I just had a listen to a few of the new Daft Punk songs from Tron Legacy. Somehow I’ve been living under a rock for the past year and didn’t know they were doing the entire soundtrack until today. For about 10 minutes I was totally pumped until I heard the new tracks, at which point my heart sank like a very large stone.
The last thing I expected was an adagio from Daft Punk. Isn’t that a bit too DJ Tiësto?
Take a listen to the songs on the link above and let me know what you think. Homework and Discovery are two of the best albums of all time. Why can’t Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo get back to Burnin‘ shit up?
This album’s spent a lot of time spinning in a smoke-filled room. Not smoke from an unattended panini press. Not smoke from a curling iron left on an Ikea shag rug. Not the smoke Glenn Beck’s blowing up America’s ass.
Nay, it’s the smoke that huffs and puffs from a frog bong. Yes, the frog bong you used begrudgingly as a replacement for the perfectly nice, perfectly non-jumping bong your brothers broke while playing soccer in the apartment. The frog bong you “forgot” to pack in the big move. The frog bong you never got to say goodbye to…until now.
Wow, sweet. A frog. On a bong. Awesome.
Dear Frog Bong,
I never really liked you very much. You were an ugly mess of glass with a stupid frog blown on your side, for crying out loud. You were an exaggerated cliche of marijuana culture that showed up unwelcomed after the tragic loss of a good friend. Your beady little eyes eternally mocked his demise between each and every rip.
Every chillout, every prized stash, every slammin’ party was ruined just a little bit by your presence. Your unnecessary girth was a continual source of shame and coffee table dents. How many times did you ruin a potential friendship with your shitty ambiance? How many times did your deceivingly narrow downstem clog as soon as I flipped on disc two of my UNKLE album? Only endless fingers on endless hands could count the times.
I would have destroyed you if it were possible. However, several attempts to annihilate your faux permeable skin proved fruitless. A drop from the fourth floor balcony onto 33 E. McMillan Street didn’t create so much as a scratch. Letting my crack-dealing neighbor blast your facade repeatedly with his shotgun only deprived the world of a dozen 12-gauge shotgun shells. Multiple attempts murder you using a non-FIFA approved soccer ball in conjunction with a wicked bicycle kick proved folly at best.
And you took it all with an amphibious little smile. “Ribbit, ribbit,” you croaked, “you know you wanna hit it.” You monstrosity, you whore of Babylon. Your bulbous shaft was blown straight from the devil’s mouth…that’s what she said.
Goodbye forever. I hope you have a really tough time being green, you bastard.
xxxxxxx
Don’t cry, friend. That terrible frog bong can never hurt you again. I hope a look-see at this amazing music video for “Rabbit In Your Headlights” (ft. Thom Yorke) will dry those beautiful eyes.
Lyrics By, Vocals – Kool G Rap
Music By – DJ Shadow
Recorded By [Vocals] – DJ Shadow , Kevin Scott
Scratches [Cuts And Skratches] – DJ Shadow
Vocals [Additional] – Lateef The Truth Speaker , Lyrics Born
Written-By – J. Davis* , N. Wilson*
2
UNKLE Main Title Theme
3:24
Mixed By – Jim Abbiss
Music By – DJ Shadow
Scratches [Cuts And Skratches] – DJ Shadow
Written-By – J. Davis*
3
Bloodstain
5:57
Mixed By – Jim Abbiss
Music By – DJ Shadow
Performer [Sample] – Be Be K Roche*
Recorded By [Vocals] – James Lavelle , Jim Abbiss
Scratches [Cuts And Skratches] – DJ Shadow
Vocals, Lyrics By – Alice Temple
Written-By – A. Temple* , J. Davis*
4
Unreal
5:10
Mixed By – Jim Abbiss
Music By – DJ Shadow
Performer [Sample] – Jules Blattner Group, The
Written-By – J. Davis* , Jules Blattner
