Music Video of the Day: Thom Yorke, "Walk It Out"

On the one hand, juxtaposing very serious white people with a banger-cum-meme from the Dirty Dirty is played out. On the other hand, Thom Yorke's dancing! The best.

Music Video of the Day: Enrique Iglesias, "Tonight I'm Fucking You" [NSFW -- Not Safe For Anything}

You know I get it. Dude's been making these subtle videos his whole career, and the point's been lost on us. I mean is Enrique into fucking hot girls or not? Question answered.

Music Video of the Day: She & Him, "Don't Look Back"

Ok. So our lord and master has come to survey his dominion. And normally I would be freaking out about this. (Go home, Hu Jintao. You smell...like unfettered economic success.) But it turns out here in America we know how to clone Zooey Deschanel. So, eat it, China.

Music Video of the Day: The National, "Conversation 16," Treasure Island Music Festival

Baby Anonymous, Sugar Pockets and I attended yesterday's Treasure Island Music Festival, on, well,  Treasure Island, an otherwise sleepy naval base beneath the Bay Bridge in the Bay between Oakland and San Francisco. Baby A caught the She & Him set, seemed to like it, then took a nap. (Babies are weird like that.) She and Pockets had to bail shortly thereafter to make her bed time, leaving me to Broken Social Scene, Surfer Blood, The National and Belle & Sebastian.

Above is the National's rendition of "Conversation 16," which they introduced thusly: "This song is about marriage...and eating brains." These guys may not be the best band in indie world, or the most ambitious, or the most talented, but they are making a serious play to be a part of that conversation. They put on a stunning set of serious, weighty multi-instrumental indie rock, accompanied by a heart-rendingly sincere baritone. "Fall asleep in your branches," the singer pours out. "You're the only thing I ever want anymore."

I stayed till the end of the Belle & Sebastian set, and schlepped it home with a friend, a harrowing trek involving shuttle, foot and BART train. I came home to Baby A, who was already asleep, of course, which is too bad because it's my branches she usually falls asleep in.

Music Video of the Day: That Creepy Cover of "Creep" Set to a Bizarre Montage of Mortgage Industry-Related Images, Courtesy of an Extremely Shady "Foreclosure Assistance" Organization

By now everyone's seen the trailer for The Social Network, which sort of confuses me. I mean it's a David Fincher film, written by Aaron Sorkin, so it's going to be awesome. But then again it's about the Facebook nerds and offers this line -- "I am going to sue you in federal court" -- as an example of its dramatic bona fides. So, a big hmmmm is in order.  (It also has Jason Timberland saying, "A million dollars isn't cool. Do you know what's cool? A billion dollars." So let's add a second hmmmm to the mix.)

In reality though, here's what's cool about the trailer, the haunting cover of "Creep" done by the Belgian girls' choir, Scala. I went to Youtube to find the full version of it, and came across the above video by a group that operates stopforeclosurefraud.com, and which purports to protect people from having their homes foreclosed on.  According to the mission statement for the site, "I am Determined to expose WALL STREET MORTGAGE FRAUD and take back our CONSTITUTION Rights, POWER & DUTIES that is taken from us daily!! (1) Shall not disable any natural or constitutional right without due process of law."

That's all fine and good, I suppose, but then the site links to "a lawyer that gets it." Putting aside the stinging failure of so many English speaking humans to understand who/that distinctions, when you click on this lawyer's site you find out it's suspended for violating the host's terms of service.  The point is as an anonymous commenter put it in an earlier post, fuck all mortgage lending and servicing companies that brought our economy to its knees, but maybe we should be weary too of the "lawyers" who are willing to take up the fight against them. Basically, mankind, Jesus, it's terrible. 

Anyway, enjoy the song.

(Real) Music Video of the Day: Janelle Monae, "Tightrope"

Janelle Monae's album is so good, her vision for the future (and past) of hip hop so groundbreaking (while so thoroughly referential), in two years the backlash will set in and she'll be disregarded for simpler fare. For now, here's her video for "Tightrope," which is the absolute jam and which has the hottest dance moves I've seen since the "U Can't Touch This" video.

