September 30, 2004 (0) Comments

Autumn is the time when I have been in New York City the most, and so it is strange for a place I've barely lived for two months to not only smell familiar, but for its streets and shops to evoke memories of ye olde lovers und concubines -- with whom I've shared the city's brittle winds and the crush of concrete and Brooklyn's loping, particular fall gray. When hope alone was the horse we rode in on; that was a sweet taste.

Instead I will tell you about the road trip I took with Ezra, the crooked, funnily planned one from New Orleans to Las Vegas. While he gambled away Death Cab's show money until 6 am, I ingratiated myself to the feather bed in our room in Paris, France (Hotel), watching VH-1 extrapolate upon Joni Mitchell's great popularity as wartime escapism, on a 32-inch television incongruously set in a Louis XIV walnut hutch, with lavender-colored fleur de lis dancing all around the wallpaper. That was Spring. But the light got lower to the ground as we sped back through Louisiana's spooky marshes, to the ornate death-angels and XXXs of amateur voudoun-ists at Marie Lavelle's gravesite. We ate hot beignet and sludgy chicory and I accidentally drove the hot'n'sporty rental car onto 400-year-old cobblestone, nearly killing a white-haired crone/tarot-card reader in a purple velvet cloak, who righted her divinity table, then patiently directed us back to the road. It was the same gray then as Brooklyn in September, methinks.

Dear higher power of nature, please don't let New York or New Orleans fall into the ocean.

In far more-pertinent-to-you news: the new De La Soul video is up on Blastro. Song about gold-digging materialism I'm kinda eh on, but the The Grind Date is a good record -- better than any of the AOI stuff, thanks Beyonce's Dad -- and I'm surprised that's the single, because there are at least four or five tracks on there with better production. (Perhaps it's because in those tracks, they're mostly dissing undesignated mainstream rappers and defending hip-hop's old ways?)

Also thanks to Nick Catchdubs for not only recognizing the woman making these is my soul mate, but for emailing this link. Jadakiss' head really is that round.

Side Note: I am, however, disgusted and exhausted by videos where women gather 'round the rapper-owner dressed like Carrie Fisher in the Jabba-slave scene of Return of the Jedi, and psychically tethered to them in much the same way. Just because I don't say it every day, doesn't mean it's not a constant. Man-friends and righteous defenders of hip-hop: please take into consideration as you elevate its music and deploy its codes, that its ugliest side propels your sisters and moms into constant psychic suffering. (Tangentially related aside: the search string "Is Cam'ron Gay?" has now surpassed "poodles" for the amount of randomly googled hits this blog gets.) Everybody's always stepping on somebody.

September 24, 2004 (1) Comments

The years 1996-'98 have been relived thrice this week, with Fugees, Natural Resource, and a Black Star set at Talib (lyrics stick to yr ribs) Kweli's pre-record release. (The Emmy award-winning star of my favorite fairy tale, Mos Def, was short, sharp, shocked, and off-key as ever. Met him briefly; he is even finer in person, which is head-and-heartbreaking, but his handshake is flimsy like Nova Lox. Dude, you are Mos Def; where's your grip?!) On Sunday, Prince Po and Pharoahe Monche reunite Organized Konfusion at the Knitting Factory. It's all so rock & roll. As Trick Daddy's driver pointed out, people hit their 30s and get nostalgic (see: the amount of Bell Biv Devoe spun in the last week), and hip-hop is definitely hitting its 30s, but it also reeks deep of Clinton-era wish-listing, when everything was gonna be all right (but absolutely wasn't).

Nostalgia is lovely escape from the dismal present, but it's also a world-class wrecking cru. Folks need some quality time in a Russian spa with a cognitive therapist. I say dig for fire and listen to "Ooh Child" by the Five Stairsteps (the Valerie Carter version is lovely, as well, but the Stairsteps cut is definitive), for a moment of sweet baby-coddling. Then aim your eyes up the next block and move.

September 22, 2004 (0) Comments

Jean Grae looked radiant at her CD release party, and citing the Fugees session, she reunited Natural Resource briefly. Crispy-fine Ocean emerged for the first track, "Baseball," resulting in a satisfying moment in the continued and surely eternal lineage of underground hip-hop.

Then I left. I'd already been there for two hours literally doin da butt, and had beauty rest to fetch. Can't this shit ever start on time?!

O-Dub likes the Jeanius mixtape.

It's hard for me to talk about it now, but I think Tag Team's Whoomp! (There It Is) might be my favorite album of 1993.

