RIFF MARKET

TO: INTERNET
FROM: RIFFMARKET
SUBJ: HERCULES & LOVE AFFAIR
6 FEBRUARY 2008

A month after I'm supposed to care, it's still kind of unbelievable to me how little NYC disco made it into Zach's poll or the other one--no Baby Oliver, Still Going, Holy Ghost!, Lee Douglas, Shit Robot, Hercules & Love Affair, Lovefingers/Runaway/Wurst edits, or (to be clear) any track that seemed at all remotely relevant to my spacetime. Granted very few people are making cases for this stuff in major internet outlets, and most people who vote in these things primarily interact with music via the internet, and (from what I can tell) most of that most leave dance music to a for-download scim of Sherburne's free monthly column or the increasingly irrelevant scattershot me-first self-serving boosterism of Pitchfork's loopy fiasco, the Forkcast. So I admit, the only person I have to blame is myself. Maybe I should have put up more of a fight. Maybe I should have given more of a run for the title of Russ Limbaugh of Music Criticism, currently held by these guys.

Bygones for sure. I feel like the music press/disco relationship is more parasitic than symbiotic anyway, which is to say part of me wonders whether I'm delighted when a truly brilliant edit like M.E.'s "R&B Drunkie" or something like Baby Oliver's "Shot Caller" avoids the net's panopticon. The internet music press's (IMP) ethnological tendencies cause more harm than less--cf the blockbuster screenplay I'm writing entitled "I Killed Grime and All I Got Was This Random Google Alert" starring S1mon Reyno1ds and Mart1n C1ark--and cashwise/credwise the IMP kingmaker has significantly more to gain for its kingmaking, with impunity!, than the made king himself. In a word: poor Black Kids.

And yet despite that--despite the sick and sobering fact that people have a shitload more to gain cashwise/credwise from jumping on the Hercules & Love Affair bandwagon, more than H&LA itself--I really hope people jump on the Hercules & Love Affair bandwagon. I really hope Andy Butler gets a SPIN cover. I really hope Antony Hegarty is enough of a hook here to backdoor increasingly uptight indie rock circles--who I couldn't care less whether they actually liked the record, just that they know it would be a good look if they did, since (like or not) these people control the IMPs with pull.

This album is tremendous. Not all floorkillers but the tracks are very physical, mixed and mastered in a way that overcomes the usual digital loss of so-called oomph. This isn't fully Butler's gag, as there was at least one other Hercules I know of who had the same idea: But if there ever was an avatar of this tough-sounding but sexually-charged and ultimately extremely gay loverboyish disco-house sound, it is the man/myth/Disney shill Hercules. "Hercules' Theme" is, in fact, a theme, a display of the rich sonic contradictions that play out the rest of the album, alpha-male funk octaves in the bassline next to the breathy dude moans, discordant counterpoint chromatic runs on the horns next to a bright and peacocky trumpet solo. "Athene", same deal except the flip: the goddess of victory and in-war asskicking, a woman but also a "warman", here Kim Ann "singing a woman/warman's song"--but there's something virginal about the track too, desexualized, parthenene. Pretty moving. The most swaggering, biggest-beat toughest-sounding house song,"You Belong", is an admission of defeat: "You belong to him tonight/ there is nothing I can do." Except for Monday morning, when I was so bummed out over something that I ended up putting on (of all things) Isn't Anything, the last week or so I have listened to "You Belong" on repeat every morning and night commute.

This being an impossibly smart DFA full-length, explicit sonic references bubble under. I think my favorite is the song at the top, "Time Will," which deploys an echo of our friend Frankie Knuckles's "Your Love" at the bridge--if you're going to align yourself with any one house record, that's not a bad choice, even if I heard from somebody that it's in a car commercial. The last track "True False, Fake Real" doesn't really offer an apology either; "true" runs the same length in the vocals as "fake", and "false" and "real" are merely respective echoes. Which is to say the implicit sonic reference, to my ears, is: You have to remember that so many old disco records, even the shittiest ones with the terrible bridges, had seriously kick-ass session players behind them. Technically talented musicians played even the cheesiest Philly International string swoops. I'm not sure what the true/false fake/real breakdown is on Hercules's string and horn parts, my guess is producer Tim and Hercules worked with high-quality synthesizer sounds whose genetic makeup came from expensively recorded string and horn instruments--but the point is this album is very lush, very (for lack of a better word) expensive-sounding record, just so enormous, made to play the Big Room, made for a time when records like "Blind" did in fact play those Big Rooms.

Right now those Big Rooms are, EMI assumes, only in the EU and UK, which (from what I understand) might be why EMI still hasn't figured out a US release for H&LA. It makes sense as a European dance-pop act, but US pop has hip-hop and dancerock on the mind, nothing as straight-up gay/house/disco as this album, so radio-/MSM-wise Hercules would be an uphill battle, a thirteenth labor (if you will), probably a losing investment.

I don't feel this way about many smalltime/non-Radiohead/non-Bjork acts but: If Hercules & Love Affair actually got the push from the right mainstream-making places--and again, I don't even care if these people would be pushing H&LA for disgusting, self-serving, credmongering reasons either--if it got that push, I feel like it could register a seismic and great change for mainstream pop music and MPM audiences. I feel like this record could open the door for similar records. And since it's a dance act, I feel like there's another post to be thought out in which the industry moves away from (for lack of better) rock-type commerce (event-as-spectacle, non-functional one-way products, more overhead and initial investment, fewer but bigger acts) to something like a dance-type commerce (non-spectacle events, functional decentralized and debureaucratized two-way musicmaking, less overhead and forcefed "artist development" more but smaller acts). To a great extent I am a relativist about music--you have yours, I have mine, both are "the best"--but I actually think everyone would be better off hearing this album, things being pangaeatically shitty as they are these days, than not.

Labels: disco

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HAPPY NEW YEAR, I'M A-U-D-I. -FANG

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YEAR IN RIFFS: MATT WARBURTON
Pitchfork Feature: The 20 Worst Album Covers of 2007

The Worst Album Covers of 2007!!!!!!!

Radiohead – In Rainbows
I get it! I get it! The album’s called “In Rainbows”! Yeesh!



Deerhunter – Cryptograms
You are getting verrrrry sleeeeepy – because of—Bambi?!!!!!! Yuck.



Wu Tang Clan – 8 Diagrams
Too bad none of the diagrams was of what a better album cover might be like. Nice try.


Beirut – The Flying Club Cup
Where’d you get this photo from, my Grandmother?! Nice try.


Feist – The Reminder
I don’t have a good one for this one.


Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
Hey, Dan Flavin called and he wants his-- Oh, wait, I thought of a great one for the Feist one. “Hey, look at me, I have colored strings or whatever coming out of my neck. I must be on LSD! Nice album cover, huh?” God, so bad.


Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
“Hey, Lady! Over here! We’re taking the picture for the record album!!!!!” Then she turns around and is ugly. Horrible.


Of Montreal – Hissing Fauna Are You the Destroyer?
The “Mandelbrot” Set? More like The “I-Hate-This” I-Hate-This. Nice try.


The New Pornographers – Challengers
I wish that the guy on this would just punch me. Right in the face. So hard that I just fall back and hit the corner of a table and black out or something. Then I just— I wouldn’t have to look at this. Why did they do this? Why did they do this to me?


Animal Collective – Strawberry Jam
Look, I just-- I work really hard and, whatever, I like listening to music and so I go to the store or whatever and I buy this and I want to listen to it. But I just see the cover and I— I’m sorry. This sounds crazy. It’s just. I hate it. I hate it more than anything. I can’t even say--


Dirty Projectors – Rise Above
Why? Why do this? We live in a world full of dark things. And then a band makes me see this. It’s like. I don’t know. I close my eyes and I just keep seeing this. I don’t want to keep dealing with this. I just--


The Field – From Here We Go Sublime
I just can’t—


Okkervil River – The Stage Names
I can’t.

97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007

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Each contributor to the 12 DAYS OF SPIDERRIFFMAS was told: OK I'll let you jump on a record, but listen Kite Runner! You got 35 minutes max. Because I do not want no Bonfire of the Vanitas like last year. So the only rule was: Thou shalt not write more than 35 minutes--capito?

***THIS POST CONCLUDES THE 12 DAYS OF SPIDERRIFFMAS***

THANKS FOR READING

-FANG

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YEAR IN RIFFS: WILL WELCH
I Just Sent An Email

Fang,

I didn’t write anything. I just sent an email to a bunch of people and asked them to spend less than a minute answering three questions. I figured if 35 of them wrote back each having spent under a minute then I would come in under the limbo bar that is my allotted Riff-Quota. 32 wrote back, 2 came in by phone and 1 came in by text message. Thus leaving not one to beg and none to spare. Much thanks to all 35.

Will

* * *

Diplo
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... LCD Soundsystem, “Someone Great.” And the Jama Masjid intro on Bedford & Fulton at 5AM every morning.
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... stop drinkin.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... South Africa.
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... weird.

Marissa Nadler
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... Sammi Smith “Sunday Morning Coming Down”
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... get significantly better at the piano.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is...Helsinki, Finland
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... the saunas

Chris Isenberg
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... Willie Colon, “Que Lio”
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... hold onto my apartment on Leonard between Ainsle and Devoe. A bad, bad beat.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Sun Valley, Idaho
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... fly fishing with Zoe and how good she looked in galoshes.

Brian Winton
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... The Hold Steady, Boys And Girls in America. At first cause I couldn't believe how much they messed up, then because I thought maybe I was wrong, then cause I realized it is Awesome.
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... Regrets are for pussies, I have too many to list.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Southaven, MS
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... the most amazing Little League fields I have ever seen, like a Little League stadium almost! Growing up in Southaven probably kind of sucks, but playing baseball there definitely does not.

