MF Doom is at it again. The underground emcee managed to aggravate a whole room of fans on Saturday by billing a fake show at LA’s GrandStar Jazz Club. After standing around through opening acts and DJs, fans began to suspect that something wasn’t right when someone assumed to be Doom took the stage and then didn’t even take the mic. Boos erupted, and some of the commotion was even caught on tape by upset concert-goers.
Take a look at some fan footage from the venue and decide on the situation yourself:
Mischief has always been a large part of Doom’s persona. There were a few other live fake-outs in 2007, one of the most notable being the possible imposter at the Pitchfork Music Festival this year.
In March, Doom told Rolling Stone that the hijinks are a deliberate part of his persona:
“Everything that we do is villain style,” Doom says. “Everybody has the right to get it or not get it. Once I throw it out, it’s there for interpretation. It might’ve seemed like it didn’t go well, but how do we know that wasn’t just pre-orchestrated so that we’re talking about it now? I tell you one thing: People are asking more now for live shows and I’m charging more, so it must’ve worked somewhere.”
Is his music worth the hassle, or should Doom stop biting the hand that feeds him? Take a look at Current’s Embedded with Mos Def, where he talks about why the mask and villain concept are ingenious to him.
Check out this clip from December 2007 (cleverly retitled by someone—not me—post-Idol), in which he talks about getting glammed up for a high-fashion soiree at an LA nightclub. (While you’re spotting random reality show stars, don’t miss Project Runway winner Christian Siriano in a couple of shots.)
2. Lambert auditioned for Idol because he was tripping his face off on ’shrooms at Burning Man.
”I realized that we all have our own power, and that whatever I wanted to do, I had to make happen,” he tells Rolling Stone.
All things considered, I’d say his drug-inspired gamble has paid off pretty well. Can you say the same for your Playa epiphanies?
Instead of just talking about how Bowie is the be-all end-all of glam-rock and inspiration to hipster bands everywhere, Lambert has pushed the idea of androgynous queer dance rock to a new (and far less ambiguous) level.
See, for example, his extremely cheeky, campy album cover:
Now, I hate medleys with a fiery passion—pick a goddamned song and sing it all the way through, people!—but I appreciate a man who sings not one but three Bowie songs on a nationwide tour targeting mainstream American TV audiences and their kids.
4. He liked the American Music Awards just about as much as you did.
(Photo: Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
Lambert’s debut album, “For Your Entertainment,” comes out today.
Here’s the short version of the story behind these songs. Back in the day, Neil Young saw all the clips of some really horrific things happening in Alabama (most these things were also happening all over the country, but it’s easier to demonize the South for racial problems. In the grand scheme/sham of news stories, that’s the South’s preconceived backstory/character. I could go on for hours about revisionist history that demonizes the South in order to alleviate blame and guilt among the rest of the country that did the exact same shit, but tried to stop it about 3 weeks sooner, but that’s an entire book, not a quick blog post), anyway, Neil he wrote a couple of great songs about it: “Southern Man” and “Alabama.” They’re both amazing songs and said things that needed to be said.
Then, Lynyryd Skynyrd went to Muscle Shoals, Alabama and recorded an album. You may not know it, but Muscle Shoals has produced some of the best R&B and Soul music in America. Little Richard, Wilson Picket, Clarence Carter, Aretha Franklin, and tons more legendary musicians recorded their with the house band. Everyone wanted to a piece of the Muscle Shoals Sound.
When Skynyrd was in town recording, Ronnie Van Zandt was blown away by how different the images you saw on the evening news were from what he saw. He saw a bunch of black and white musicians playing together, loving each other, and making beautiful music. That never made the news, so he wrote “Sweet Home Alabama” to show the other side of the story.
Flash forward 30 some odd years, and Patterson Hood wrote a song about the things I just typed, and addressed the supposed feud between Ronnie and Neal. That song is “Ronnie and Neil” and it’ll rock your fucking cock off while giving you a history lesson. It’s on Southern Rock Opera, which is mandatory ownership for any rock fan.
Want to score an awesome limited edition poster for Current Music Presents: Embedded? (Trust me, you do. I’ve gotten a tease and they’re awesome.)
Here’s what you do. Go to this page for Embed Embedded. Now, if you aren’t logged into your current.com account (or you don’t have one—what?? it takes 1 minute or you can use Facebook Connect!), it’s going to kick you back to log in. Once you have and are logged into a current.com account, it’ll take you back to the Embed Embedded page, where you can copy the code from that box below the video. Then go paste that in your blog, MySpace, message board, or other places that like HTML. Only video plays generated using THIS CODE—which the eagle eyed among you will notice includes your current.com username—will count towards your total video views. Whoever generates the most video views gets the poster. Got it? Good.
This is our Embed Embedded video of the week. It’s Death Cab for Cutie’s Nick Harmer in San Francisco, talking about the “Full House” house. It’s part of next week’s episode, in which Nick teaches about tilt-shift photography, his favorite way to chill while on tour. (Don’t lift the embed code from this video if you want to participate—follow the instructions above, get your own, blog it, get people to watch it, etc. Right?)
And while we’re at it, let me publicly acknowledge our first two top-video-view-getters: Current.com users underdogthedj and FROLAB.