September 21, 2004 (0) Comments

Oh sure, you will hear breathless tell of the Dave Chappelle rigamorole, recounted by incredulous, red-cheeked attendees; you will hear of the guest appearances, the reunions, the unexpected collaborations, the man in the audience who caught Jill Scott's drummer's stick. And you might even witness it with your own two eyes, on DVD, in the warmth of your apartment, after Michael Gondry has sufficiently edited and distributed what it was he captured on his dioramic fairytale camera. You will hear of these things. It was meant to be grandiose, and it surely was, and even though I was not in attendance I suspect it was spectacularly anticlimactic, like opening your parent's birthday gifts on the appointed day after you have already secretly peeked.

Fugees reunion, that's all fine. But I ask you, was Al Sharpton there?

Sunday night, the day after Ft.Greenestax, Angie Stone hosted something of an epilogue to it, with a many-splendored procession of surprise guests and unexpected collaborators. These included Mr. THC, Styles P, Marsha from Floetry, Anthony "the women love him, so the men try to cut him down" Hamilton, backup singers (Angie's high school best friend and the woman who wrote all SWV's hits and two numbers on the upcoming Destiny's Child record), and, of course, the Rev. Sharpton.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Angie Stone, whose title "the Queen of Neo-Soul" is somewhat generic but also accurate, is Soul, partially evidenced by a fist-sized medallion in her right earlobe which declared, in gold wire, "SOUL." She, of The Sequence and Vertical Hold and D'angelo's toe-sucking, is one of the only people who can rock an earring like that and not incite dispute (though if Anthony "So, do you wanna come over for dinner tonight?" Hamilton wore one, I wouldn't complain). She opened with "I Wanna Thank Ya," the best song on Stone Love, which features Snoop Dogg rapping his gratitude for Angie's understanding of his gangsta within. Snoop wasn't there, so the rapper Mr. THC played his understudy. (A second "Mr. THC" was a clearly herb-knackered Styles P on "Black Magic," whose coherence and flow were equal to that of my senile grandmother.)

Angie complained about being ill, but it didn't effect her performance, and in a way it was fitting; her appeal comes from her incredible humanness. She embodies how being grounded and surviving day-to-day, normal (and specifically female) trouble is extraordinary in itself. Early in the concert, while describing how she had to fight to get the Anthony/Angie tour going, she even started weeping from the sheer rawness of it. I wept in solidarity.

(These were not the night's first tears, however; Anthony "i am so smooth and loving" Hamilton, verbally calling upon Christ but physically calling upon Crazy Legs, wailed and popped for "Lucille," his gut-wrenching song about abuse and self-destruction.)

But Angie's not all blue, and when she played songs like "Lover's Ghetto" and "No Rain," she glistened like church. Appropriately, right before her great hit "Brother," which, as J.Hova can attest, fueled an entire summer on the elliptical trainer for me (my gym empowerment album, '01's "New Workout Plan")--

Right before her great hit "Brother," she announced the Reverend Sharpton was in the house, and would he please come onstage and join her for a special song. After an unecessary introduction, she started singing--"Black brother/strong brother/there is/no one above ya/I want you to know that/I'm here for you forever true"-- it was certainly the most appropriate Sharpton serenade probably in existence. He tried to dance, a little, but I don't know if it's in his nature, because he gave up after managing a timid little bounce. It was amazing and I LOVE ANGIE STONE SO MUCH OH MY GOD. I cried like 95 times and traveled the spectrum of emotion via Soul Earring. It was a night of reprieve for romantics stuck in the wrong time.

Apparently the Sharpton onstage appearance was not unique, because when I got home, Steve told me he was at last year's James Brown show at the Apollo, but whatever.

IN OTHER NEWS: I am glad to hear Teedra Moses on the new Raphael Saadiq concept album; together, they sound like really sexy Atlantic Starr. And the beat for "I Want You Back" is chilly.

September 21, 2004 (0) Comments

Editor's Note: The comments section, and the overall functionality of this blog, will be fixed after next weekend thanks to K. Mikey and the Urban Fresh Crew.

A Note of Congrats: to my crazy friends Charlie, DAVE CATS, and Chip --known to the art world as The Planet The -- who finally got off their lazy asses and procured a record deal.

Editor's Note part two: My new email is julianneshepherd@yahoo.com. I will link to it over there once I figure it out. Email me, I send sparks through the web.