T-Pain
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... Cee-Lo Green, OutKast, and numerous other artists.
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... have sexy with Oprah Winfrey.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Japan.
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... the Japanese people are very respectful.

Pascal Spengemann
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... Delaney & Bonnie & Friends On Tour with Eric Clapton from 1970, starting on New Years Eve 2007 cleaning up after the party. So amazing, and you know where Jason Pierce took his live big band cues from. Coming down in sheets indeed.
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... Play a Hex Message show in ’07!
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is...
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... I rode a chartered bus from Austin TX to a ranch in Wimberley, TX for a wedding. Took in the beautiful hill-country landscape with the tinny P.A. piping in a mixtape of Texas artists from Bob Wills to Willy Nelson to Jerry Jeff Walker and Stevie Ray Vaughn. Not every jam was a winner but it kinda made me jealous that I couldn't get all locally nationalistic with my listening. I mean I'm from Northern California so that would be like only having Grateful Dead, Dead Kennedys, Operation Ivy, Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape...hold on...that sounds awesome!

Andrew Kuo
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... Vampire Weekend CD-R and Strawberry Jam by Animal Collective.
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... do a ton of things. Go to Yankee Stadium, read a good book, leave the country, etc etc. But cry me a river... it was a good enough year.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Miami
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... the food sucked.

Ed Droste
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... Beach House, Beach House
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... Hang out with Will Welch more, in fact I've only gotten to once in my life, which is fairly tragic.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Dublin, Ireland.
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... Playing a show at Whelen's and loving the people there. We were relieved to be out of England.

Caroline McCloskey
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963.
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... do my taxes.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Paris
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... a toss-up: getting engaged/stealing a Ricard ashtray from an outdoor cafe on the banks of the Seine/accidentally wearing my dress inside out on the flight back.

Antony
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... Nomi’s demos
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... turn gay.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Istanbul.
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... being handed a wad of tissues at the door of the sweltering trannie club because I was perceived to be fish.

Jean Touitou
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... "Chérie BB" by Bertrand Burgalat
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... Can’t find regrets. Sorry.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Zürich
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... buildings with the right proportion all over the place.

Michael Schmelling
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... Bobby Charles, “I Must Be in a Good Place Now.”
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... It sounds stupid to say, “no regrets,” but I'm too superstitious not too. But it woulda been nice to have gone tubing or fishing probably.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Cairo, Egypt
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... The view out of the hotel window at 5AM.

M.I.A.
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... ?
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... learn to fly and get a pilot’s license. What with already bein on the threat list, I had to shelf it and rewrite the year’s goals.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Nîmes, France. It’s where denim was invented.
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... celebrating my LP release around a fan's house. His dad cooked amazing food for my whole band and friends and cracked open their best booze and made me smoke cigars all nite.

Jason Nocito
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... the theme song to the Sopranos.
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... move out of NYC.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Atlanta.
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... going to a strip club called Body Tap and getting called “The Geico Man” by the MC all night.

Rob Mazurek
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... Satie, "Famous Pieces," performed by Jeanne Pierre Armengaud
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... learn Portuguese.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Zilina, Slovakia.
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... Jason Ajemian's bass exploding during the Exploding Star Orchestra concert.

Nico Muhly
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... Final Fantasy, The CN Tower Belongs to the Dead
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... spend a week without speaking.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Gøta, the Faroe Islands, for a music festival.
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... lunch with a lady Marine Biologist of a Certain Age and she had me smell the metallic tang of her whaling knife.

Patterson Hood
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... Sly and the Family Stone There’s A Riot Goin On (Reissue)
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... actually take a vacation.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Tulsa, OK
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... Playing at Cain’s Ballroom (former home of Bob Wills). Great venue.

Knox Robinson
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... a tie between Kellz “Same Girl” remix and Hypnotic Brass Ensemble “War.”
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... manage the band I was “managing.”
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Dublin.
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... pouring a full bottle of Spanish rioja on a beautiful girl and watching her get thrown out of the club for it.

Brian Degraw
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... Brian Eno, Another Day On Earth
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... dry out.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Istanbul.
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... severe panic attacks.

Mark Ronson
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... the opening theme to the TV program “Arrested Development.”
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... clean my room.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Moscow.
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... walking through Red Square at 2 in the morning.

Valgeir Sigurdsson
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... Sam Amidon, All is Well, which is going to be out in 2008.
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... spend enough time with Ben Frost.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Minneapolis. Well actually the Minneapolis airport.
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... that regardless of me being deported, my friends and bandmates, lead by Nico Muhly, still performed my music and his to a sold-out crowd at the Southern Theater, as scheduled.

Damon McMahon
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... Burial
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... think of a thing I didn’t manage to do that I regret.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Kiev.
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... eating a ham sandwich, and this waitress with big tits.

Cole Alexander
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... Wendy Rene, “After Laughter (Comes Tears).” It is dark sad weird and I guess funny. It’s beautiful, it was probably made most famous now ’days from being sampled by Wu Tang Clan on their 36 Chambers record.
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... My only regret is when I lost my passport and got stranded in Portugal and missed playing on “The Culture Show” on the BBC. It would have been cool and I was all alone and bored.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Bethlehem
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... It was quite distinct for me. We played next to a mosque. It was quite sweet and there were lots of children. It was a strange context for our rock band. The most distinct moment was when we played “Johhny B. Goode” and the kids were familiar with it and they sang a Hamas chant over the top of it.

Juston Stens
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... Sibylle Baier, Colour Green
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... convince Giselle Bundchen to go on a date with me.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Brisbane.
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... driving an hour south to Springbrook for a hike. On the path we came along a little mullet, a common skink.

Hank Shteamer
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... Say Anything, “Alive with the Glory of Love”
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... learn how to play the piano.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Lubbock, TX.
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... playing a show with a party rapper who went by the name Burgers.

Thomas Bartlett
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... R Kelly, “Step in the Name of Love”
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... blackout for more than a few hours at a time.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Moscow.
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... sitting in traffic.

Paul Major
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... the Geico Caveman commercial where he's on the moving sidewalk at the airport. “And every place I go, always something to remind me, of another place and time....” Song of the year.
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... pay off my back taxes.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Buffalo, NY.
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... being on Endless Boogie tour where it took 45 minutes to find a candy bar even though we were downtown. The place is deserted...

David Banner
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... The Greatest Story Ever Told (my new album) because it has been a year in the making.
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... spend more time with my father before he passed.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Prague.
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... 7000 non-English speaking Europeans screaming DA-ZID BANNAH and chanting the words to my songs.

Brian De Ran
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... The Best of Tim Hardin.
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... buy a new bed.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Las Vegas.
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... breast implants and blackjack.

Ewen Spencer
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... Teenage Fanclub, “Take the Skinheads Bowling” (from a live BBC session).
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... meet up with Martin.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Lublijana, Slovenia.
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... swimming in a purpose built
19th century oak pool, fed by a 26 degree [Celsius] warm natural spring, situated in a
remote valley covered with snow.

Joshua Wildman
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... Esther Phillips, “Home is Where the Hatred Is.”
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... Get out of the country. I didn’t leave the States. That’s a bummer.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Fayetteville, Arkansas
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... I saw the most drunk people I ever saw. They were all zombies. The whole bar.

Rick Ross
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... “We Taken Over.” It was a big record for my brother DJ Khaled and the entire movement. We shot it in my city. It was genius. I knew it was gonna be pretty big but when Akon came the way he came, he took it there.
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... sign an in-house producer to the company. We about expanding. Someone who can bring that custom sound. Snoop had his Dre, Big had his Puff. In 2008, that’s definitely goin down.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... The Dominican Republic.
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... that it’s one of the islands we always overlooked. We do shows in the islands all the time but we had never really touched that spot. My distinct memory is the strip clubs. It reminded me of a very extra-Spanish Miami. There was like a bunch of J-Lo’s in the club. Some of them were badder than J-Lo.

Hank Sullivant
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... Spacemen 3, “Big City (Everybody I Know Can Be Found Here)”
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... decide Myspace wasn’t gay.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... London
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... I remember playing on the BBC radio Christmas special with MGMT surrounded by a sauced Kazoo marching band and a bonzo-wasted reindeer helium choir. Airs Christmas Eve. Real.

Carol Lim
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... Beachwood Sparks, “By Your Side”
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... go to the pyramids.
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Guimaraes, Portugal
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... the monastery hotel is so enchanting.

Kevin Pedersen
1. The piece of music I listened to more than any other in 2007 has been... ?
2. One regret about 2007 is that I never managed to... ?
3. a. One city or town I went to this year that I had never been to before is... Vancouver
b. My most distinct memory from being there is... I was there to see this band Sex Vid—their single “Tania” is a rager. It was a week before my brother’s bachelor party and I had dinner and strip clubs planned but nothing crazy. Anyway in Van City there was an old man singing with this band and I asked my local friend Jeff, “Who is the geezer?” He says, “Oh that’s William Gibson.” My brother was a huge WG fan and on one occasion made me go to a book signing for him. Here was my chance to convince my brother’s favorite author to fly to NY and hang out and blow my bro’s mind with some far out stories and cement my place as coolest brother ever. I went up to the old guy as he was thrusting his hips toward a wall in some bizarre dance and asked, “Are you William Gibson?” He replied, “Only if there’s cash in advance.”

97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007

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Each contributor to the 12 DAYS OF SPIDERRIFFMAS was told: OK I'll let you jump on a record, but listen Kite Runner! You got 35 minutes max. Because I do not want no Bonfire of the Vanitas like last year. So the only rule was: Thou shalt not write more than 35 minutes--capito? Also if anybody knows what happened to my man Don Pollyanna get at me! Also if anybody knows a good dentist-- FANG.

