Bombass Groove of the Week #1

"Cosmic Slop" by Funkadelic, from the album Hardcore Jollies.

Dig the first Bombass Groove of the Week. It's no wonder Dr. Dre sampled it for The D.O.C.'s "Beautiful But Deadly" from his debut, No One Can Do It Better.

Stay tuned every week!

Bombass Groove of the Week #1.mp3

Kings of Leon | Only By The Night

Forget worshipping at the altar of U2, Kings of Leon are straight up zealots on their fourth record, Only By The Night. If lead guitarist Matthew Followill would stomp any more on The Edge's signature delay pedal, they'd be jamming yesterday. Not that this family affair - Matthew the cousin, Caleb, Jared, and Nathan brothers - merely marauds.

A submarine sonar lead guitar opens the first track, "Closer." There is an ominous, haunted feel to the track that is magnified by Nathan's drumming. The song's rhythm isn't pegged as a backbeat or a downbeat; in fact, it is both. In the first bar of drums the beat is one-two-three-four; and in the second bar the beat is on the three, one-two-three-four. This two-bar pattern is repeated throughout the tune. This created a rhythmic imbalance that, instead of interrupting the rhythm, paradoxically adds to the lyrics's vampire anguish: "Driven by the strangle of vein/showing no mercy I'd do it again."

The album shifts from strength to strength in the first half. "Sex On Fire," the albums first single, is the best song on the record, and possibly the best song Kings of Leon have written thus far. As the bass and drum alchemy changes throughout the verses, expanding from chopped rhythms to fluid eighth notes and hi-hat hits, the chorus's topography becomes clearer. Caleb wails, "Your sex is on fire" as Matthew tears a melody from The Edge School of Poignant Guitar Dynamics.

Sandwiched between the doubtful wedding bells of "17" and the soul's dark night of "Cold Desert" are the weakest tracks on the record. Neither "Notion," "I Want You," or "Be Somebody" deliver the emotional impact that the rest of the album so earnestly does. The band's promise, though consistently improving record by record, has yet to be fulfilled. Stay tuned.

Sarah Palin, ignorant

Let's hope the GOP doesn't win. Just a quick note. Palin says Alaska's proximity to Russia enhances her foreign policy credentials. Does that presuppose that the farther she gets from Alaska, the less she knows? Following this rationale, she'd be ignorant of Florida and Texas, not to mention China, Iraq, or Afghanistan.

Note Palin's excessive brashness and annoyance at being stumped. Remind you of somebody?

Rolling Stone Magazine | Weezer "Troublemaker" Tour

I see it's been a long time since my last post. From now on, I'll be blogging on a regular schedule, about two or three times a week and as news and events arise. A recent event I covered for Rolling Stone Magazine was Weezer's first U.S. date of their "Troublemaker" tour.
(Photo credit: Jason Bergman)

My Morning Jacket | Evil Urges

After releasing 2005's Z, My Morning Jacket entered the mainstream spotlight, ready to inherit the mantle of alternative rock's next big thing. But a funny thing happened. The jam-band scene embraced their supreme live shows - though the group rarely jams - and now they are farther away from the mainstream and closer to being festival gods. Faced with this cognitive dissonance on their latest record Evil Urges, the band simply chooses not to pick a style and justify it. Rather they relish in the contradiction, creating subtle alt-country tunes and space rock excursions.

And they also pause for funk. "Highly Suspicious," easily the most adventurous and hilarious track on the album, is a mix between Southern rock, Prince, and metal-Devo. Jim James sings in a peerless falsetto as drummer Patrick Hallahan does his best Bambaataa beat. A dark, paranoid chant and a guitar solo that would make Skynyrd proud elevate the chorus to postmodern heights. Where this tune incorporates a pastiche of modern pop music, various tracks are sober, country-inspired ditties.

"Thank You Too!," "Sec Walkin'," and "Look At You" are tunes where James's pastoral musings on love and identity are given room to breathe with the earthy arrangements. Carl Broemel's work on the lap steel augments the country atmosphere on the songs and James's exquisite melodies bring the pathos. The closing suite - "Smokin' From Shootin'" and "Touch Me I'm Going To Scream Pt. 2" - package the country and electro tendencies in a sprawling, freewheelin' epic.

"Smokin'" begins gently and slowly intensifies to a soaring bass and guitar harmony. The rumbling drums and lap steel push and pull at each other while the harmony and vocals barely hover above them. "Touch Me Pt. 2," on the other hand, is a space dance number inspired more by Pink Floyd than Daft Punk. Disco drums and short chromatic bass fills propel the rhythm as the keys play the main melody. In the denouement, James's high pitch melodious screams mirror the chord changes in the chorus. And the chorus mirrors how you should feel while listening to this record: "Oh, this feeling it is wonderful/don't you ever turn it off!"

