

Justice breaks down into two equal parts: one part Xavier de Rosney one part Gaspard Auge. And the two heads have cracked a very simple code: good beats + great hooks + a frantic energy = everyone dancing their asses off. Everyone I’ve played this record for has loved it. No joke every single person… It seems to have something that appeals to everybody. If you’re looking for a lot of substance, though, you should probably keep looking… there’s not much beating underneath the candy coating. But if you’re the type whose deepest moments of self-examination come from fixing your bangs in a freshly cleaned coke mirror before headin’ back out to the dance floor, then this is your jam.

Not heavy, not smart, just a hell of a lot of fun… it’s a great summer album and a guarantee to instantly hype up any house party.

The culprit was probably scared, and subsequently sped off. My friend was left to gather her damaged bicycle, and the slew of tears that ordinarily follow a traumatic experience.

Despite recently venturing through the ultra-cynical early twenties, there is still a part of me that wants to believe there is good in all of us. While I agree no wealth of young-angry-writer rhetoric would further the cause for banishing soulless commuters who would even think of doing such a thing, there is a great deal of good such angst can do to bring these realities to light.

There are a steady slew of individuals who are good drivers. This is not something to dispute. The Illinois DMV wouldn’t send a legion of hell raising NASCAR enthusiasts through the vein of our highways, would they? We are required by law to pass both a written exam, and driver’s test before being trusted to patrol the public streets.

This is all well and good, but what happens when a hit & run occurs throws a penetrating cork in the wheel of the process? What makes things difficult is the fact that drivers with clean slates don’t necessary collectively possess the unblemished track record their personal auto-history indicates.

Driving Records are state driver’s license reports containing details about a driver’s history including accidents and violations*. Fine. But what about those who flee the scene of an accident involving a bicyclist on their way to a thankless job (in this case, waiting tables for under-appreciative patrons)? According to the DMV, these altercations never happened in the first place.

None of this sits well, but I am neither an attorney nor a person in power. It’s true both of these realities are my fault, and a result of perpetual underachievement, but there is still a part of me that wishes there was something I could do.

This website may very well be just a professionalized-looking blog, but it’s this writer’s freedom to write that’s being exercised. Nothing more. Let’s just all be aware that these things happen everyday, so whether you are growing impatient behind the wheel, or enjoying a two-wheeled voyage from A to B, there are exceptions to every rule.
Be careful, my friends. Though not everyone meanders through their day apathetically, one thing is for certain: Everyone has a blind spot.

-Chris De Salvo

*-http://www.4dmv.com/driving_records.htm?nav_link=24

Not today, though. I was almost killed today by a thirty-something business women who weighed no more than one hundred pounds. Her car was much heavier, and the conversation intoxicating her awareness of the road seemed to have held just as much weight.

I am not a sexist, not would it ever occur to me to insult a female just because of her chromosome count. It’s just that every single time this situation presents itself, it’s my quick thinking that saves my life, or at least an extended hospital stay. Two variables are always the same; me, and the woman. Sure, men yell at me from their one-ton trucks, flip me the bird, or lay on the horn, but it always seems to be a lady immersed in an engrossing (hopefully) phone conversation on her way from work to palates that gives me a scare.

The Internet is a vast universe of whinny people who feel their opinions carry greater value than others. They think that by personalizing their rhetoric, an anonymous slew of faithful readers will take what they have to say seriously. To Hell with that. I am not speaking as one person, but as the faceless thousands whose lives are mercilessly put in dangers by these self-absorbed, Lakeview residing, yoga-doing, late-brunch eating women who can’t wait the twelve Goddamn minutes between destinations to carry on whichever asinine conversation they make it a point to kill time with everyday.

Notice the lack of exclamation points amidst my sentences. I’m not yelling, or wagging a finger in the air. This is all based on a series of experiences many of us have had with in two-wheeled transit. Though it’s obvious men also discuss stock-broking, manicures, and tennis lessons while steering their automobiles to and from their homes, my experiences have only been with women. Call me a bigot. Call me a sexist. Call me names.

Feminism is in my blood. Ask my mother. Ask anyone. Maybe these happenings have merely been an allotted slew of circumstantial coincidence. Who am I to say?

Let’s just hope this message has been made clear: Get off your Damn phone, and listen to the radio, an Oprah-endorsed book on tape, or even the wind flowing through the fucking window. Do whatever it is you have to do to keep that phone from being perched between your shoulder and those delicate ears.

Oh yeah, and it’s against the law. That’s something, right?

Look, I promise to look the other way and not report you if you can promise me one thing: Just don’t kill me.

*Cell phone distraction causes 2,600 deaths and 330,000 injuries in the United States every year, according to the journal’s publisher, the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society

*-http://www.livescience.com/technology/050201_cell_danger.html