5
Lonely Soul
8:56
Arranged By [Strings], Conductor [Strings] – Wil Malone
Mixed By – Jim Abbiss
Music By – DJ Shadow
Recorded By [Vocals] – Sie Medway-Smith , UNKLE
Strings – London Session Orchestra*
Written-By – J. Davis* , R. Ashcroft* , W. Malone*
6
Getting Ahead In The Lucrative Field Of Artist Management
0:56
Music By [The Entertainer (uncredited)] – Scott Joplin
7.1
Nursery Rhyme
4:45
Mixed By – Jim Abbiss
Music By – DJ Shadow
Recorded By [Vocals] – Jim Abbiss , UNKLE
Vocals, Lyrics By – Badly Drawn Boy
Written-By – D. Gough* , J. Davis*
7.2
Breather
Vocals [Breaths] – James Lavelle
8
Celestial Annihilation
4:44
Arranged By [Strings], Conductor [Strings] – Wil Malone
Mixed By – Jim Abbiss
Music By [Additional] – DJ Shadow
Scratches [Cuts And Skratches] – DJ Shadow
Strings – London Session Orchestra*
Written-By – J. Davis* , W. Malone*
Written-by [Concerto For Strings And Beats] – Wil Malone
9
The Knock (Drums Of Death Part 2)
3:58
Bass, Theremin – Jason Newstead*
Mixed By – Jim Abbiss
Music By – DJ Shadow
Scratches [Cuts And Skratches] – DJ Shadow
Vocals, Lyrics By – Mike D
Written-By – J. Davis* , M. Diamond*
10
Chaos
4:42
Mixed By – Jim Abbiss
Music By – Atlantique (2)
Producer [Additional] – DJ Shadow
Vocals, Lyrics By – Atlantique (2)
Written-By – A. Khan*
11
Rabbit In Your Headlights
6:20
Bass, Synthesizer – Thom Yorke
Mixed By – Jim Abbiss
Music By – DJ Shadow
Recorded By [Vocals] – Kevin Scott , UNKLE
Vocals, Lyrics By – Thom Yorke
Written-By – J. Davis* , T. Yorke*
Will Smith has been a lot of things in his life. He started off as a loveable miscreant run amok in an affluent California community, mixing follies of youth with tough life lessons. Next, he served as the human race’s first ambassador, albeit informally, to visitors from another planet. Along the way he was twice nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Actor (?). Yes, he has worn a large pair of ears under many hats.
But can The Fresh Prince, with all of his achievements, be considered a bona fide badass? Let’s explore arguments for and against, shall we?
Arguments For!
1) Will Smith Works the Booty
Yes, you read that correctly. Will Smith works the booty. This isn’t that spectacular, you say. I too have worked the booty on several occasions, you say. But have you worked the booty in a public setting? On stage in front of hundreds, nay, thousands of screaming fans? Unless you work in the Red Light District of Amsterdam the answer is probably no. But Will Smith has. And it shook the room. The good stuff starts 21 seconds into the video.
Standin’ in a crowd of girls like a (sic) island
I see the one I want I said, “Come here cutie”
I flip her around and then I work that booty
Work the body, work work the body
Slow down girl you’re ’bout to hurt somebody
It appears that the booty was worked with a voracity that risked bodily harm to spectators in the immediate vicinity. That, my friends, is some pretty badass booty working.
**Also, check out the rigidity of FP’s dance moves. What’s the deal?
2) Will Smith’s real life butler is Geoffrey from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air
He’s actually more of an indentured servant. I think it has something to do with Caribbean law, an expired visa and the awesome power of NBC and its parent company General Electric. I’m not really sure. But Will Smith eats a lot of mash potatoes…nearly a third of his own body weight in hand-mashed taters each day. And Geoffrey has terrible rheumatoid arthritis, which makes the 19-hour mashing shift unbearable. It takes a full-time surveillance team to ensure that Geoffrey doesn’t commit suicide. After all, who else would make Will Smith’s mashed potatoes?
But Will Smith doesn’t care, because Will Smith is hungry. So terribly hungry.