September 21, 2004 (0) Comments

Brown Bunny is crap fondue. Yo Vincent, I know what a road trip looks like, thank you. The only saving grace behind his fake-beauty, misanthropic, played-out Nietczean (sp) "men can't cope with their emotions because women are variable" boring-ass pity play was that between alternating shots of highway, windshield wipers, and Vincent Gallo's bangs, I was reminded of how much I despised On the Road.

The fellatio brouhaha, for its part, was pertinent to the story; it was the story. If I had a higher opinion of Gallo I'd think it was a literal commentary on how far an audience will sit through a director's conceit to get to the happy ending. But Brown Bunny is just more hate mail from a miserable narcissist imposing his own bleakness upon the audience. Not unique, or even very interesting. Granted, for cinematic aptitude and cohesion alone, he is somewhat more graceful than others (for instance, Todd Solondz, with the exception of Welcome to the Dollhouse). But there's an underlying cruelty to his moments of artfulness, evident in the significantly less-discussed rape scene (here, not the blowjob); it's one of the most profoundly upsetting psychological devices in cinema, a suckerpunch in a dirty fight. (Thereby rarely employed by woman directors, and even in Coralie's Baise-Moi, used as a motivation for women to embark on a killing rampage in "feminist" revenge, it was unnecessarily obtrusive.) He introduces it with little warning, framing it with evil words and power dynamic, right after the blowjob scene. It was supposed to illustrate his pain, but incredibly, it could've been meant as farce -- implied by some cardboard lines and purposely trite devices. Meanness inhabits all forms.

September 17, 2004 (0) Comments

It was going to be on some humid cosmos shit, as Elliot put it. Storm brewin', as a Steinbeck character might grouse. In my parlance: the breath of Ivan's monsoon was both cold and humid in the city tonight, so sweatshirts were necessary—but ten minutes in, you felt like nougat after some quality time on the dashboard of a sedan. When it's weird like that, on humid cosmos shit, frame's slightly shifted, and you see things. Things like unbelievably tailored French people, and gorgeous Italian men hollering "You are number one" in accented English to their lucky paramours across the way, and ASHLEY OLSEN AT THE TASTY D-LITE.

Ashley Olsen is shorter than Elliot Aronow, which puts her at about 4'11 with a scrunchy pug face, and her dye job is INHUMAN good: glossy woven flax, gilded in soft white sand. Kudos to the colorist. She was trying to buy a $2.50 cup of Tasty D soft-serve with a credit card. I should have checked if she was carrying uber-exclusive skull and bones American Express plates; instead, I just started laughing, because that is what I am conditioned to do, is laugh. And also, I have seen New York Minute.

Luckily, the guy on line behind us inherited most of my assiness when he asked, "Are you an Olsen?" "No!" she yelped, and as she sped through the front door, he called back, "Do you know Carl from LA?" And I felt incredible sympathy for this teeny tiny freshman -- who was afforded a private, normal-person-life for about 32 seconds post-womb before her parents plopped her on the Full House baby-cam -- because creepy guys probably cat-call her stupidly all the livelong day.
Wait a minute, though; stupid creepy guys cat-call EVERY WOMAN I KNOW all the livelong day. And she is a crazillionaire. With her own penthouse. And New York Minute was racist! Fuck an Olsen twin!

And anyway, the best part of the night came on the park bench, inhaling the dewy calm and flowering clusters of the drunk and the beautiful and the stumbling, when Elliott turned to me with honest eyes and asked, "You know what's really gangsta?"

"No, what?"

"Leopards."

September 17, 2004 (1) Comments

Young whip Yancey Strickler finally caves to blogspot's wiles. In less than 42 hours, he's written about 12,000 words on God, sports, DFA, John Kerry, Zack de la Rocha, and Carson Daly.

Welcome to the dark side, Yancey. Welcome to the dark side.

September 17, 2004 (0) Comments

Here, he explains why.

Excerpt: "If you can pump something that they’re fiending for and it doesn’t destroy the community, that’s gangster right there. People laugh about it. They say, oh, tamales, oh how funny, but tamales is big business. I mean you can be at the courthouse, trying to pay your ticket, and there can be an old lady right there with an igloo, and she probably making more money than the court, and the lawyer. She’s bein nice, giving you your change, and then she goes across the street to the gas station and makes another quick hundred dollars. By the time noon come around, she got two grand in her pocket. 52 year old lady named Luisa and she just bought a Hummer. How she get a Hummer? She sell tamales, what?"

