I suppose it's a bit unclear what we were to expect from the reunion of Rage Against the Machine for the 2007 Coachella festival in Indio, CA. Sure, they would probably be loud and raucous and political. But Rage are primarily a band borne of early-to-mid-nineties anxieties about race, equality, feminism, and globalization. For some reason, their iconography--Free Mumia, Che Guevara, Malcolm X--seems quaint now that the world really is much flatter and Ralph Nader has fallen from top-ten to not mentioned at all (did I take him seriously because I was eighteen, or was 2000 really that much more idyllic and naive than 2007?). So the question isn't really even "Do we need Rage now more than ever?" so much as "Should we feel sad that we don't need Rage?" or even "Should Rage feel sad?" and "If not now, then when?"
Witness this Reuters Canada report of the band's onstage conduct:
The front man addressed the crowd only once between songs, when he likened the current U.S. administration to Nazi war criminals. "They should be shot as any war criminal should be," he said.
Not exactly incendiary, and judging by the only audiovisiuals from their set currently available to me (cell-phone cams, YouTube), RATM look a little worse for wear, despite the fact that the Empire is probably more Evil now than it was when they broke up seven years ago. It could just be the technological limitations of the recording devices, but Tom Morello looks a little like he's standing still, and Zach de la Rocha sounds a little like he's trying to rap along to his own lyrics. After a couple minutes' thought, it seems it would've been hard to experience anything at this reunion other than pitying sadness and nauseated nostalgia.
Just as a cartoon vase shatters on the head of a cartoon cat, so does cartoon punk Avril Levigne shatter the Billboard charts; the preteen demographic's favorite skater chick has hit Number One.
"Girlfriend," the single in question, rides a lot harder on the effervescent, uptempo aesthetics of producer pop (hand claps, shouty chorus) than on the sulky, vaguely annoying histrionics of adolescence (orchestras, tonsil-baring whole-note laden chorus). That is, "Girlfriend"—-more heavily influenced by Kidz Bop than Linkin Park --exhibits Lavigne reveling in her corporate pop power, having abandoned all angsty teen alternative inhibitions. Whether those inhibitions were ever real is hardly the issue now, as listeners are confronted with a monster they helped create.
For, as much as "Sk8r Boi" and "Girlfriend" share a poppy-go-lucky musical vision--"Sk8r" with its bouncy guitars and "Girlfriend" with its Go-Gos singalong jump-right-to-the-chorus intro, they're fairly exactly narrate the same story from diametrically opposed perspectives; "Sk8r" plays as an anthem to the sexually powerless, "Girlfriend" a paean to the third-wave slut in all of us.
During the bridge to "Sk8r Boi," a more innocent Avril looks back, now happily going steady with her "superstar" boyfriend, whom she had the vision to see was more than just a stoned high-school loser. Meanwhile, her ballet-performing foil who, due to peer pressure, initially spurned the Boi in question has to stand in the crowd at his punk show, nervously biting her nails and kicking herself for her lack of vision.
"Sk8r Boi" shows Avril the vengeful loser, awkwardly paying her dues during conformist high-school years only to win out "five years from now."
Three lines, however, largely unnoticed in 2002, betray Avril's sadism and serve, in hindsight, as a warning of things to come:
five years from now, she sits at home feeding the baby she's all alone
The girl who "took ballet" is now a single mother, scarcely out of teenhood, with no one to help her. And we're supposed to feel good about that because Avril wound up getting the boy. But wait, it gets worse.
In 2007, Avril certainly has a lot more chutzpah than she did when we first heard from her. It appears the post-high-school Avril character of "Girlfriend" has learned the power of her own sexuality, and unlike the largely passive persona in "Sk8r Boi," is now turning outward to pursue new conquests. And, as the video shows, she's willing to trollop it up to pillage as many taken men as she can:
Note self-satisfied lines like "I'm the motherfucking princess," not to mention baby girl's bleached-blonde hair extensions. Gone is the green t-shirt, forever lost is the loose necktie of 2002. Enter Avril of womanhood, with blue short shorts and an uncomfortable penchant for mugging the camera a bit too aggressively.
It's a familiar arc. A girl goes through high school with shattered self-esteem and a love for Blink-182. The years are hellish and drag on. Soon, however, she graduates (or drops out), loses her cherry, starts going to bars, and witnesses with her own eyes the manipulative power of heterofemale sexuality. Five years on, the endearing frustration that made everyone root for her in the beginning has hardened into a callous, insatiable desire to possess and dominate any boy/man she sets her sights on.
Avril's image has always been a little hard to stomach. Her schtick, designed to go after the preteen ladies who hate themselves some Britney but still need some slick studio pop to groove to, has been so transparent as to come off as pomo parody. But there was reason to like the anthemic "Sk8r Boi"; it gave play to the pimply skateboarder fantasy that one day it would be possible have a hot girlfriend who loved watching them try varial heelflips. Now Avril's all about spreading that pootie wherever it'll go, and following it around just isn't as appealing as it was back in the day. She's slept with too many skaters.