Help me, sir!
Against!
1) Will Smith Is A Closet Scientologist
Will Smith has time and time again rejected accusations that he is a practicing Scientologist. However, the Fresh Prince owns and operates a private school for affluent California children. One of the courses students take, in addition to Jiggynomics 101, is Study Technology. Study Technology is the Scientological approach to reinforcement of certain learning principles aimed at cleansing a student or student’s……blah blah blah. Check out the article from ABC News here. He’s basically a black Tom Cruise.
Just know that Will Smith’s music career was inspired by Scientologist founder L. Ron Hubbard’s soundtrack for Battlefield Earth. If you haven’t heard that soundtrack you’re in luck because it’s available for download on Rebuilt Tranny right here!
Take a little taste, if you dare:
2) Will Smith’s From Philadelphia
Yes, this is a real setback for Will Smith obtaining his Class A International Badass License. As you may or may not know, Will Smith’s ”from West Philadelphia, born and raised.” He spent much of that time doddling away in the copious slide n’ swing haunts dotting his neighborhood.
Technically, Philadelphia is a real-deal urban metropolis complete with the typical urban woes: drugs, prostitution, and of course violence. Philly is the 6th most dangerous city in the United States according to the highly reputable Morgan Quitno Press. So Will Smith probably did suffer a few bumps a bruises from the local Ruffians. Black Magic and Cherry Bombs were common practice on West Philly four square courts throughout the 80′s.
West Philly playground bully Billy "Bus Stop" Tonalito
So what’s wrong with Philadelphia? It’s often referred to as the ”City of Brotherly Love”. I’m sorry, but that just isn’t badass. Well, I guess it could be, if you were one of these guys:
This is the album that made me think I wanted to visit the UK. Well, not this actual 12″, but the LP that this 12 was derived from. I bought this 12″ a few years after I bought the original in high school. Sue me…joke’s on you, I’m broke.
For a split second it seems like a good idea, vising the Cream Isle. After all, Britannia rules the waves! Wait, can they really do that? Is their science so far ahead of ours? We can’t even clean oil, albeit millions upon trillions of gallons of oil, from our waves. Yet somehow they are able to force the foaming sea to bring millions of Britons breakfast in bed each and every morning.
Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rules the waves!
There really aren’t any perks to visiting England. It’s not like you can hang out for a week on one of their fabulous beaches. You can’t visit their quaint little alpine lodges. You can’t witness the splendor of untainted fauna roaming virgin countrysides. You can’t do none of that because none of that exists!
And do you know why? It’s because the United Kingdom is just a bigger version of New Jersey. There are a lot of weird-looking white people living there with no other place to go. So, in protest of their shitty luck, they’ve been forming unholy missionary positions for the past millenium and producing terribly ugly babies. And those babies have been killing off any wildlife, African Swallows included, they could get within their single-barrel shotgun sights. England, Wales and Scotland aren’t the shallow end of the gene pool…they are the trash compactor.
Instead of white trash they have "chavs".
But somehow this little island of misfit boy toys never fails to produce a steady stream of musical savants. And you know what, it kind of gives me the creeps. It’s not like these guys are being fostered in a culturally rich environment. The Beatles were from Liverpool, for Christ’s sake.
With less than 900,000 “Liverpudlians” within the greater city limits, Liverpool is less populous than Cincinnati. The only thing that ever came out of Cincinnati was 27th President of the United States William Howard Taft. He was a president so terrible that Teddy Roosevelt came out of political retirement to form a new political party in an attempt to knock Taft, Roosevelt’s former Vice President, out of office.
Nice pants, asshole.
So how, oh how, is it that this land mass crawling with cheeky monkeys keeps birthing killer bands? After listening to the song “Gomez In A Bucket (A Seaside Town Made Of Ice Cream, Slowly Melting)” I think I’ve found an answer both simple and mysterious. That, of course, is the little known existence of an unbelievably potent strain of Indian hash called “Symphalamajamjam”.