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YEAR IN RIFFS: CHRIS SCHLEICHER
My Riff: The Year in Music

When I was first asked to cover the year in music, I was a little intimidated. Me writing about music? For some background, I kind of look like a 1950s prom king and my music sensibilities tend to be very Dick-Clark-American-Bandstand-it-has-a-good-beat-and-you-can-dance-to-it. Who am I to judge music? I don’t even know what Pitchfork is. Is it a magazine? Is it a website? No, wait, maybe it’s a blogosphere. I’m pretty sure it’s a blogosphere.

But wait a second, I have just as much of a right to say what I think about the year in music as any of those hipster indie types. (Did I use those words right? Can hipster and indie be the same thing or are they deadly enemies like Bloods and Kryps?) I may be a slave to the top 40, but that doesn’t mean I can’t come up with a valid top 10 songs that made a difference in music this year. Strap yourselves in and get ready for a ride into my dome. This is my year in music:

#10 – Rihanna ft. Jay-Z – Umbrella
Nothing happened in music between Jan. 1 and March 28th. Then Rihanna dropped this bomb on us all the way from Barbados – a place I’m pretty sure is a country, but might be a resort in Florida somewhere. And this bomb wasn’t one of those scary bombs that hurt the nervous systems of subway-goers. It was a bomb filled with joy, life, Apple Garageband’s Vintage Funk Kit 03, and a good beat that you could dance to. Yes, Rihanna, I will stand under your umbrella anytime. And I will gladly listen to Jay-Z rap while we comfortable share one of those large golf umbrellas that are awkward to walk down a sidewalk with.

#9 – Rihanna – Umbrella (Lindbergh Palace Remix)
You can only play the original “Umbrella” a couple thousand times before it gets boring. Let’s remix this bad boy. I’m sitting around listening to “Umbrella,” caressing my signed autograph of Rihanna when I think to myself, “I wish there was a version of Umbrella that was a lot like the original, but somehow gayer.” Then I hear this remix. It makes you want to go out, put on some body glitter, sit down to watch “Project Runway,” but then change the channel to a hockey game because you refuse to perpetuate a stereotype. This one comes in at #9 because of the unfortunate reference to Lindbergh in the title. Did you know he was a Nazi?

#8 – Rihanna ft. Elephant Man – Umbrella (Dancehall Remix)
I shake my Magic 8 ball and say, “Magic 8 ball, send me a reggaeton version of Umbrella.” It sends me this delightful re-imagining of... the greatest song ever written? P.S. Rihanna, have I ever told you that you are beautiful? Because I think you are beautiful. You don’t have to respond. Just mull it over.

#7 – Rihanna ft. Lil Mama – Umbrella Remix
I like when people are clear with their intentions. Lil Mama, you didn’t disappoint me, starting your remix with the words “Remix. This is the remix. Remix. This is the remix.” You make me wonder how in fact “Umbrella” is like “The Magic School Bus” as you claim. But then I realize. “Umbrella” is a lot like “The Magic School Bus.” They’re both about learning, loving, living, and the water cycle.

#6 – Rihanna ft. Ne-Yo - Hate That I Love You
Nice job, Rihanna. You’ve remixed this to an almost unrecognizable level. New lyrics too. I’m starting to worry about you though. Maybe you should get back to basics. And who’s this Ne-Yo guy? Maybe you should get around to answering your fan mail before you go out making new friends and writing new lyrics. Just saying. Maybe you should give something back every now and then. I made you a hand-turkey. Still waiting for the “thank you.”

#5 – Rihanna ft. Travis Barker – Umbrella Remix
There we go, Rihanna. A lot like the original but much, much louder. Check plus.

#4 – Mandy Moore – Umbrella
I loved Chasing Liberty.

#3 – Rihanna - Umbrella (acoustic)
I’m so sorry that I doubted you, Rihanna. God damn you, I love you so much. Why do you make me do this to myself, Rihanna?

#2 – Rihanna ft. Chris Brown - Cinderella Under the Umbrella
Ok, Rihanna. I get it. You’ve found another Chris. And he’s gonna make you his Cinderella. I understand. He’s a big movie star. Stomp the Yard was great and truthspirational, and I’m sure Last Christmas is fun for the whole family, but come on. I gave you my heart. I’m sorry about all those messages I left you. I just... relationships are tough, huh. But you know, “took an oath I’m-a stick it out to the end” and all that. I’m gonna be a big man about this. I’m not jealous of this Chris Brown. I’m gonna put this song at #2 just to prove it to you.

#1 – Rihanna ft. Jay-Z – Umbrella (via youtube)
It’s been a rough year for the two of us. Ups and downs. Rainstorms and more rainstorms. I’d almost forgotten what made me love you. I usually stop watching your video on youtube when it seems like the song is over. But this time, I watched it to the end, and saw your personal message: “Thanks for watching my new video. I’m really excited about being a CoverGirl, so make sure you check out my favorite gloss, Fruit Spritzers at covergirl.com.” All this time, you’d been thanking me every time I watched your video and I was just too impatient to realize it. I can be such an idiot sometimes. I love you because you are a CoverGirl and you are easy and breezy and beautiful and yes I will try out Fruit Spritzers. They look delicious.

97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007

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Each contributor to the 12 DAYS OF SPIDERRIFFMAS was told: OK I'll let you jump on a record, but listen Kite Runner! You got 35 minutes max. Because I do not want no Bonfire of the Vanitas like last year. So the only rule was: Thou shalt not write more than 35 minutes--capito? Also if anybody knows what happened to my man Don Pollyanna get at me! Also if anybody knows a good dentist-- FANG.

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YEAR IN RIFFS: SEAN BOYLAND
The Song Belongs To Everyone Now

A caveat: Prior to riffing, I conducted research to find out what happened this year in music, since I did not, for the most part, notice. An obvious exception is Person Pitch, which was good. Did you know that? More information on the topic can be found on the Internet. I deleted my first and dull effort, preserving in the following two key points - my clumsy efforts to connect to today's youth, and the apparent continuing existence of The Pipettes. I added a charming personal anecdote, and the eschatological woes which consumed many of my idle moments in 2007.

Neon Bible was bad, but 8 Diagrams and In Rainbows were not.

A while ago, I decided that I should familiarize myself with popular American culture, and watch High School Musical or its sequel or listen to My Chemical Romance or Rihanna or etc, but I did not. At Thanksgiving, my cousins and I had to explain what High School Musical and Hannah Montana were to our various parents. Then my older cousins and I had to try to discuss the Hudgens nude pictures and other High School Musical related scandals without letting Anna, who is younger, know what we were talking talking about. It was hilarious.

I have not yet found the kind of skeptical-yet-forgiving mood that would compel me to watch I'm Not There, so add that to your list of things I did not do in 2007. Another entry is "care about Walk Hard." I saw Rock the Bells, which was great.

Western civilization is going to collapse. Climate change, AIDS, super-resistant bacteria, and impoverished former SSR's with nuclear arsenals have been with us for a while. It's just that now they're all going to happen. Did you know that Russia has more nuclear warheads than the rest of the world combined? I hope that everything is going well over there! I bet it is! I just bring up all this doom and gloom stuff for fun because there is going to be a global economic depression imminently.

The Pipettes (they still exist!) seem like the musical equivalent of the magic jelly-beans in Harry Potter that taste like earwax. Clearly not the sort of jelly-bean anyone should put in their mouths, yet look at all the children, grinning like monkeys and holding bags of the things. Go figure! Except I think part of the Pipettes' appeal is sex appeal, so imagine the children also have pornography. Fetish pornography, for people who get turned on by giant eyeglasses and women dressed in the kind of clothes our grandmothers wore. I imagine there's a really juicy spread in the middle of the magazine with a woman talking on a bakelite phone while using a canister vacuum and rationing meat. Are you ready to have sex yet, reader? Did you know that the Pipettes don't even write their own music? That's right: sweater-wearing greasy-haired nerds are now a lucrative enough demographic that someone manufactured a Menudo/Vengaboys style fake music group just to cater to them. Who is your favorite Pipette? Mine's the ugly one!

I never thought I would say this, but I became somewhat fond of a song by the Incredible String Band, "Swift As the Wind." For the benefit of younger readers, Incredible String Band is similar to and almost as awful as The Decembrists (sp?).

Song of the year - honorable mentions to Nurse & Soldier for that song I liked, "Goin' Against Your Mind" which I listened to more this year than last, "Wolves" of course, next year's "Three Way" from the Magnetic Fields, "Hey Muscles I Love You," Liz Pappademas, Aqueduct, The Little Ones, "Violent Past," oh, all kinds of great songs. And the winner is: "Five Years" by David Bowie. Enjoy it while you can, because next year it will be comically inaccurate. Because next year it will only be four years until the apocalypse. And zero years until the global economic depression.

The best album of 2007 was Spiderman of the Rings by Dan Deacon.