Music Video of the Day: Ron Artest, "Champions"

One of the things about Ron I've always loved -- and not to get all OG on the bandwagon jumpers, but dude's been nutty since 1997 -- is that he seems to have disregarded all hip hop culture post 1992. If you look at him in games, he refuses to wear his shorts baggy and prefers them well above the knee; he prefers Rodman-like hair dye to cornrows; he raps, but he eschews gimmicky hooks; And most important, although sometimes he dresses like this on talk shows, at other times he dresses like this (bluetooth and purple-and-gold scrubs.) Other things I love about Ron: He broke Michael Jordan's ribs, but no one talks about it; And he majored in math at St. John's. Here's his video for "Champions."

Music Video of the Day: Ron Artest, "Afghan Women"

This is from last fall, but E, you may have missed it. Since you expressed some interest in the Queensbridge Killer's upcoming single, I thought you may want to check out his last video. There are some disturbing images here, so tread carefully. The point is Ron Artest is one of the weirdest, most interesting people in American sports. (Btdubs, the video's been pulled from Youtube. Based on a cursory glance of the characters, I believe this is from a Chinese website.)

Music Video of the Day: She & Him -- "In the Sun"

This video is exactly like Britney Spears' "Baby One More Time" video, except for one minor change. They changed it from being terrible to being great.

Music Video of the Day: Vistosso Bosses, "Delirious"

The outfits, the greenscreened images, the Soulja Boy intro, the dancing, the sickly-sweet adolescent romantic theme-mongering, the chorus, which has colonized my brain -- all of it make this video the best. Happy new year, bitches. See you in '010.

Music Video of the Day -- Dirty Projectors, "Stillness is the Move"

This is not a real post, I'm aware, but I've been commenting more than blogging these days, and I feel the need to break E's uninterrupted reign, so here's Dirty Projectors' "Stillness Is the Move."

There was a movie that came out a couple of years ago called Bulworth, in which Warren Beatty played some kind of white liberal politician whose mask was slipping, and then he met Halle Barry, and he was all like "You're a gangbanger. Let me tell you about the Black Panthers." And she's all like I know about the Black Panthers. Go fart into a Slanket while I play this song by Ol Dirty Bastard and the third person from the Fugees (ed's note: three people were in The Fugees? Knowledge) . And he's all like, "What? There is a thing called hip hop which allows me to say "fuck" in public and also wear ski caps." Let me put down my Arnold Palmer, and rap my thoughts and feelings. And then he says something about how we should all fuck each other and this will erase racial distinctions, and basically solve acid rain and the problem with the o-zone layer (ed's note: 90's environment references, people). If I were to describe this movie in one word it would be "gangsta." If I were to describe this movie in two words it would be "Snoop Dogg."

Anyway, what does this have to do with Dirty Projectors? Very little. Except while it's interesting that Warren Beatty thought embarrassing rapping would lead us to the racial promised land, in fact, there was some truth to his gangsta, homey-dogg philoso-jazzing. White people music, Black people music. So different in 1998, so not different in 2009, maybe? Dirty Projectors are about as white a band as you can find, and they've recorded what is to my ears an absolute R&B club banger, which Beyonce's sister has re-recorded, and which is, in fact, now an absolute R&B club banger. Jay-Z and Beyonce go to Grizzly Bear concerts; The Magic Numbers covered Beyonce. And meanwhile people in the Bronx and people in Williamsburg wear the same skinny jeans and throwback multi-colored Nikes. And blipsters is a word.

You know, I remember a time when I was DJing in college and there was some discussion about whether or not I should be playing Gang Starr during our somber indie broadcast.

The question would be absurd today.

The question is the truth.

Not Music Video of the Day: Jay-Z, Alicia Keys, "Empire State of Mind"

This is the new-ish Jay-Z video. It is trash. And you know, that's fine. Sling that trash, Rake in that cash. Respect. See what I did there? I made a stupid rhyme, but that rhyme is better -- lyrically, syntactically, rhythmically, what have you -- than any one couplet in this song. In fact, I don't even know why I said "couplet." This is essentially a mad-libbed series of non-sequitirs sprung from random New York-based touchstones, and strung against a mis-matched beat. This song is vile, vile trash.