(Photo credit: Laurie Scavo)

N.E.R.D | Seeing Sounds

There are few producers who can both craft bust your shit open beats and wreck havoc on the mic. Dr. Dre is probably the best at doing both, never mind the constant ghostwriting rumors. Timbaland attempted the duties on his recent solo album and the results were lackluster. N.E.R.D, The Neptunes's Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo with their childhood friend Shay Haley, have been the most consistent, though often underwhelming, producers-as-headlining artists. Their latest effort Seeing Sounds continues their proud beat-making tradition (see Clipse's Hell Hath No Fury for evidence) and their ongoing lyrical challenges.

"Everyone Nose," the album's first single, is brilliant and infuriating. The music is a cross between Bomb Squad horn blasts, live drums, and chaotic scratching. But in the middle of this sonic assault, there is an absurd slow keyboard interlude that disrupts the vibe with lyrics such as, "You partied all night in sixth gear/just so you know." The tune's hook is so long and convoluted ("All the girls standing in the line for the bathroom") it barely works as a hook. If if weren't for the spectacular beat, well, you wouldn't have a song.

Hooks that do work, in "Anti-Matter" for example, where a fuzzed guitar lead and funk drums provide a steady bottom for the nonsensical lyrics ("You're so anti don't I matter?"), are bookended by verses that say little. Example: "Life is short in black and white/just like little penguins." True, very often the point of hip-hop and pop is to dance and get funky, not to have meaningful lyrics. I'm not looking for meaning in the lyrics though, I'm looking not to be distracted by silliness. Sometimes silliness is an absolute virtue (Beastie Boys, Del tha Funkee Homosapien), but here it interferes with the flow of the beats and the verses.

Maybe The Neptunse and Shay aren't that good at multitasking. In their critically lauded debut In Search Of... the music was played by power-pop, psychedelic outfit Spymob. Perhaps that freed Pharrell and Chad to write better lyrics. Though the guitarist and drummer from Spymob also contribute to this album, it didn't help the lyrics much. Seeing Sounds is all about club bangers, headphone beat deconstruction, and dancing. Who listens to lyrics on the dancefloor anyway?

(Photo credit: Leslie Kee)

Junot Díaz | The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

A few days ago in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic – where my parents currently live and the place I tend to call home – Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Díaz delivered a speech at my high school alma mater, the Carol Morgan School. Though his first novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao had won the prize last month, this was far from an award tour. As an artist in residence at the school, he conducted workshops and worked individually with students. The most anticipated portion of his visit was his speech and reading in the evening, where most members of the audience loudly demonstrated their pride as some parents gasped at the incessant cussing.

As in many of these kinds of talks, the speaker tends to be self-indulgent. It was no different here, except that it was charming. Díaz speaks joyously, with personality and wit, and the intermixed Spanglish pandered to the knowing crowd. The content of his speaking and its style instantly made him personable and familiar, though the reading of his novel and ensuing Q&A was more a lecture than a conversation.

The book is a coming of age story in which an overweight, sci-fi- and fantasy-obsessed romantic tries to find happiness and acceptance. Doesn’t sound quite earth-shattering, right? But the book’s grip lies in how it describes the Dominican immigrant experience in New Jersey as well as life under the tyrannical Rafael Trujillo regime back on the island. It is less a bildungsroman and more a portrait of the Dominican experience in the 20th century, with Oscar Wao and his family as Díaz’s lenses.

When it was time to begin the Q&A, the audience appeared ready to probe the author’s ideas and purpose for writing the novel. The subject that sucked the air out of the gym was negative hallucination. Díaz said it’s a concept that says that people don’t see themselves as what they are, or in psychoanalytic theory, the "active erasure of a perception." Its clearest example is race in the Dominican Republic, he said. A black Dominican he knew said he wasn’t black, that he was Dominican; Haitians are black, he said; the “other” is black. In a country where people obsessively straighten their hair, where Trujillo powdered his face and ordered the massacre of thousands of Haitians, where the most powerful and wealthiest families are white Dominicans, the subject of race is all but unspoken.

However, when people in the U.S. read or talk about race in other countries, people must remember that the racial construct that applies here doesn’t apply in other places. Different histories, different cultures, different everything. For example, Hispanic only exists in the U.S. Call a Venezuelan Hispanic and they are not going to know what you’re talking about.

Oscar Wao doesn’t examine these issues as much as demonstrate how they’re present in Dominican life at home and abroad while also presenting the resiliency of the human spirit.
(Photo by: Jim McKnight)