For my part, I wouldn't be here were it not for Escobedo tortillas and St Mary's Bingo. The way Chingo Bling combines the iconic parts of first and second-gen Mexican American cultura in 2004 is genius. He embodies it, with his tamales, botas, roosters and his pick-up and his hip-hop girls and mouth bling; he is the line between preservation of identity and cultural assimilation. Los Lonely Boys and their burrito theory can't step to this. Even South Park Mexican was mostly just repping the sweet. (Although you can't deny lyrics like "This for my Raza/ I got a beer panza/ I just burned my fingers trying to smoke a cucaracha.")

New York, don't forget Mexican Independence Day Parade this Sunday, 11 am, on Madison between 41st and 23rd (for you parade freaks, the African-American Day Parade starts at 2 pm on Adam Clayton Powell between 111th and 142nd streets).

September 15, 2004 (0) Comments

The ladies in Chingo Bling's "Walk Like Cleto" video traffic neither dough nor yayo; they traffic, my friends, in maza and husks. Best video EVER. Shot in Beta. Roosters figure prominently. Funny white guy doing the cabbage patch. Cooking as economic leverage (and you know all those bikini girls are cousins). So Mexican. Exactly like my mom's house on NYE, except the women are all senior citizens wearing sweaters and wigs.

September 13, 2004 (0) Comments

I am learning to love Fashion Week; when you walk by Bryant Park, women in Jackie-O wigs and pink tweed (what else!) will hand you bags of crap for free. Today, I got an electric toothbrush from Shop Etc. magazine.

The absurdity of last night hit critical mass when the guitarist started humping the keyboard. It was a side-hump, on the corner of the synth, and it must've hurt, because he didn't do it for very long. It should have been sexy, but it was a moment of lost-in-the-rock, unselfawareness; I like it when the band comprises the dorkiest people in the room. They are a trio from Australia that sounds remarkably like Led Zeppelin, mostly from the singer's voice dead-ringing for Plant, and they seemed to me like some 17-year-old kids who'd heard Zep, smoked some weed and hooked up after science extra-curriculars to jam, then time-traveled from their 1971 basement to a SoHo art gallery, 2004. For that, and their pink-cheeked enthusiasm, and their street-sweeping bass, I dug them.
CERTAIN PEOPLE reneged on plans, so I was forced to enact Plan B: the fashion party/Nylon magazine release EVENT. Next to the stage where Wolfmother howled its wares, models playfully removed their jeans (because it was also a party for an Australian denim company, obviously) behind a backlit white screen, silhouettes in hypnotic quasi-titillating motion, making any number of references--Beyonce's "Naughty Girl" video, 91/2 weeks, modest peep shows more blushing than Gypsy Rose. The effect was poorly conceived art project-meets-sexy slumber party. Meanwhile, men with industrial grade video cameras were filming NOT the band, NOT the party, but the screen, as if these shadow-models were more interesting than the sweaty, skinny curly-heads playing their guts, which I guess if you are a straight man or a lesbian, maybe they were. A woman standing behind me who, I swear to god, was either Jane Pauley or looked exactly like her (I've never seen more sensible hair), everytime Wolfmother finished a song, would daub her index finger into her ears and complain about the sound. I laughed the whole time I was there, but I left after the band played, because they weren't giving anything away for free (besides copies of Nylon for Men).

On the train home, a woman keened loudly for Jesus, freestyling about bathing in the blood of the lamb and singing him the highest praises all the way Bway-Lafayette to Jay streets, at least. She was wearing an American flag on her head like a turban.

Got out of the train, and a mariachi band was playing in Dizzy's, the park slope brunch cornerstone, which is kind of like having a Greek festival in a bodega.

Life is sweet. New York is one big, funny art installation.

The guitar melody of "Ground Zero" on the Mash Out Posse record is a complete rip of Fugazi's "Waiting Room," which is fine with me 1. because "Waiting Room" is a great song and 2. I love to know Brownsville's finest are fucking with DC punk mythics.

Can I live in a song? Can I live in the chorus of a song? The part in Sleater-Kinney's "Oh!" when Corin Tucker takes over the mic, "Nobody lingers like/your hands on/my heart/and/Nobody figures me out/like you figure/me out," Moog screaming ascension, it steps tall and unbound.
I'm all about music for escape lately… not escapism, but affirmation and possibility. LIGHT.

September 11, 2004 (0) Comments

My wee pal Daniel is a photo genius (hire him!) and this is his new blog. Includes hot shots of Urban Honkers and my old housemate/bandmate/BFF, Jay Winebrenner, smoking in front of the computer, which pretty much sums up his entire existence.