But, reader! I actually did join in on part of contemporary culture this year. I learned how to crank dat Soulja Boy. In totally 2007 fashion, I loaded up "Soulja Boy Tellem - How to Crank That - INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEO!" on my Wii's Opera, cleared my coffee table to the side, and obeyed patiently. I am one of the over twenty one million views of Soulja Boy's instructional video on how to crank dat. In fact, I'm several, maybe a couple dozen. I don't crank dat well; I don't crank dat suitably for public exhibition, but if pressed, I can crank dat. Yes, note my repeated use of "dat" where Soulja Boy himself at times says "that." Look, jerks, the song belongs to everyone now, that's the whole point. It doesn't matter. I did it because I liked the song. Because I liked the way the people on YouTube danced, all the teens in their uniformly nice suburban houses, with the same undecorated beige walls from the YouTube videos of teens playing songs on electric piano from Final Fantasy IV or Regina Spektor or what have you and the same as all YouTube videos - you know, AMERICA, where I resent teens for being upper middle class, but sympathize with them for their mundane parents' dull beige homes, but also envy their abilities to play the electric piano/dance. I did it because I generally mean to dance more, in my private moments, to get better at dancing and to exercise, although I rarely remember. Because it's fun to have projects. Because I really do want to connect somehow with America's youth. The whole process was super earnest, readers! Suck it!

If I had money, I guess I would probably convert my cash and other financial assets into hard goods, mainly bullets and some canned foods. If, if, if! I know it sucks to be a war profiteer, but it also sucks to not be a war profiteer in a world where only war profiteers have fun. Anyways, we only have so many years of uncivilized chaos before climate change and epidemics kill everyone, so may as well live it up trading bullets for cigarettes, right?

I'd like to live in a cave in Nunavut for a while, cook on the fire, hunt for food and talk to my dog. I'd like to loot the occasional condo complex. I'd like to steal a book from the library about how to plant things, compile my own sort of Junior Woodchuck's Guidebook/Tobin's Spirit Guide/American Boy's Handy Book. Folks, I think I'm going to like the latest of many arrivals of the eternal hun! Until we all die from heat stroke and lack of potable water.

Some Loud Thunder - **** of *****. Did that come out in 2007 or 2006?

97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007

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Each contributor to the 12 DAYS OF SPIDERRIFFMAS was told: OK I'll let you jump on a record, but listen Kite Runner! You got 35 minutes max. Because I do not want no Bonfire of the Vanitas like last year. So the only rule was: Thou shalt not write more than 35 minutes--capito? Also if anybody knows what happened to my man Don Pollyanna get at me! Also if anybody knows a good dentist-- FANG.

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YEAR IN RIFFS: PETER NELSON
Classical Music in 2007

So I've been hearing some conflicting facts about classical music these days:

"Classical music is dead!"

"Classical music is more alive than ever!"

"So classical music is both dead and alive like some sort of vampire-zombie?!?!"

"Have you played Quake? You can only kill zombies with explosives."

What to make of all this? I've boiled down all the hubbub to the absolute core essentials:

-Over 19,000 new classical music releases this year alone.

-Pregnant women listening to Mozart will give birth to babies that look a lot like Mozart.

-Yo-Yo Ma is still alive.

Even though none of these things is true, it still makes me optimistic for 2008.

Plus, here's my all-time top five classical music albums (revised for 2007):
1. Amadeus Soundtrack
2. Amadeus Gold Soundtrack
3. Amadeus Special Remaster Soundtrack
4. Amadeus [listening to the DVD audio with the TV turned off]
5. Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

In sum, I present you with some notable happenings of classical music's 2007:

-Philip Glass' new composition, The Book of Longing, was set to the poetry of Leonard Cohen.

-Electric violinist Tracy Silverman played concerts of John Adams' ethereal The Dharma at Big Sur.

-Dawn Upshaw sang again and received a MacArthur grant.

-Twenty-six year old sensation Gustavo Dudamel took the helm of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

-New Yorker critic Alex Ross released his much-anticipated, expansive, and inordinately sage The Rest Is Noise.

-Choral composer Morten Lauridsen was recognized with a National Medal of Arts.

-Zarin Mehta announced the New York Philharmonic will be cultural ambassadors to Pyongyang.

-András Schiff played and talked about all 32 Beethoven sonatas for The Guardian, who released these lectures for free online.

-The passings of Stockhausen, Rostropovich, Sills, and Pavarotti were mourned.

97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007

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Each contributor to the 12 DAYS OF SPIDERRIFFMAS was told: OK I'll let you jump on a record, but listen Kite Runner! You got 35 minutes max. Because I do not want no Bonfire of the Vanitas like last year. So the only rule was: Thou shalt not write more than 35 minutes--capito? Also if anybody knows what happened to my man Don Pollyanna get at me! Also if anybody knows a good dentist-- FANG.

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YEAR IN RIFFS: ALAN YANG
THIS YEAR IN GUNS

This year, instead of listening to music, I decided to get into guns. It wasn’t hard. Every time I thought about listening to a song on iTunes, I shot Steve Jobs instead. Every time I wanted to hear Arcade Fire, I let Win Butler shoot Steve Jobs. Guns are very versatile.

Wikipedia defines a gun as a metal thing that shoots holes in cowboys’ hats [citation needed]. Armed with this information, I went to a gun range, where I armed myself in a different way – with information from a gun brochure.

I then went back to this gun range every day for the remainder of 2007. Needless to say, I learned a lot about guns. You shouldn’t wave them around, even if you make it very clear you’re doing a bit. You can paint a gun gold, but you can’t force people to call you The Man With The Golden Gun. You can grind guns up, and that’s how you make gunpowder. I tried many guns:

9 MILLIMETER
This is a starter gun, or as it’s advertised, “Finally, a gun for babies designed by babies.”

STARBURY HANDGUN
Because he sympathizes so much with underprivileged youth, professional basketballer Stephon Marbury came up with the idea of manufacturing these guns, which retail for a very reasonable five cents per gun. The only catch is, everyone knows how cheap they are, so they’re not cool – even though they’re guns. Also, they’re not guns. They are plastic knives.

DICK CHENEY RIFLE
A fluted bolt shroud and stainless steel barrel make this rifle lighter than most, and a .705 inch muzzle diameter enhances accuracy and heat resistance.

RUGER P345, “THE HUMAN-KILLER”
“Human-Killer” is a misnomer – this gun specializes in killing women.

WALTHER P22 SEMI-AUTOMATIC, CHO SEUNG-HUI AUTOGRAPHED MODEL
They don’t sell this. That would be pretty fucked up if they did, though.

CHO SEUNG-HUI
I brought in a supersized poster of this guy and they allowed me to use it as my target.

MATTHEW MURRAY
Likewise.

JFK
They did not allow this one.

A SHEET OF PAPER WITH THE WORDS “THE PRESIDENT” WRITTEN ON IT
No.

FASHION’S TOP “GUNN” OF 2007
Michael Kors.

97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007

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Each contributor to the 12 DAYS OF SPIDERRIFFMAS was told: OK I'll let you jump on a record, but listen Kite Runner! You got 35 minutes max. Because I do not want no Bonfire of the Vanitas like last year. So the only rule was: Thou shalt not write more than 35 minutes--capito? Also if anybody knows what happened to my man Don Pollyanna get at me! Also if anybody knows a good dentist-- FANG.

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YEAR IN RIFFS: ROB KLEIN
One Morning in the Life of a Guy Who Posts Comments on the Internet

Good morning, internet! You're looking well, old friend. Share with me now your delights, won't you?

I believe I shall begin with youtube. I do so love a good youtube! Look, here is a short comedic video made by some teenagers.

...

Hm. Not as funny as I'd hoped. Though I do suppose it could've been worse. I shall offer them my honest reaction by typing out a brief yet pithy comment: "I think...that you guys are fags...and I honestly wish...I could cut off your dicks...and rape you to death with them..."

There. That seems fair. Onward then, to politics! I think I'll read some conservative blogs today. I know I'm a democrat but perhaps this will be the day OH MY GOD WHAT THE MOTHERFUCK IS THIS. WHO DOES THIS GAPING ASSHOLE THINK HE IS EXPRESSING CONSERVATIVE VIEWPOINTS ON A WEBSITE FOR CONSERVATIVES. Goodness. I must help this vulgarian to see the error in his ways. I shall do this by comparing him to a bucket full of a retarded man's farts.

Aaaand done. What's next? Ah, here's an imdb thread addressing the films of Will Ferrell. And this commenter thinks "Blades of Glory" his best performance. Ha! I shall set him straight, posthaste! "Everyone...with half a brain...knows the jews planned 9-11."

You know, I'm not certain that actually gets across all my thoughts on Will Ferrell. Yet it makes some valuable points, like my hatred of jews, and the fact that I am an idiot. I think I'll leave it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I must go chat with some coworkers and serve as coach to my daughter's youth soccer team.

97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007

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Dark knights! You know it's been a minute since I've been back in old fang country--Wu Wear HQ whaddup!--coasting the ferry parking lots on my 'goose, bunnyhopping over boxes of ganked Yankee farmteam merch till Ma Liberty killed the moonlights, my man Don Pollyanna riding on my back pegs looking for half-smokes to puff, the Jack Sparrow of this shit if there ever was one--it has been a minute!! So what I'm going to do is take it back for you, when the internet was just a thing I drew on Mario Paint, when a man was a man when the second after Boy Meets World finished up 9pm, he was in the bathroom getting his quiet riot on to Topanga's hot asian friend in that doubledate episode with all the frenching. IT HAS BEEN A MINUTE!!

LADIES AND GENTLEMAN THIS IS A JAZZY PHANG INTRODUCTION: MY MAN DON POLLYANNA IS IN THE BUILDING!! CHECK IT OUT!

ALSO CHECK OUT:
YEAR IN RIFFS: P. COLTON SPIDERFANG
YEAR IN RIFFS: THE REAL JAKE THE SNAKE

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YEAR IN RIFFS: DON POLLYANNA
Ambler Campus

What would Johnson, Frodo, Ranger or Jones be without Boswell, Tonto, Sam or Short-Round? Well, what would a canvas be without an easel? I first learned of the sidekick and their rich tradition while studying at Temple University's Ambler Campus; auditing course called Ill Get That, Boss: Behind Every Great man, Another Man. But to know how I joined this regal fellowship, and how I met the great man, and how I would become the man behind him, one most go back 10 years, to hip-hop's raging days of puberty.