First of all, Jay-Z, you live in Alpine, New Jersey. That's just the cold, hard facts. Stop fronting. You live in a villa designed by I.M. Pei with your purebred Himalayans, with hundred dollar bills in your pillowsacks, and with Beyonce Knowles. (She makes good music videos, fyi.) That is a good life you lead, especially considering you were handed nothing and you used to sling crack in the Marcy Projects. You harnessed this God-given gift for beat and flow (see here) and made art, and then you took this art and married it to a preternatural business acumen, and created an empire. You are in like the top 100 humans, Jay-Z. So what the fuck? You took a city that counts you among its favorite sons and made an undignified whore of it.

Here are the "New York" references you make in this song: DeNiro (ed's note: What is going on with that guy?), Frank Sinatra, Brooklyn, Tribeca, Harlem, Dominican people, the Knicks, the still New Jersey Nets (cross-promotion!), yellow cabs, gypsy cabs, dollar cabs, Afrika Bambaataa, and the World Trade Center. Literally, these are the references somebody from Dubuque would make of New York, based on his experience watching an afternoon of I Love the 70's and thumbing through a coffee table book from grandma's house.  Please, Jay-Z, stop. There is only so much vicarious embarrassment I can take.

Now, as far as that Alicia Keys hook:

Concrete jungle where dreams are made of,
There's nothing you can’t do,
Now you're in New York!!!
These streets will make you feel brand new,
the lights will inspire you,
Let's hear it for New York, New York, New York

I mean no disrespect when I say this. Alicia Keys, you made a really sweet, quietly sexy, authentically New York video where you captured the nuances of unrequited love, begun in a coffee shop on 39th and Lennox, that then blossoms in the wake of a broken-up, uptown houseparty. You are a good singer! And you got Mos in your video, before he went crazy. But now -- and again, no disrespect -- you really need to kill yourself.

Music Video of the Day: Joey Potter's Douchey Worthington College Boyfriend Plays Cheap Trick

For some months now, I've been bemoaning my lack of musical talent to any and all who would listen. Any and all in this case is a list of one: blog devote Thumbu Sammy. I told him I should take up an instrument, perhaps the guitar, and last weekend whilst I was skulking about Brookline and Cambridge with Sugarpockets, E, occasional reader A. Frances, and others, Thumbu, who was house-sitting for us, procured a guitar and deposited it in our living room. Veritable gauntlet, dropped. I am so used to my empty threats going ignored, I am not sure what to do with wide-eyed idealist Thumbu's faith in me. Will I finally make amends for those tortured four years from 4th to 8th Grade in which my father forced me to play the violin? Will I follow through on my half-formed ideas about taking up new hobbies? The jury is still out.

But today, I made peace with the fact that my taking up acoustic guitar--in whatever lazy form or fashion--does not mean I share company with that douche nozzle half-assedly playing Cheap Trick songs on West Quad--you know the one, leaning super cazh against that garbage can that really drunk freshman girl threw up in after the Carolina game in '97, the one right in front of the Bryan Center Walkway, right below Joey Potter's dorm room. (See above). No, thanks to Thumbu I learned to play -- more or less -- four notes from "Wild Thing." And I felt like a fucking genius of rock and roll. I felt like these guys. Motherfucking Extreme! Motherfucking Nuno Bettencourt, in tube socks and shorts and combat boots. That's what I felt like. And it felt good.

Thanks, Thumbu. Safe travels back to Detroit Rock City. The Bay will miss you.

90's4Life.

Music Video of the Day: Matt & Kim, "Lessons Learned"

Many years ago I had a very taxing job. I was a school teacher, which means I spent my days getting mad at small children. When I'd come home my favorite thing to do was to watch music videos, usually on BET because, well, that was the only place where you could watch music videos in those days. Anyway, the art form, as we know, has more or less died, or at least the medium has, so it's with a heavy dollop of nostalgia that I continue to post videos on this site. Still, it is curious that Matt & Kim insist on making really awesome videos, in addition to just being awesome themselves.

Music Video of the Day: Yo La Tengo, "Today is the Day"

For E, as promised, no fake words. Just positive vibes. Hope all is well.

Music Video of the Day -- Rumpshaker

For Thumbu Sammy and E., who wants more 90's references.

Music Video of the Day: Tilly and the Wall's "Beat Control"

If, back in the day, Keith Haring impregnated Gloria Estefan in a vat of toxic stew, composed of discarded I Love the 80's video footage and neon spandex, this video is what would result.