September 10, 2004 (0) Comments

Sasha's extensive drilldown on the run-ins and run-outs of our eve, including the true haps on JimJam and Haiku (the F.I.T. sophomores we nearly drop-kicked whilst new-old-jack-swingin'). Those two, by the way they were dancing together--eyes locked, mimicking the slow grace of tai-chi and maraca shoulder-shimmying as the rhythm pattern shifted-- I thought they were practicing fusion body-motion, or that they were modern-dance students just getting to the last half of '70s and working it out in the bar. But actually, I think they were just taking ecstacy.

On the floor at eye-level, M.I.A.'s first show was wicked Olympia basement party --her co-performer, whose name I did not catch, was even wearing spandex. They were both approx. 4'11", ebullient, and aside from the sound system, which was 1/4 notch above assy Aiwa boombox, it popped like the recorded stuff. "Galang", galang, galang, all summer long. Here are Nick Catchdubs' photos from the actual event. Photo #2: you can totally see my arm.

My First Fashion Week in the city, I have learned models are freakish, and it is ridorkulous they set body standards for tweens everywhere. I know this is like Women's Studies kindergarten 101, but it doesn't really hit home until you see your first in-person 12-yr-old, seven-foot-tall, 84-lb Swede in head-to-toe pink tweed who is emaciated enough to pass for a crack addict or an I, Robot.

To the people googling "Is Cam'ron gay?" and "Cam'ron is gay." Of course he is gay; not because of the pink and the sizzurp and the strong affection for Carmina Burana. It's because of his Strom Thurmond-like contempt for women and homosexuals. He only hates himself because he does not yet know how to love himself.
Streets are feeling him, 'cause the hot new shit is total acceptance of every person. It's on the mixtapes.

September 10, 2004 (0) Comments

Dick Cheney's equivalent to Reagan's ketchup quote here. Infuriating.

September 9, 2004 (0) Comments

Good luck to Ezra's softball team, The Lagers (nee The PDX Martyrs Brigade). Tonight is their first game.

Here is what some sadists do to their puppies.

"I'm a typical playboy dualist, constantly surrounded by roses. And I can shoot lasers out of my eyes." [scroll down to "Anime Geeks."] As entertaining as the drunk Dipset video? (No, but good enough.)

Also, I'm taking bets on how long it takes Cam's woman to go Aileen Wuornos on his ass. I give her til the end of that bottle of Cristal.

September 8, 2004 (0) Comments

Precisely two minutes and 45 seconds into R. Kelly's "Ladies Night," when his echoed vox descend like shooting stars, glitter confetti, swathes of chiffon--and the guitar bubbles, restrained tickling on the counter rhythm--and he's singing "Daaaaance, yeah"--because the dance is a transport, away from what we don't know (jail?) but the steppers are angels, definitely; and I'm like, so far gone up in R.'s utopian uni I can't even remember my own name: thank you for this particular moment, you creepy happy genius.

September 8, 2004 (0) Comments

If someone helps me navigate this mac. com account, Jessica and I will activate the Faculty Lounge music blog and I will post a QB jam with extra special deep mobbin. It's time. All taker-uppers may email julianneshepherd@yahoo.com, or mp3s to jawnita@gmail.com, and in the spirit of Simple Machines bake-offs, will get a special present in the USPS, from me. Like a reality present, not a digital one. THANK YOU.

Non-ADD translation addendum: If you are versed in mac.com mirror site usage, and would like to assist me in minor unraveling of its code, I will send you a nice surprise in the mail. A tangible surprise, not an ethereal one. Email above. THANK YOU.

September 7, 2004 (1) Comments

You can make a career out of untethered wandering, and I got out before my stop for that purpose. No purpose, just wandering; trying to step where the legos lock right. But I discovered something: a clean and fertile dumpster, where someone had shed art books in French, and two huge plexiglassed posterboards with half an illustrated narrative glued on. Clearly drawn and scripted by one or more 14-year-old girls, the part I found includes a blonde Cyborg named Shaqeuia, rendered in Anime's gaping eyes and elven hairstyles, who has recently emerged from an unspecified physical challenge. Here is an excerpt. Copyright whomever threw it away.

As Shaqeuia is taken away for surgery and repair, Jeanette becomes alarmed. She realizes that one of the other women who is part of the CyberZon team has been absent from the laboratory for days.

"Someone with large teeth will apear to be the enemy, but once a weight falls from her neck, she will become a friend."