They say only bastards and frozen yogurt come from New Jersey and in 1995 I found a dark metaphorical truth to the cliché. For, in my soul, I was just a recently-orphaned child, wandering through a gargantuan TCBY, looking for, in the parlance of the time, for someone to shove.

I was a pauper then. I had lost a small fortune in the great angel dust crash of 91, and had squandered the rest of my savings in an ill advised investment in the Troop clothing line's first foray into the men's fragrance arena (blunt smoke...perhaps you recall it). I found myself in a barren way, so I took to wandering the garden state for revival of finance and spirit.

It was on the periphery of the set of New Jersey Drive that I met Spiderfang. The location for the under-appreciated Nick Gomez film had become, ironically, something of a Wailing Wall for the region's most enterprising car thieves, as well as any other man of nefarious intentions. On the outskirts of the film's motor pool we created our own Moss Eisley space port. It was a band of brothers. We sang the blues.

'Everybody on the Isle knows I'm the original “Incarcerated Scarface.” Raekwon got no fucking respect for intellectual property!

“1989, right? I was in the bing for stealing the stereo volume knobs out of Mercury Cougars, cause my thieving game was so fucking personally tailored to the wants and needs of the Tri-state stolen auto accessories consumer. I got sent on an up north trip. Not my first. And I didn’t give a fuck because I was in my Chippewa Indian zone, and bars can't contain the motherfucking Little Sturgeon!’

This brief digression was hardly an inconsequential. I would later find that Spider considered the Wu-Tang Clan to be kleptomaniacs when it came to his ideas. In the early 90’s, upon his release fro Valhalla, Spider was in the process of raising a 9-man rap ensemble, the iconography and vocabulary of which were rooted in his fascination with the Chippewa tribe. Spider’s vision for the group, which he had dubbed War Eagles, was to include a no doubt potent mix of Chippewa imagery, shot through the lens of the trife life he had lived on the streets of Staten Island.

When the Wu-Tang Clan commenced their Sherman’s March into the American consciousness, Spider was crestfallen.

‘Staten Island is a small fucking place. Bitches talk. It’s like Designing Women,’ he told me, in his inimitable style. In his view point, one I share, as if it needs to be stated, the Rza had appropriated the mythological infrastructure of War Eagles, replaced the Native American spirituality with the Orientalist, zen-warrior mysticism of Kung-Fu films, and deftly sold it to the youth of White America who were desperately looking for a version of rap that wasn’t so dogmatically concerned with reality.

“Enter the 36 Chambers…Squaking Buffalo of the High Country…you telling me that’sa coincidence?

So the seeds of lifelong feud with members of Wu-Tang were already sowed before Raekwon got his cocaine dusted hands on another piece of Spider Fang’s personal history.

“One day in the weight lifting area, some dude cut the line for the 20-pound dumbbells. So I told him if he didn’t respect the order of the yard I was gonna take that dumbbell and examine his prostate with it.! I ain’t gay! But you need to let these sluts know the pecking order!

“This little fucking Gremlin whips out an Oral B 24-Soft fashioned into fucking Excalibur. I shouted, ‘Not the face!’ And you know what happens next? He cut my face! But I respected that. Never let another man tell what is and isn’t possible!’

His disfiguration was not without its charms. Prison puts a high value on empirical evidence of one’s mettle (or so I’m told). And nothing says, ‘I’m a superconductor of violence’ like a scar from a crude blade/oral hygiene tool, bisecting one’s face. Spider became the stuff nightmares are made of; there was chatter: “Spiderfang, the scarface from C-Block, he’ll give you a colonoscopy with a dumbbell and he won’t even ask nicely before he goes in.”

Upon his release, and his return to Shaolin (as it was by then re-christened) the legend of the ‘Incarcerated Scarface’ grew. Spider did little to temper the rumor mongering, paying no heed to those who might be in the business of appropriating the legend for their own purposes. Spider liked to invoke Charles Foster Kane, “You can't buy a bag of peanuts in this town without someone writing a song about you. AND THAT’S WHAT THAT BURGLAR SHALLAH RAEKWON DID! BUT HE DIDN’T ADD, “DEDICATED TO AND INSPIRED BY THE ORIGINAL RIVER FROM WHERE MY CREEK OF A CAREER IS DRAWN, THE ARACHNOID MC SPIDERFANG; MY ARTISTIC FATHERFIGURE UNDER WHICH I SUFFER THE GREAT ANXIETY OF INFLUENCE!”

You could’ve heard a Dutch being split.

97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007

Dark knights! You know it's been a minute since I've been back in old fang country--Wu Wear HQ whaddup!--coasting the ferry parking lots on my 'goose, bunnyhopping over boxes of ganked Yankee farmteam merch till Ma Liberty killed the moonlights, my man Don Pollyanna riding on my back pegs looking for half-smokes to puff, the Jack Sparrow of this shit if there ever was one--it has been a minute!! So what I'm going to do is take it back for you, when the internet was just a thing I drew on Mario Paint, when a man was a man when the second after Boy Meets World finished up 9pm, he was in the bathroom getting his quiet riot on to Topanga's hot asian friend in that doubledate episode with all the frenching. IT HAS BEEN A MINUTE!!

On the ninth day of SPIDERRIFFMAS today I got my man the Real Jake the Snake giving you a taste of his next verse for my next single, it's gonna be called FANG GANG. It's got this soul feel to it, but with like ten-thousand guitars. Shoutout to my man DJ Hometaping--he's murdering the game! FANG

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YEAR IN RIFFS: THE REAL JAKE THE SNAKE
GUEST VERSE

Real recognize real, Fang. Snake's in the motha fuckin house. Let 'em know.

Hey, yo, yo, Fang talk about trickin all his "Google Earth Bitches".

Meanwhile Snake constrictin on all you fuckin snitches.

My scales, my scales, my scales, uh!

Poison, bitch!

Let's go!

Defamation, desquamation, A! A!

Hustlin, bitch, you know snake's got that yay! Ya!

You don't see me, but I'm comin,

So slippery, Snake in the grass,

Rat-tat-a-tat-rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tattle,

I straight fuck up yo' life when I bite all yo' tenda cattle.

Hustlin, bustlin, rappin, bitin, hissin, rattlin, killin, lova,

Makin that pussy all kinds of wet when Snake's winding up inside ya

Mad, crazy nice, son,

Eatin tons of mice, son,

That's the type of shit I'm on,

Rattlin to the break of dawn,

Pussy ass rappers best get gone,

I'll bite you.

Snakes.

Ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss!

I'm out.

Get venom!

97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007

YEAR IN RIFFS: P. COLTON SPIDERFANG
Genesis

Dark knights! You know it's been a minute since I've been back in old fang country--Wu Wear HQ whaddup!--coasting the ferry parking lots on my 'goose, bunnyhopping over boxes of ganked Yankee farmteam merch till Ma Liberty killed the moonlights, my man Don Pollyanna riding on my back pegs looking for half-smokes to puff, the Jack Sparrow of this shit if there ever was one--it has been a minute!! So what I'm going to do is take it back for you, when the internet was just a thing I drew on Mario Paint, when a man was a man when the second after Boy Meets World finished up 9pm, he was in the bathroom getting his quiet riot on to Topanga's hot asian friend in that doubledate episode with all the frenching. IT HAS BEEN A MINUTE!! You think Topanga's hot asian friend's got a Google Alert? Chirp back lover! [email protected]. Anyway this is my year in riffs I was talking about way back, it's called GENESIS. It's got this cool style, it's how I used to think before the accident. Flip those 'burgers! FANG.


In the afternoon when school was out and the last one had left with his little dirty snuffling nose, instead of going home I would go down the hill to the spring where I could be quiet and hate them. I took off my shirt thinking my shirt is off believing if she sees me with my shirt off she'll see my valley the valley in my chest it looks like darkness when I shower it goes to sleep hoping I wish the darkness would go to sleep forever. In the water was a face that was my face, and in my face were eyes, and mouths with crumb stains, they hung from follicles I had never seen but knew I had them, like we forget that we have blood in our hands until those hands are cut, and what bleeds isn't blood but a reminder of our bloodness.

I look at the face in the water. It's a kind face but a tired face, weathered with lines like tree rings, some fat others skinny if I am tree then a tree is an I, if is were she would not know she would never see under the shirt, if were was I would be a tree and my shirt is just the bloodness of my pastness. I punch the face. I punch it and it goes away, but then it comes back again, laughing at my fist with its waves and laughing at my face which is the same face, slurping back first in waves like the ocean then little ones like pa's fish bowl when he would put my fingers in it. He would put our fingers in it and the fish would nibble at our fingers and I would think this fish is going to eat all my fingers but my fingers won't come back like my face in the spring and the water would get cold he doesn't care about my finger he just cares about my not-finger and I would cry because I like my finger but pa likes my not-finger and pa likes the fish. Colton, pa said, you stop crying Colton, you stop that now. Goldie got to ett, he said to me, and Colton that's why you never wash your hands, never wash your hands Colton, Goldie got to ett. And he said this to me, and his eyes were like holes in trees and scaring me like my darkness.