Everyone thinks that Gandhi was the reason India gained independence from the British. Non-violence my ass. No, it was because all of the Maharajas running the Indian drug trade got together and said enough was enough; those British bastards had hampered their sweet cheeba trade for long enough. So, in a bid to rid their dominion of the buzzkill wankers, the head Maharaja met secretly with GeorgeVI to let him in on a little secret.
This guy loved the doobage.
Boss Maharaja sais, “Look Georgey Boy, I don’t like you and you don’t like me,” he says. “You been floppin’ your stinky pikey feet all over my sweet subcontinental turf for too long. I want you gone and gone quick but I’m gonna make it real sweet for you, see?”
Boss Maharaja leaned in real close to George VI. It looked as if he would kiss George on the brow, but he resisted.
“This here Symphalamajamjam is gonna make all your people real good at the gee-tar. One toke and they will be just as good as the Beatles, maybe better.”
“Why in the bloody hell would I want my subjects acting like insects, blub blub blub,” said a moistening Charles.
“That’s not important, my man, that’s not important,” said Boss Maharaja. “What is important is that you take this little brick of sticky wicky home along with these seeds. Every street and alley in London will be like a god damn Gilbert and Sullivan convention. You dig?”
“No, but your turban is very convincing.”
And that’s how Gomez came to produce this 12″ in 1999.
When I entered the 7th grade I was only a baby. I knew nothing of covert lunchtime dumpster smoking. Shit, it took me half of the year to figure out why everyone was posing so much; I didn’t see any cameras. I wore tight, pure white Levi’s Silvertab jeans the first day of school. My musical tastes consisted of listening to the 5-disc “Classical Music From Around The Globe” set that was part of my parent’s CD collection and every once in a while threw in Genesis’ We Can’t Dance when I was feeling really sassy.
Eventually I picked up the mandatory mid-90′s punk and ska bands (NOFX, Operation Ivy, Pennwise, Bad Religion, etc.) that Cincinnati suburbanite youths clung to in the hopes of appearing cool. For a while I skirted with the concept of hip; I could ollie over two stacked skateboards, I had JNCOs with 30 inch pipes (big enough to flip them upside down and wear them as a ridiculous skirt for comedic relief at family reunions), and I even carried a pocket knife to class. So tuff.
Despite my greatest effortsI was always miles and miles away from true cool, figuratively and literally. The really cool kids were the ones doing heroine and listening to Unwound in some Seattle warehouse loft their older brother Crust rented out. They had piercings, real tattoos, real VD and were over Kurt Cobain even before Courtney blew his brains out. They were accomplishing real feats of cool 24/7 while I was trying to learn the lyrics to The Aquabats’ “Captain Hampton & The Midget Pirates” 3000 miles away in West Chester, OH.
Before I picked this album up I had never heard Unwound. Not once in my entire life. I’ll admit I know nothing about the Post-Hardcore scene or even the regular Hardcore or curious Pre-Hardcore scene. I just don’t look good in black jeans. However, I feel like I should have heard about them at least once since this retrospective was released over 10 years ago. I mean I’ve been first mate on Black Bart’s MP3 Submarine for a while; from Napster to Bearshare to Limewire to modding a DC++ hub in college to my current venture as peddler of cheap vinyl smut. But I never heard Unwound.
Well, after running multiple scenarios through my head about how this could be I finally came up with a solution: I simply wasn’t cool enough to pick up the Unwound wavelength. It was a long-lasting punishment for attempting to rock an undercut despite my superhuman cowlicks (I bore an uncanny resemblance to a Bighorn Sheep)
You skate?
I’ve finally served my time for my crimes against style and now can be as angsty as I wanna be all throughout the twilight of my 20′s. I choose to do that by throwing on Unwound when I have houseguests over and saying, “Oh yeah I really got into this band in, like, the 5th or 6th grade. It kind of changed everything for me after I ran away. Kind of gave me a voice for all the shit I was going through. You’ve never heard of them? Wow, where are you from again?”
