I named Cee-Lo Green is the Soul Machine the best hip hop album from the 00s (and third best overall), and although Cee-Lo has certainly been visible since that 2004 release, he hasn’t put out another another solo record. So thanks to Chris Bodenner for hipping me that he’s got a new one coming out. Man, this and Sufjan Stevens in the same day, and after The Books and Joanna Newsom already dropped this summer? Hooray!
Anyway, the song is pretty much the greatest thing music has ever produced. Also, totally safe for work.
Cee-Lo Green – Fuck You
(seriously, don’t let the title fool you – what a fantastic song)
If you don’t know Scott H. Biram, do familiarize yourself. He’s the only guy doing outlaw country and punk blues worth a damn (with all due respect to Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers, Hank Williams III, and Bobby Bare Jr., who are actually all worth quite a bit of damn, but you get the idea).
Yes, Jack. One of my favorites.
He also reminds me a bit of how Kathleen Brennan once described her husband, Tom Waits’, music. “Grim reapers and grand weepers.”
Grand weeper:
Scott H. Biram – Still Drunk, Still Crazy, Still Blue
A routine call to shoo away a protester turns into a monumental headache as it slowly dawns on the officer that he has no idea what he’s talking about, and the protester – an attorney – does.
The officer is trying to do his job to the best of his ability, and he seems like a genuinely good cop, but he initially tries to fall back to the “I’m a cop and I’m telling you this, so back off” routine that’s second nature to a lot of law enforcement officers, and for what might be the first time in his career, the person in front of him isn’t buying it, and says so. To his credit, he at least has the good sense to back-pedal once he realizes he’s overstepped.
Note: don’t try this at home. A lot of people do try to challenge an officer’s authority, but most of the time they’re just spouting urban legends, half-remembered and barely understood incomplete pieces of law, and flat-out misinformation. Standing up to a cop when you have no idea what you’re talking about is just not a good idea.
You’ve probably seen at least one OK Go video. Nobody has mastered the art of the YouTube music video better, and for an only marginally known power pop quartet, getting an average of five million eyeballs per single ain’t bad. Hell, it beats radio.
Anyway, their videos are indeed among the best in the history of the medium. But the sneaky trick is they’re really a fantastic band, thank you very much. I’ve been getting into them a lot (sans YouTube) lately. So, without further ado, a bit of a link fest. A lot of these are unembeddable, but they’re all worth watching. And, worth watching in chronological order.
Normally I don’t pass on things like this, but in this case I want to make an exception.
A movement has started to get Pete Seeger nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. You can view it here (http://www.nobelprize4pete.org/), and sign the petition if you feel so inclined.
Pete Seeger is one of my heroes (I have very few), and has probably done more good with less actual power than just about any American in the last 100 years, and certainly more than any American musician, Woody Guthrie being his only real competition for the title. An unrepentant hippy who predates the hippy movement (and, it must be said, a pretty hardcore socialist), he has been a powerful force for labor, civil rights, peace, multiculturalism, and environmentalism, all while basically just playing the banjo. I think it’s easy to underestimate his impact—the guy who made “We Shall Overcome”, the guy who nearly single-handedly cleaned up the Hudson, the guy who popularized the protest song and the socially-conscious folk movement—because at the end of the day he never did anything but perform songs for people. But I think American culture, politics, and social consciousness would look very, very different today without Pete Seeger.
Pete Seeger is an ambassador for Peace and Social Justice and has been over the course of his 88-year lifetime. Using his prowess as a musician he worked to engage other people, from all walks of life and across generations, in causes to build a better and more civilized world: His work shows up wherever you look in the history of labor solidarity, growth of mass effort to end the Vietnam war, ban of nuclear weapons, work for international diplomacy, support of the Civil Rights Movement, for cleaning up the Hudson River and for environmental responsibility in general. Pete knit the world together with songs from China, the Soviet Union, Israel, Cuba, South Africa and Republican Spain. We learned that Crispus Attucks, born a slave, was the first man to die at the opening of the Revolutionary War, that the Farmer-Labor party in the mid-west had a socialist philosophy that lasted well into the 20th century, we learned that anti-slavery movements were often inspired by songs that indicated a map of escape, such as “Follow the Drinkin’ Gourd,” he popularized many of the IWW songs that helped in CIO organizing, and spread the Civil Rights Movement through promoting the SNCC Freedom Singers and making songs such as “We Shall Overcome,” known all over the world.
When subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee in August of 1955, at the height of the McCarthy period, Pete defended himself on the basis of the First Amendment, the right of an American citizen to free association, not the Fifth Amendment, protection against self incrimination. When he was boycotted from earning a living and practicing his craft on a national scale Pete appeared at union meetings, summer camps, Jr. High Schools, High Schools, and Colleges. His pay at times was as little as $5, but his value was priceless.
Pete Seeger is truly a Great American, a national treasure, and if any cultural figure ever deserved a Peace Prize, it’s him.
So, Joanna Newsom released her third album last week, which I got immediately. It’s a sprawling three-disk LP, over two hours solid of music. I’ve been listening to it on and off (although haven’t had a chance to really sit down with it). Frankly, I’m still not quite sure what I think of it all. Too much to process, and weirdly, the fact that she chilled her voice out a little, and found a middle ground between just the harp on Milk-Eyed Mender, and a total baroque orchestra for Ys. People who hated her before because of her vocals and relative inaccessibility might…well, hate her less on this one, as both aspects of her are taken down a notch. But frankly, I liked both those things. So I’m having a hard time adjusting, I think. Still, it that has been the case with each of her albums so far, and both wound up being, for me, damn near perfect records.
Anyway, two highlights from my first-pass listening:
I like Ingrid Michaelson, and tooling around to post something else as the Music Video of the Week, came across this gem. She’s a surprisingly good rapper (and she does get into the real song eventually, which I adore). I’m not sure why the “soft and sultry” style of spittin’ hot fire hasn’t taken off yet.
Reason #5634 why George Mason University is the coolest higher education institution around.
A music video sponsored by their economics department in which John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek have a rap battle.
That is exactly as awesome as it sounds.
“If you’re living high on that cheap rented hog,
don’t look for a cure from the hair of the dog.
Real savings come first if you want to invest;
The market coordinates time and inter-est.
Your focus on spending is pushing off red;
In the long run my friend it’s your theory that’s dead.
So sorry there buddy if that sounds like invective;
Prepare to get schooled in my Austrian perspective.”
So, Scarlett Johansson. She put out this album, what, last year?, and I’ve had it on my playlist since then, and it’s maybe the only time I can recall where I play something a lot with not a damn idea whether I like it. Like, I really have no idea what I think. She’s not got much of a voice (she sings ok, for the style she’s going for, but her voice is just…not very good), the production values fall somewhere between “Mostly Passable” and “1988 Casiotone Keyboard Demo Setting”, and the song choices are uninspired. But I keep listening to it. It’s got some sort of weird hypnoticness to it. I can’t tell if it’s hypnotic like a car crash or hypnotic like, say, some kind of animal you’ve never seen before and can’t for the life of you identify. And like I said, on the scale of 1 to 10, I think I have to give it an R.