MORE STUFF HAPPENS, then:

The Werewolf begins to howl with relief. "It's me, Tanya, the lab assistant!" Jeanette tries to imagine Tanya beneath all that hair. The Werewolf continues, "When Yalitza and Shaqueia left, I found a government agent surfing through our Mainframe, trying to find the diagram for the Project Blender Spaceship we have been developing for MArs. When he saw me, he hit me over the head with something, and when I woke up, I was in Washington. They altered my genetic structure and made me into a werewolf. But even as a werewolf, I wouldn't do what they said. Then they put this medallion around my neck. It was controlling my mind.

Deep, no?

September 5, 2004 (5) Comments

NYC fake-blood fanatics, mark your calendars: My friend Sara is playing drums in The Husbands, a band with Sadie Shaw and Sarah Reed, and they're at the Knitting Factory Sept 19. You may remember Sadie and Sarah as independent horror-filmmakers, members of the Lies and The Vanishing and the coolest gore gore girls on the West Coast. You may remember Sara as the quiet storm on skins in Unwound. Go go, ok.

September 5, 2004 (0) Comments

Blew out Steve's speakers obsessing over Nicole Wray's spectacular "If I was Your Girlfriend," which is this year's "Milkshake" in that it starts and ends in the same pocket, but despite its march-in-place, is fireworky enough to warrant repeats. It's two minutes of package-delivered energy, and I like that it doesn't sound subject-object, despite the lyrics; it's more Nicole's solitary "I'm freaking regardless of whether I'm your number one supplier, because I'm a FREAK!," a dancing solo in the mirror kinda freak, and all the power that comes with that. She's real Angela Chase that way. [download video under "Freedom Dance" header.]

September 5, 2004 (1) Comments

And she is 28 years of totally fabulous!

September 4, 2004 (0) Comments

Labor day and the sirens on my street, near the hospital, have mostly gone silent. I assume this means nobody dies on holiday weekends, which fares well for Big Saxy up in the ICU.

For you people googling Fox News, here are some interesting links.

For the person googling "Usher Raymond Dead Person," I really don't know what to tell you.

September 2, 2004 (1) Comments

GW Bush sighting!!: Coming out of church on 39th and Park around noon today. We didn't actually SEE him so much as yell—his car was parked in a tent attached to the side door of the church, where he exited unnoticed—but we DID see a secret service-looking dude hand a bag of KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN into the tent. Does GW munch Colonel Sanders so immediately after partaking of Christ's body? I hope so—that shit causes mad atherosclerosis.

And leaving from the church's front entrance, because apparently no one wants to harm them: a bevy of Bush's Orcs, badly dressed, all old white rich-looking white Xtian men, probably praying for apocalypse so they can tear through the flesh of those human suits and finally roam Middle-earth in true demonic form.

Coming soon: guest blogger Steven Lankenau, my roommate (a gay American), on Schwarzenegger, the term "girly-man," and the oppressive reinforcement of patriarchy. Don't sleep!

September 2, 2004 (2) Comments

Unfailingly, here in the front row of emo rap shows, just before its mostly white emcees bust onstage, punky teen girls get their lips sticky with gloss and giggle, eyes doe-lined and pubescent, perfecting their best "choose me" coy fist pump. Maybe hoping dude'll spit a lyric their way, maybe hoping something else, but with these unlikely sex symbols, it's ultimately less about backstage fucking than it is about backstage saving. Rescuing the man in the lyrics from himself. Cutester punk Florence Nightengale syndrome. Like you can know a man through his lyrics, like you wanna coddle him and like the lyrics are about you, or you hope they are.

Last night at the Def Jux show, I watched the under-22 girls in front re-make-up, five minutes before Aesop Rock’s set; they lip-glossed all through Chuck D’s “you do you” American political monologue. I've watched this exact lip gloss application scene a million times, and I just wanna unroll the whole canvas for these ladies: I'm pro sex/seduction narrative in music, but there’s NOTHING sexy about Aesop Rock lyrics. Dude wrote an entire song about how all he does is watch TV; do you think he’d get his ass off the recliner to kiss you hello? HELL, no. (Well, maybe; I’m sure Aesop Rock is a very nice fellow, but that’s not the point.) Male dysfunction as romance in art has been the straight relationship dialogue for awhile now, reinforced in lyrics from Aes Rock to New Found Glory (who, along with Slug/Atmosphere, are the most popular dudes among the tattooed, pierced, and willing to blog about taking their clothes off, according to our trusty Suicide Girls MVP ’04-‘05) (another blog entry entirely!). But it doesn’t make it any less frustrating or draconian, that the music changes but the groupie text never goes away.