I will never wash my hands ever again

Looking into the spring I lean down and my hands are dirty from the mud by the water. My shirt is off still but it is not dirty, it is pure. I sit there looking up at the sun, right at it like it wants to say something to me. I want to stop the looking but looking believes more than remembering looking never again, not for nothing. I take my hands and I push them towards each other on my belly, the mud and the hair together and my belly is now two hills and in between the hills is a valley, a dark line where the hair hides and the mud. I am looking into the spring. I see the belly in the spring, and I see the two hills thinking there are four hills now thinking there are four hills and two valleys and two faces and twenty fingers and no fishes I pull my fingers away from my belly before the fishes get our fingers, but the mud is still there and my shirt is on the grass by the mud, and it is pure. Never wash your hands Colton ok pa I won't Colton why don't you put the bike down and help your pa with something in the garage I look at the shirt and put my hands on the shirt, and then I look back at the sun and I cry. The smoke from the factories, I see the city lights and the purple fog of overnight commerce hang over the island, and I see the stadium and the beaten colors of the vending machine, yellowed from the distance and the sun, thinking cash rules everything around me looking back at the sun and looking for the my valley but it was disappeared.

IN CONCLUSION: IT HAS BEEN A MINUTE!!

Download: "Triple FAT Goose (The Real Spiderfang Fangs Out Fangmix)"

97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007

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Each contributor to the 12 DAYS OF SPIDERRIFFMAS was told: OK I'll let you jump on a record, but listen Kite Runner! You got 35 minutes max. Because I do not want no Bonfire of the Vanitas like last year. So the only rule was: Thou shalt not write more than 35 minutes--capito? Also if anybody knows what happened to my man Don Pollyanna get at me! Also if anybody knows a good dentist-- FANG.

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YEAR IN RIFFS: DANNY CHUN
My Favorite Part of the Song

It was a great year for music. I don’t think anyone would argue that 2007 was all about the quarter notes. And if December’s new releases are any indication, ’08 will be the year of the half rest, and that excites the fuck out of me.

Anyway, this piece is about Rock Band. You're all as familiar with that game as I am, right? No? Here we go!


SETTING: NEW YORK’S LEGENDARY HEEBIE JEEBIE’S.
I’m so excited for this show. The band, The Farts, is from London but they won a private jet at a concert and now they’re in America looking for a sound guy so that next they can get roadies. I’ve never heard them but they say the drummer, KindBud1337, is really good, plus he’s got a new pair of pants that he’s pretty happy with. Oh weird, that fan over there looks exactly like me. Come to think of it, there are only like four different kinds of people in this whole audience. And they’re all pumping their fists in unison. As am I.

Nice, the band just got on stage. They're doing a random setlist, which is one of those concerts where the band doesn't know what song they're going to play until it starts. I wish they'd just play their hits, like "Say It Ain’t So" and "Dani California."

There’s the singer, a black guy with sunglasses and a leisure suit. And his amazing guitarist, a long-haired goth with spiky shoulder pads. And their rock-solid bass player, a girl in a miniskirt. And there’s KindBud1337 on the drums. Boy am I ready to hear some rock music!

Yes, they’re playing their new song "Vasoline" by Stone Temple Pilots! I love this song! KindBud1337 is really tearing it up on drums. Tap tap tap, tap tap tap -- the man is out of control! Every time he hits the drum, four notes come out. Uh oh here comes a yellow note...he got it! He made ten notes in a row without messing up -- I’m going to start appreciating him twice as much per note. If he does it again, my appreciation will triple. When it comes to rock music, nothing matters like consistency. Oh man, his drum fills are awful. How can his normal playing be so magical, yet his drum fills so horrendous?

This is my favorite part of the song. But the drummer keeps messing up! And now he's been kicked out of the band, mid-song. He's just sitting there doing nothing. Wait, the guitar player tilted his guitar and now the drummer can play again. I guess I'm fine with that. All right, the song's over. What will they play next?

“29 Fingers" by the Konks? What is this shit? I’m out of here. Oh wait, I can’t move.

Jesus, his drum fills are terrible.

97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007

---

Each contributor to the 12 DAYS OF SPIDERRIFFMAS was told: OK I'll let you jump on a record, but listen Kite Runner! You got 35 minutes max. Because I do not want no Bonfire of the Vanitas like last year. So the only rule was: Thou shalt not write more than 35 minutes--capito?

Also if anybody knows what happened to my man Don Pollyanna get at me! Also if anybody knows a good dentist

FANG

---

YEAR IN RIFFS: LEILA STRACHAN
AN INTERVIEW WITH LES VINYL

This week I had the privilege of interviewing American singer-songwriter Les Vinyl to get his take on 2007.

LAS: First of all, I’m a huge fan. Thank you for doing this interview.

Les Vinyl: Wow, so this must be so weird for you then. Wow. I'm imagining being you: I feel excited, honored, hungry… Wow. You're so welcome.

LAS: I hope you don’t mind the Old Spaghetti Factory. I love this place.

LV: I prefer the Cheesecake Factory but Spaghetti Factory is also pretty perfect. Did you ever go to that dance club Sound Factory? The food is terrible.

LAS: Once I went to the Harley Davidson Factory. I didn’t eat any food, but our tour guide did tell us that they “try to use as many robots as possible”. Oh, and definitely order whatever you want. This is totally on me, by the way. Alright, let’s do this: Concerts. I went to see The Handsome Family this year, and they have a song about Tesla and in it he eats saltines. I guess for that reason, it was my favorite concert of 2007. Also I think maybe it was the only concert I went to. What is your best 2007 concert story? I’ve thrown out Tesla/saltines. Top it.

LV: The Animal Collective dudes were definitely the group of the year. Strawberry Jam, Person Pitch, Pullhair Rubeye (re-reversed): Those were my most played albums this year. I saw Animal Collective twice. Once at the South Street Seaport and the other time at Webster Hall. The Webster Hall show was baller. Everything they play is so deliberate. I was dancing with strangers all night. Months prior to the concert I had downloaded loads of live performance torrents so when the show rolled around I was familiar with every song. I also saw Panda Bear play solo at Bowery Ballroom. That was a Blastoise (awesome pokemon reference).

LAS: Okay let’s get real: the Kanye West/50 Cent feud. What was your role in all this?

LV: Look, I only sell bullets. Does that mean I know where, who, and why they are used? Friend, the answer is no. Only when.

LAS: Do you think Kanye got dissed at the MTVVMAs? That guy complains a lot. But also he’s so awesome! How do you reconcile these facts?

LV: I admit it. I mean, I wouldn’t say I have my Player Hater Degree but ugghhh, I’m so mad at all the attention this little gopher-cheeked-baby-bitch gets. Then I hear “Flashing Lights”- double ugghhh. I really love mid/late 90s pop rap and Kanye knows how to take me there.

LAS: Also remember at the MTVVMAs when Chris Brown was doing awesome dancing and he was totally jumping from one thing onto another thing, like “Fuck it, whatever, I’ll jump that shit, don’t even worry about it.”? That was awesome.

LV: Truth is I was controlling him from my computer. It said I can win a free ipod if I jump Chris Brown from one stage thing to another. Unfortunately, all I won was a sub par Rihanna performance of “umbrella” with more distorted guitars and live drums. I guess I’m stuck with this MiniDisc player.

LAS: How is your Mizithra sauce by the way? That’s the thing I always think I’m going to order, but then never do, you know?

LV: Zeus couldn’t have made it better himself. I could be eating Ambrosia, I can’t tell.

LAS: Okay, I really love your song “Ghosts”. Can I tell you a scary story? True story: I was all alone in this big house in the middle of the night. And there was a lot of creaking and rattling. And then I started hearing weird gothic piano music, and then maybe some Bjork. And then Joni Mitchell. And then some They Might Be Giants. And it was impossible to tell where it was coming from. I’ve watched enough Medium and Criminal Minds to know that this was obviously either a ghost or a serial killer trying to gaslight me. It was probably my most important musical experience of 2007. Do you have any 2007 ghost stories?

LV: One. It was around June. I was continuously spilling hot coffee on my crotch until the cups I had laid out turned cold. You see, I had a lot of time to kill because I was late for meeting with my late wife (may she rest in peace) Rebecca “The Vertigo” Hitchcock. She had news for me… She’s late! I anticipated this so I dropped a clammy handful of money on the table of St. Peter’s Gourmet and bounced. I took the shuttle bus from heaven to my red bean bag chair hideout. Yeah, June was cray-cray.

LAS: No one said having the gift would be easy. I think that’s the point of that show Ghost Whisperer, but I don’t know I’ve never actually seen it. Now, the one thing on everybody’s mind: 2007 and still no flying cars? Wtf, right?

LV: Riiiiiiiiiight. Wink! Write that. Write “wink”.

LAS: We lost a lot of big names this year. I’ve included an abbreviated deathwall below. What song would you dedicate to each person? (You can include songs from any year, including the future.)

Norman Mailer (Writer)
LV: As tribute to “The White Negro” and to Norman, I choose Eminem – Without Me

Ingmar Bergman (Filmmaker)
LV: Keepin’ it Swedish: The Cardigans – Beautiful One

Jerry Fallwell (Evangelist)
LV: The Hidden Cameras – Ban Marriage

Evel “The Daredevil” Knievel (Daredevil)
LV: Gorillaz – DARE. I know. “too easy”. First off, go stab yourself in the face! Second: I will always love this song and this man.

Marcel Marceau (Mime)
LV: Oh man, The Shangri-Las – Out in Street

Ernst Gallo (Winemaker)
LV: Mobb Deep – Quiet Storm. I want either this or neutral milk hotel – three peaches played at my funeral.

LAS: Okay, I get it. I didn’t ask for your life story.

Vladimir Kryuchkov (KGB Chief, Gorbachev plotter-againster)
LV: TLC – Red Light Special

Barbaro (Racehorse)
LV: Department of Eagles – The Horse You Ride

Jean Baudrillard (Philosopher)
LV: Cracker – Get out of my head

Momfuku Ando (Cup of Noodles inventor)
LV: No Doubt – Don’t Speak

LAS: Let’s end this thing. Any plans for 2008?