Embed Embedded is a viral game in which users get a unique embed code for a sneak peek video from our new six part music special. The user who generates the highest number of video views during a one-week period gets a limited edition poster for the show designed by legendary music artist Justin Hampton. Each week we’ll put up a new video and you have a new chance to be our mastermind of viral videos.
In this exclusive clip, Silversun Pickups invite you to sing-a-long to “Panic Switch” off the album, “Swoon.” Follow along with the little bouncing ball, and Brian’s subtle assistance. We’re excited to share this with you, and hope that you’ll be just as excited to share it on your blog, MySpace, message boards and anywhere else you hang out online.
Log into your current.com account and go to Embed Embedded for your unique code. Pass it around!
In case you don’t know, Mexican Institute of Sound is Camilo Lara, who is also the president of EMI Mexico. Why yes, that is strange and unusual. Here’s how it happened: at the end of the year, Camilo used to make mixed tapes for his friends using the music of his favorite albums from the year. Soon his remixes started getting passed around to other people, and eventually his friends were like “hey, um, yeah, you should, um, do this professionally, and um, yeah, I think you have the connections to make it happen.”
Originally MIS had more of an electronic sound, but the latest album “Soy Sauce” defies categorization, and most all of it is live instruments. There are dance songs. There are rock songs. There’s rap, and there’s even a Mariachi tribute to Bittersweet Symphony by the Verve, which is fucking amazing.
See? I told you that was cool. The range of music on this album even goes beyond the polarity of “Alocatel” and “Sinfonia Agridulce.” “White Stripes” is probably the most down and dirty song about a chick with coke snot running down her nose while she dances that I’ve ever heard. And it’s not that the lyrics are that dirty, but the beats are. They are straight up raunchy.
If you’re one of those people that knows and loves music, but find yourself wondering where all the badass, groundbreaking, new stuff is, it’s on Soy Sauce. If you are bored with everything you have and everything you hear, or if you love everything you have and just need that one more album to round out the perfect collection, this is it. Get it here.
Is Justin Townes Earle country? Well the word “country” doesn’t mean a fucking thing anymore. Country music has been bastardized by the same money grubbin’ corporations that are responsible for 99% of every new TV show and movie being either a sequel, a remake, or a rip-off, and they’ve done the same thing to country music over the past few decades.
The most important word in the expression “show business” is “business,” and just like the business you work in, the bosses are generally unimaginative, money-driven morons who suck at their jobs and only got there because they married someone’s daughter or accidentally walked in on someone important doing something really weird late at night at a frat party during college.
Think of Justin more like indie-billy with a Southern punk rock mentality. In case you don’t know, he’s Steve Earle’s son and named after Steve’s buddy Townes Van Zandt. And in case you don’t also know, that’s a big fucking deal. However, when Justin was younger, his dad threw him out of his band for livin’ too hard, which is kind of like getting thrown out of the Jimi Hendrix experience for having too bad-ass of an Afro, but whatever, life moves on.
Anyway, Justin got his shit together some time back, and he is making amazing music as his own man now. He tours with his pal Cory Younts, who plays banjo, mandolin, fiddle, harmonica, and pretty much every other instrument in the back of the van. In addition to being a complete bad ass who would probably stab you with a rusty spoon if you did him wrong, he’s also featured in GQ’s Style issue this month. He also just won Emerging Artist of the Year at the 2009 Americana Awards last week. Plus he’s nominated for Americana Artist of the Year and Video of the Year at the Nashville Music Awards.
I first saw Justin when he was the middle act on a show at Spaceland. The place was packed, all for him, even though he wasn’t headlining. When he played “Mama’s Eyes” the place shut the hell up unlike any music venue I’ve ever heard in Los Angeles. Everyone in this damn town thinks they are performers not audience members, but for those three minutes they shut up and listened.
This fall, Justin’s playing some shows with Dan Auerbach and also with the Pogues, which is honestly still blowing my mind, even though I heard about it months ago. If you are within 1,000 miles of the shows, you should be there. You can grab Justin’s albums here and here or stream an amazing live from Austin show here.
There was a funny back and forth on @thedailyswarm’s Twitter this morning, trying to figure out whether the new Thom Yorke video was real, a fanvid, or something else altogether.
But do you like it? (I have not yet had enough coffee to answer this competently.)
Our awesome music licensing coordinator, Jen Pray (yes, she of the John Hughes greatest hits of a generation dressing down of our then-intern) let loose with a little rant on Twitter:
(Watch one example above from the Oprah Winfrey Show. Ironically, this is an embeddable clip, but none the BEP’s actual video of this song is not.)
I retweeted at @current_music, asking for what else you’d plead to never again be licensed to anything because if you once loved it you’ve now lost all respect. Your responses were too good to truncate in mere 140-character bites, so here they are in their entirety:
@sarahindie @current_music The Turtles’ “Happy Together.” I used to love that song. Now it brings up memories of dancing bagels and cream cheese, etc.
@kid_amy @current_music ugh, I just heard Digable Planets “Rebirth of Slick” for a Tide commercial yesterday! and also New Order’s “Ceremony” I like those songs, just found it appalling they were being used in commercials
