SOUNDTRACK: MC PAUL BARMAN-It’s Very Stimulating (EP) (2001).
So is this guy a joke? Well, he’s very funny. Very funny, in fact. But to my ear, not in a novelty sort of way. He’s got the kind of rhymes that make you laugh but still work upon multiple hearings. And, yes, Paul Barman is a squeaky, Jewish boy from Ridgewood, New Jersey (again!) and he really can’t rap on the beat and he really doesn’t have much in the way of rhythm, but got awesome skills in the lyrics department and he has production from Prince Paul (that’s the kind of credentials that anyone would like).
The theme of this EP is Paul’s utter failure to get with women (even in his fantasies). He’s crass and vulgar and yet he’s also quite smart and rather witty (“I think about all the pube I got while reading the Rubaiyat“) . The music is more or less inconsequential. As Prince Paul noted, the craziness comes from the lyrics, so you don’t want to overkill the song. But there’s some great samples and some solid beat work as well. Nevertheless, we’re here for the words. So, sample a few of these rhymes:
“The Joy of Your World”
It was time to copulate but we didn’t want to populate
So my bold groin reached for my gold coin proooophylactic
I unwrapped it, you can’t know how I felt
It wasn’t a gold coin condom, it was chocolate Chanukah gelt
The white part crumbled on her tummy and the rest began to melt
Foiled again…..
“School Anthem” or “Senioritis” (this song was renamed for the reissue of the disc it seems)
Homework is tell major lies or plagiarise encyclopedias, so boring
Fresh-faced teachers want to tickle ’em
but a test-based curriculum excludes exploring
I’ll let a mystery gas out of my blistery ass
Just to disrupt the misery of history class
“Salvation Barmy”
She said, “Go get a haircut”
So I showed her my bare butt
Pulled down my Carhartts put my moon in her star-charts
“I’m Frickin’ Awesome” ( I love this especially for the Lila Acheson bit)
It’s nice to be hypnotized by a man you don’t despise yet
He had a type of flow and I can’t quite label it
All I know it made me want to take off my cableknit
Sweater, Oh he better be hetero
I hope they don’t catch us in the Lila Acheson
Wallace Wing when Paulus brings the mattress in–rudely
He backlashed my booty
like I was Susan Faludi over the Grace Rainey Rogers Room rostrum
“MTV Get Off The Air, Pt 2” (the first two lines are fantastic, but the whole thing is genius).
Smirkin’ jocks with hackysacks
in Birkenstocks and khaki slacks
I’m the hypest lyricist
while they’re like, “What type of beer is this?”
Just wait until the full length for the utter genius that is “Cock Mobster” (how can be s o smart and so stupid at the same time?)
[READ: October 10, 2011] E Pluribus Venom
Like most people, I learned the name Shepard Fairey because of his iconic prints for Barack Obama. In addition to supporting Obama, I really liked the design of the prints–simple, bold, an easy iconic style (which has since been lifted, morphed and used everywhere). I know that many of Fairey’s prints actually come from other people’s original photos. He has a print of Muhammed Ali in this book, and he clearly didn’t take the original photo (I don’t know where it came from). But since all art is theft, I’m okay with Fairey taking someone else’s work and making something new from it. I’ve always felt that attribution should be enough if you modify the original enough to call it different (which I feel this print does). [The fact that he didn’t acknowledge the source does bug me, of course]. But that’s neither here nor there because this book predates all of that.
This book documents events that occurred in 2007. The E Pluribus Venom show was based largely around two images that Fairey designed to reflect the two sides of capitalism. The image to the right really doesn’t do any justice to the work itself, but you can kind of see that he created two-sided faux dollar bills. The front showed all the good things that capitalism can do. The back showed all of the evils that capitalism causes. The images resemble dollars, but the text is straightforward in its message. As with a lot of what Fairey does, it’s blunt and obvious but pretty cool.
As far as I’m concerned, though, this is the least interesting image in the book. Although I love that they made dollar bill sized prints of these faux dollars and left them scattered around in cities to promote the show. They way they were folded made them look at a glance like actual currency. Very cool. (more…)
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SOUNDTRACK: NADA SURF-“When I Was Young” (2011).
This is a new song from Nada Surf’s new album (due out in January 2012). Nada Surf aren’t changing much from their tried and true sense of pop hooks, but this is a slower, statelier song (with strings!). It features a challenging-to-sing-along-with chorus (“I wonder what was that world I was dreaming of”).
I Just Read About That... 