LV: Yes. I’m going to be like famous; like boy band fame. Like I’ll be like Michael Jordan without all that whining bullshit! My resolution is to fight that dude. Put it your planner, Toon Squad.

LAS: …

LV: That was the name of the team in Space Jam. Do you think people will get that? That soundtrack was good. Oh man, remember Jock Jams?

LAS: You have a lot of food left. Are you going to box that? You should box that.

For more Les Vinyl visit myspace.com/lesvinyl. LAS faves: “Ghosts”, “Deadly Fucking Silent”, “To The Moon For The North Atlantic, Part 1”, “Adam and Cave Man Woman”.

For more on the Old Spaghetti Factory visit www.osf.com.




97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007

---

Each contributor to the 12 DAYS OF SPIDERRIFFMAS was told: OK I'll let you jump on a record, but listen Kite Runner! You got 35 minutes max. Because I do not want no Bonfire of the Vanitas like last year. So the only rule was: Thou shalt not write more than 35 minutes--capito?

Also if anybody knows what happened to my man Don Pollyanna get at me! Also if anybody knows a good dentist

FANG

---

YEAR IN RIFFS: NICK SYLVESTER
Another Five Years of Life

A lot easier to write last year's. Stupid decisions, the personally/creatively catastrophic sort, have a way of aligning everything you didn't think needed alignment, plus with brute clarity you'd never get from the shrink sesh or cozy pray-on-it. Pants down and balls out and egg cracked wide open, suddenly you find out the limits of your current ideas and your abilities to translate them; the people who understood you and the people who merely said they did; down to the hundredth of a thousandth of latitudinal/longitudinal degrees, with option for street view, where exactly you stand in the world. If after all that you still happen to give a shit, you connect the dots and scour for those missing pieces to What Exactly You Were Getting At. You reacquaint yourself with yourself, spend a lot of time hitting the speedbag in the barn. Then maybe you come back to the rink and slug your own personal Racki, then maybe you jump off the ice and onto a sexually explicit videotape with some youngblood, then you watch Keanu Reeves run away with your career, and then it's Year In Riffs time: wash rinse repeat.

These days I spend a lot of time hitting the speedbag in the barn. Where I published seemed off Google's radar, what I wrote was exercise. I bought cookbooks and watched my face pock from the splashback of hot olive oil. There's a cat now, and an apartment with a couch, and a mattress on a boxspring. In two months I saw Midnight Cowboy, Taxi Driver, 8 1/2, Blow-Up, Blue Velvet, Breathless, Days Of Heaven... you get the idea. Major catch-up. Rules of the Game. For whatever reason I had always begrudged film the uninterrupted two-hour burden it supposedly placed on me, one that music, even the most difficult stuff, supposedly never had the arrogance to do. Wash, rinse, then: twelve-grand in credit card debt--twelve grand! It took me the whole year but I beat it down to goose eggs. Lots of Kevin Saunderson, Derrick May, Juan Atkins. Lots of Faulkner. Long mostly fruitless hours in front of certain hundreds of thousands of words I called in finite jest the Ten Minute Wait, and only now, a year and a half into it, am I realizing why I have to see them through. Writing has to be the most roundabout way imaginable of making friends, trying to be loved, curbing social reflux, connecting on the astral plane--especially in this city, when best friends are a half-hour subway ride away and don't make you jump through verbal hoops for said astral planitude. Except most of them write too, or hide in their studios audio and visual, and one doesn't begrudge the other (at least one hopes not) for the time and energy and aloneness their roundabout communications by nature require. Lots of emails.

(Which is to say that "All My Friends" is not "about" aging. I don't know why everybody keeps saying that, except that I know exactly why people keep saying that: Every Pop Song Ever Is About Aging. Somebody on the internet got paid money to pass off that nugget as criticism, as his own, and nobody called him on it because unlike most somebodies on the internet, he can at least write a good sentence. Anyway the song sums up last graf's sentiment better than I could. "Where are your friends tonight?" isn't just for missing them. It's also what you say to yourself when you've hit upon some brilliant riff in your black mold studio, when that clear turn of phrase comes to you on a Friday night and you decide to stay in and feel it out, when after a decade of hedonism you figure out you have a voice, and something of astral planar significance you want to say, and a good reason as to why you in particular have to say it. You hole up and work your ass off and suddenly you're touring the world to much acclaim and yeah you're tired but hey: "Where are your friends tonight?" They're watching Frasier reruns like they always do. Like they always do, tomorrow they will wake up and go to work. Or more likely they're doing exactly as you are, good because it gives slack to guilt, bad because you're not the only one stuck alone in the proverbial middle of France. So the question you ask when you're lonely as all fuck, it's the same one for when you've realized your time away has scored cosmic dividends. A really tangled emotion to deal with--let alone put to beat. See also Panda Bear's "Bros": "I'm not trying to forget you/ I just like to be my own/ Come and give me the space I need/ And you may and you may/ And you may and you may and you may/ Find that we're all right.")

Double digits of friends are out of work at the moment. If you've been reading the last few days, you've seen their names and could with minimal dogpiling find out when and where you've seen their work elsewhere. It's not so much the money-lack that's tough but the uncertainty timewise. Difficult to commit to writing something like a screenplay, say, when you don't know exactly how much time you'll have to work on it. All bets off, they've all lost their psychic exhaust pipes--no way to, as Mike Schur put it, sublimate fear. Granted nobody's in tears or anything but the funk is thick and undeniable.

A few weeks ago some of us made it out to Friday Night Fights, this amateur boxing night that happens underneath the Church of St. Paul the Apostle on 60th and Columbus. We went down the steps to what looked like a grade school cafeteria, except there was a ring lit up in the middle of the room, lunchlady types selling beer and hotdogs and popcorn out the kitchen, "Cher Chez LaGhost" loud on fat speakers, two white screens on either side the room with half-baked video art and foreign television advertisements projected onto them, elsewhere vinyl banners announcing the Fights' sponsors: Singha, Le Tigre, Wallstreet.com, Mohegan Sun, New York Post. I'd seen one fight before, by accident. But just from the way people around us talked about the fights, you got the sense they were new to this too, the bulk of our boxing and fighting knowledge cribbed from Punch-Out! and Tekken and Mortal Kombat and (to a lesser extent) Blades of Steel. Father Martinez, the church pastor, got into the ring and made the fights' introductory remarks. "People say to me, 'Isn't it too violent for a church?'" he said. Most screamed back no--not too violent. "Well, yes, it is," he said. "But like all good sports, it teaches us who we really are."

Martinez skirted the question he started with but whatever, that's not the point. In Muay Thai kickboxing, Fighter #1 often tries to land huge hits on the thigh of Fighter #2's leading leg. The kick makes this fat dad's-belt-on-the-ass kind of sound if it lands square, and from there maybe the guy next to you will start screaming stuff like "KICK HIS ASS, SEABASS!" or "RIP HIS HEAD OFF!" or "I KNOW YOU GUYS ARE AMATEURS AND ALL BUT WHY DON'T YOU THROW SOME PUNCHES!" before returning to his lady, whom he's now gripping by her backfat. Otherwise the kick is rather uneventful--no blood code, like a cheap Chun Li roundhouse sweep. I found myself drifting in and out, making Sagat jokes, drinking Singhas, then caught sight of my friend Chris's face. Another kick had just landed. He was rapt, smiling. "They're trying to give each other charley horses," he said.

97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007

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All you internet Homer Simpsons out there get your heads out Veronica Belmont's donuts, it's the BIG DOH REHAB here on the SEVENTH DAY OF SPIDERRIFFMAS


Each contributor to the 12 DAYS OF SPIDERRIFFMAS was told: OK I'll let you jump on a record, but listen Kite Runner! You got 35 minutes max. Because I do not want no Bonfire of the Vanitas like last year. So the only rule was: Thou shalt not write more than 35 minutes--capito?

Also if anybody knows what happened to my man Don Pollyanna get at me! Also if anybody knows a good dentist

FANG

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YEAR IN RIFFS: STEVE HELY
THE RIDICULOUS RACE: EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT

This is an excerpt from the book “The Ridiculous Race”, co-authored by Steve Hely and Vali Chandrasekaran. Look for it in bookstores in June 2008!

A Conversation Which I Imagine Must Have Occurred Somewhere in Ulaanbaatar on the Night of May 6, 2007, Following My Attempt to Eat Lunch

Starring Tishgilit and Borte, two Mongolian girls.

TISHGILIT: ‘Sup, Borte.

BORTE : Hey Tishgilit.

TISHGILIT: Hey, how was work today at Yochin Booye?

BORTE: Just another day at “Mongolian national fast food.” The craziest thing happened today.

TISHGALIT: Really? What?

BORTE: Well, this American guy came in – at least I think he was American. He had like a huge backpack on, and his hair was all crazy and he was totally sweaty and everything. So he walked up to the counter, and started saying stuff in English.

TISHGALIT: What’d you do?

BORTE: So, I was like, “I don’t understand,” but of course he didn’t speak Mongolian, so that didn’t help. So he starts pointing randomly at the menu, and going like this. (SHE PANTOMIMES EATING.) And I was like, “okay, I get it, asshole, I’m not an idiot. You want some food. What do you want?”

TISHGALIT: And he of course keeps babbling.

BORTE: Of course. So, finally, a guy, a Mongolian guy, in the restaurant comes up, and says he speaks French, and maybe he can translate. So he and the American guy start speaking French. Except that it’s pretty obvious this American guy can’t speak French very well, so this takes, like, ten minutes. During which the American guy keeps making the “eating” gesture. Finally the Mongolian guy is like, “he says he just wants whatever’s good.” So, I’m like, okay.