Music Video of the Day: True Love Waits...on Lollypops and Crisps

Thanks to blog-reader, Manan, for pointing out that the abstinence pants discussed below are really just old concert promo wear from when Radiohead was touring in support of Kid A and Amnesiac, and that "True Love Waits" was on a "WILDLY "popular live record Radiohead put out, the existence of which I am too decrepitly unhip and too many days past 30 to have known about. Or maybe this is disinformation: maybe, kids, maybe Thom Yorke subscribes to the Tina Turner school of good times, and wants you to keep it in your pants.

Music Video of the Day, You Conceited Bastard

Like you, I worry about our nation's faltering commitment to the cause of justice; I worry about the perversion of bedrock constitutional principles occurring in that sleepy Caribbean Bay; I worry about the fact that no national political figure has been able to talk about solutions to the cataclysmic horror of the Iraqi occupation without invoking one side of that sad, bullshit troops-out-now/fight-till-we've-won binary.

We live in supremely unjust times--though I look to our forebears and I don't see too many models of societal equity that I think we should emulate--but from the burning embers of our governing documents, one man rises to choose the hard right over the easy wrong, if I may steal from the Episcopalian boys' school mantra drilled into my ears years ago. That man is David Paterson. He is semi-blind, but by all measures as capable--rather as able--as any other. He has affairs, but he is frugal and conducts them at a modestly priced Days Inn that is also near his office. And now Governor Paterson has his Civil Rights Act: He has freed eye-patch connoissuer and performer of "La Di Da Di", Slick Rick, or rather he has given him a full and unconditional pardon, in the wake of Slick's full remittance of payment to Society, remittance of debts following an attempted murder or two. And now we celebrate because in 6th grade we called for justice for Slick Rick, and also we likes to party. We don't cause trouble, and we don't bother nobody.

Music Video of the Day: Emerson, Catharsis, and Bitching, Bitching BMX Jumps

So, life is very self-reflective and self-indulgent these days, but not in a way that makes for good blog copy. I toil in the office whilst simultaneously mourning the fact that I'm no longer wearing this lawyering gig for shits and giggles. Now, don't get me wrong. It's not like the job has become who I am; I still resist. And by resistance I mean I continue to be constitutionally incapable of small-talking up my cases at lunch, or shaving on the regular, or doing good work, and God knows, I emphasize the casual in casual Friday. But still, today, despite my low-level resistance campaign--which, it should be noted, is just a concerted effort at retaining a semblance of Emersonian identity in a world of corporate personhood-- I inched just a bit closer to the corporatization of my own soul, or maybe I moved an inch closer to the door out of this place. I don't know.

I took out summer associates to lunch, and they were stiff and boring and fretted over ordering the right things, and I realized that I was sitting with people who saw me only as an agent of a firm they wanted to impress. We were not human beings sharing a meal. Even my desperate attempts at steering the conversation away from the relative merits of different practice groups to whether or not the new Indiana Jones is going to be awesome or really fucking awesome was met with stunted, calculated politeness. Like, if they didn't say the right thing about Indiana Jones maybe they won't make partner one day. Now, I can understand this behavior if you're sitting with somebody who's expressed even the slightest interest in maintaining the corporate charade--God knows I've been on those lunches--but I am not such a person, and I couldn't make it any clearer that I am not, and yet they just forged ahead.

The point is this: even though I do my best to separate myself--physically, mentally, emotionally--from this place, while at the same time cashing the checks it so graciously provides me, and, hopefully, doing well enough that I can to become a better lawyer in the process, those summer associates will only ever think of me as that associate who took us out for sea bass. Try as I might, try as I did, to them I will never be snarky guy with 80's fetish. I don't know why that bums me out more than say the actual work that law firms do, but it does.

Anyway, this is a long way of saying it's Memorial Day weekend, and the sun is smiling graciously on the Bay, and we can all, hopefully, unchain ourselves from our shackles--so let's celebrate by soaking in Cut Copy's pitch-perfect electro-retro track, "Far Away," set against the action-laced pivotal scene from 1986's definitive follow-your-dreams, BMX masterpiece, Rad. The only way this audio-visual experience could be any better is if it featured cameos by Soleil Moon Frye and/or Bea Arthur.

I may be associate who took us out to lunch to some, but you, my precious blog readers, will always know me as snarky guy with 80's fetish, and that's why I will never leave you.