TISHGALIT: So you give him the sauced fat lump?

BORTE: Right, exactly, I give him sauced fat lump with a fried egg on it, and some salty tea.

TISHGALIT: Salt tea, good call.

BORTE: Right, a totally delicious meal. And of course it takes him forever to figure out the money.

TISHGALIT: God, he couldn’t figure out the togrog? What a fuckface.

BORTE: So that takes him forever, and he acts really grateful. But then he sits down with his sauced fat – which is totally good, by the way, and sort of picks at it.

TISHGALIT: Huh. Was there something wrong with it? Was it beige?

BORTE: Of course it was beige! I gave him like the beigest piece we had! And he still didn’t like it!

TISHGALIT: Weird. What about the salt tea?

BORTE: Oh, he tastes the salt tea, and it’s like this dude has never tasted salted tea before. Cause he’s all like, surprised, when he tastes it.

TISHGALIT: Ugh. What the blog?

BORTE: I know. And I’d made it extra salty, just for him! But then he tries to pretend that he really likes it, and keeps looking at me and smiling. Meanwhile he’s, like, picking at the sauced fat. And I’m just staring at him, and thinking, “Dude, I don’t know how you got here, or what you’re doing, but if you don’t like beige fat with fried egg, you’re gonna have a hard time in Mongolia man.”

TISHGALIT: True that. Anyway. Only one way to relax after a day like that.

BORTE, TISHGALIT (simultaneous): Fermented mare’s milk!

They pour themselves two big glasses of fermented mare’s milk and high-five.

97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007

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All you internet Homer Simpsons out there get your heads out Veronica Belmont's donuts, it's the BIG DOH REHAB here on the SEVENTH DAY OF SPIDERRIFFMAS


Each contributor to the 12 DAYS OF SPIDERRIFFMAS was told: OK I'll let you jump on a record, but listen Kite Runner! You got 35 minutes max. Because I do not want no Bonfire of the Vanitas like last year. So the only rule was: Thou shalt not write more than 35 minutes--capito?

Also if anybody knows what happened to my man Don Pollyanna get at me! Also if anybody knows a good dentist

FANG

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YEAR IN RIFFS: ADAM MOERDER
Lat Pull-Downs: Favorite Musical Moments of 2007

After spending the last month very academically and mechanically procuring year-end album and singles lists, I defragged my brain by going back and listening to whatever songs gave me the most visceral kick. Below are some very subjective moments from those songs that made me the most excited about music in 2007, regardless of whether or not they were in any way "important" to music on the whole.

The Tough Alliance - "Miami" @ 1:35
My former college roommate is a huge Miami sports fan, so when Eric Burgland lets out that first huge sighing chorus of "ah"s on this tropical-tinged ballad, I'm always reminded what a shitty sports year it's been for the city. The Marlins, Dolphins and Heat all suck, Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis got dealt, U of M football is in a tailspin, and of course, the Sean Taylor shooting. I think TTA's Situationist politics bit is pretty intriguing, even if I'm not quite sure exactly what it entails, but "Miami" is my favorite song from them, probably because they step down from their soapbox and let you fill in the blanks, but also because it still registers when taken out of TTA's barnstorming context.

Animal Collective - "For Reverend Green" @ 4:55
There are a lot of times I feel really bad about being a staunch atheist, especially that period this year when I read new books by Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens back-to-back and incessantly harangued all my friends about how the Middle East should be blown up and that Billy Graham is worse than Hitler. I'm sorry, guys. Anyway, the worst feeling though is when the church I was confirmed in sends me a birthday card each year, single-handedly one-upping all those Facebook wall posts and pokes, and how I'm reminded of my former reverend, Reverend Roberts, who suffered a stroke halfway through my confirmation classes and has been placed in assisted living ever since. Now she was a reverend in the U.C.C. church, so out of all the Biblical stuff to get excited about--the four horsemen stuff, the time God killed a guy for picking up a stick on Sunday, et al--she became most animated when discussing how more movies need to depict aliens as loving creatures like E.T. rather than the soulless conquerors stereotype we're used to seeing in sci-fi. Pretty heavy stuff, which is why when Avey Tare repeatedly yelps "For Reverend Green!", I can't help but think of that one confirmation class when a crazed Reverend Roberts denounced Independence Day as "horseshit."

Justice - "Genesis" @ 2:16
One of my 2007 pet peeves was all the comments/criticism Justice received for sounding coked up, a lot of it coming from critics who've never even done cocaine. Cross has a lot of cogent moments--sexy even, which would be impossible if they were so coked up since cocaine makes your dick numb--the first of which occurring 136 seconds into the album. The minute or so surrounding this moment on Cross's opener was my go-to adrenaline fix at the gym, helping push me through many sets of bench press and lat pull-downs while saving me a lot of money I would've wasted on NO-Xplode otherwise.

Of Montreal - "We Were Born the Mutants Again With Leafling" @ 3:38
Usually I maintain a pretty good poker face re: songs about relationships, but Hissing Fauna synched up so Dark Side of the Moon/Wizard of Oz-like to my own girl troubles that I couldn't help but indulge myself in Barnes's medicated heartbreak. That's not to say I regressed here to junior high levels of schmaltz, cranking up Weezer's blue album and writing shitty poetry in my bedroom because a girl I liked didn't sit next to me in the cafeteria. "Mutants" is a really pretty, optimistic closer to a dark album filled with misogyny and medicinal/recreational drug struggles. Not to wax Klosterman, but my personal Hissing Fauna ended with a girlfriend level-up on par with the upgrade from Super Mario Bros. 2 to Super Mario Bros. 3--lots of fun new levels, new costumes, a warp whistle, etc. As for the lyrics on this song, I have no idea what's going on so it's hard to for me to relate, though I guess I also felt like a "mutant" earlier this year when I had a really bad sinus infection.

97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007

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All you internet Homer Simpsons out there get your heads out Veronica Belmont's donuts, it's the BIG DOH REHAB here on the SEVENTH DAY OF SPIDERRIFFMAS:


Each contributor to the 12 DAYS OF SPIDERRIFFMAS was told: OK I'll let you jump on a record, but listen Kite Runner! You got 35 minutes max. Because I do not want no Bonfire of the Vanitas like last year. So the only rule was: Thou shalt not write more than 35 minutes--capito?

Also if anybody knows what happened to my man Don Pollyanna get at me! Also if anybody knows a good dentist

FANG

---

YEAR IN RIFFS: MIKE SCHUR
A Garbage-Filled Room w/ Shitty Drop-Ceiling

Writing is a dark and dank profession. Either you sit in a room alone, miserable, and self-doubting, and think about how you’re a fraud whose best ideas are both behind you and weren’t even that good to begin with, or else you sit in a garbage-filled room w/ shitty drop-ceiling with twelve other people who are all trying to make jokes to hide the fact that they all think they’re frauds whose best ideas are behind them/weren’t very good to begin with. So: the strike, which is relentlessly terrible and is putting thousands of people out of work because six of the largest companies in the world refuse to acknowledge the somehow controversial fact that a computer is just a differently-shaped box you can use to watch TV shows, might afford me one possible good among its many evils, I thought, a few months ago: the chance to rebecome a human being.

This would include, I figured: walking around, meeting friends for dinners, seeing types of doctors I hadn’t seen this century, and most of all, interestingly, writing something. Irony of ironies -- the only way I figured I would write those short stories I had always talked about, or that small little movie idea, or the novel that is definitely in me, might be during a writers strike. So then we went on strike, so then: here we go!

Except that it turns out there’s a real “Iceman Cometh” aspect to the strike that was not anticipated and is not very cool at all. While I work at a show, all I dream about is all of the other wonderful kinds of writing that I could be doing if not for this damned job that I have. And now that I have all the hours in my day, I can’t do a fucking thing. I can’t even open a document. I picket in the morning, and then I just kind of sit there. I pass hours. I watch “Around the Horn” unironically, because it is better than having to write. And apparently it has become crucial for me to check the same 12 websites continuously, on a rotating basis, in case anything new is posted. (One of these sites is my own blog.) I’m not lying when I say that I accepted NBS’s assignment, here, because it would force me to open a document and type words.

N.B. that I did not have this problem pre-strike. When I was writing, I could keep writing on other projects. It is the absence of regular writing that has led to me not being able to write other things. Which is interesting in some psychological way that I can’t quite parse.

I read in The Omnivore’s Dilemma that in order to counteract the horrifyingly cramped quarters in which hens are forced to live on conventional farms, organic hen farms also have to have a small outdoors area where the hens can run around and play and be hens. But the thing is, hens just hang out where the food is, and since the food is distributed in the horrifyingly cramped quarters in which the hens live, they just ignore the outdoor area, because they’re forgotten how to like relax and hen it up. I think you see where this is going. It turns out I love and miss and crave the shitty drop ceiling and the garbage smell and jokes made by other fear-sublimating writers on the staff. I want to go back to my hen house. It’s weird and cold and lonely outside.

So that’s why the strike should end. Is that what I’m supposed to be writing about? I’m 33 minutes in, so it’s too late anyway. And by the way, lest this document fall into the wrong hands and in any way be used as agitprop about how weak the WGA is and how we’re all going to crack, allow me to add that the companies are being greedy disingenuous dummies and I’d rather watch 50,000 Around the Horns than sign their crappy deal and trade the future of union labor in this country for $250.

One piece of good news = I have seen a lot of the doctors I wanted to see. I have five cavities and my vision has gotten worse since 2002. But dermatologically, we’re good.

97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007