[By the way, today I'm doing my best to Write Like a Skate Magazine, that is, quite informally and often with a loosely constructed, sloppy style that may or may not appeal to readers over the age of twelve.] Alright, alright I'm going to admit it. I thought I was going to have a hard time blogging today, partly because I slept all through the sunlight, and the Internet just didn't seem as enthralling as usual. But then I trucked over to Skateboardermag and found an entire skate team I had never even heard of until today! Here's the vid, as lengthy as it is strengthy. It's so gnarly that it's even eating my blogroll, but that's not gonna stop my from EMBEDDING IT DEEP IN THIS THING ANYWAY.
Notice how often these guys skate in cement parks, revert, and powerslide. Even though the tricks aren't hyper-gnarly in terms of length-of-handrails (there might not even be any handrails in the vid, I don't remember), the tricks are creative and kind of tossed of in a manner that says "We just went to the park this weekend and brought a camera." Which is the best way to film a video.
Pretty much everything about Bacon Skateboards appears designed to appeal, but can't be, since most of it is happenstance. Here's a list of awesome things about Bacon:
-Regional Gem status (the Macalester of skateboarding? No, the Reed of skateboarding i.e. based in Portland); -Team members named, ridiculously, like NFL quarterbacks: Benji Galloway, Lincoln Nass, Johnny Turgeson, Oudalay Philavanh, Mason Huggins (okay maybe not all of them), and Donovan Rice; -Web site basically just a Blogspot page, making Bacon basically a bunch of bloggers; -Web site logo features unholy combination of pig and porn star, laying on side with come-hither stare, HUGE rack of eight fake silicone breasts; -Graphics that look like this. -Myspace slogan: "Bacon Tits."
Finally, I have to leave some space on this blog to address the music selection. The Myspace page has a metal song titled "Annihilation of the Nile." The songs selected for the Cuntry as Fuck video shown above include, as you have noticed, "Standing Ovation" by Young Jeezy and "Polar Opposites" by Modest Mouse. The third song is about "Beer and bacon for my friends," and rules just as hard but I can't seem to find it by Googling the lyrics.
This post, like many skateboard mag articles, walks the crumbling mountain summit of skaterag journalism, teetering on the brink of death with actual coverage of a topic sloping down off to the left and straight-up commercial promotion on the right. Rest assured, though, that this is not a dusted-off press release (funniest joke on the blog? maybe, def funniest on the block :P). It is one hundred percent my original thoughts on the issue of Bacon Skateboards. They rule.
Take most rockish songs from the twenty-first century. The levels on these songs generally stay the same throughout, so you, the listener, must make the remix. Fortunately, all you need is a volume knob. Then follow these simple steps.
1) Let the intro play one or two times at the normal (quiet) volume. 2) CRANK THAT SHIT UP! 3) Let the verses play at normal volume. 4) Crank the choruses UP! 5) Obey these rules, religiously. Make an exception if the last twenty seconds of the song isn't a "chorus" per se. If it isn't, crank it up anyway. 6) After the song is over, shout "A Denial" about a dozen times at the top of your lungs.
Even if this doesn't leave you as pumped as you would have been if you'd just listened to "Smells Like Teen Spirit," you should still feel pretty pumped. If you don't, just listen to "Smells Like Teen Spirit."
Bonus: Applying the volume trick to "Teen Spirit" itself. Be sure to wear protective gear.
Climb in the ideelz carriage, babies, cause we're going for a stroll.
Ten weeks ago, Timbo and J-Timbo teamed up with Nelly Furtimbo to press a single for the club's turntables, a verse-chorus-verse paint by numbos. N-Furtado does the same breathy generic shit she pushed on us with "Promiscuous Girl," not surprising since Timbaland produced that as well. Timbo raps about producing, but of course the main feature of the song is the only sexy person in the trio.
Timberlake sounds like he's trying even harder than usual to be a rapper, even defending himself with zingers like "If sexy never left, why's everybody on my shi-i-i-t." Transitioning from boy-band to b-boy, Justin's landed at the uncomfortable boy-boy stage.
But enough about "whether the song is good" or "what the artist is up to," and none of "what the beat sounds like" because holy yawns on all that, right?
The most compelling feature of this otherwise bland song--besides the end-line (dammit RID DH) stuttering--is the music video. Note each performer's movements. Nelly points her hands at the camera to emphasize her point. Justin points his hands at the camera to emphasize his face. Timbo points his to de-emphasize his face. One gets the impression by watching this that the three artists are being melted into paint, stirred in a big vat, poured into cans, shaken in one of those automatic shakers, then opened and spilled all over a dance floor, where people had just been minding their business, and now suddenly everyone's coated in this beige liquid, but as with all club mishaps (vomiting, pill-fueled wig-outs), they try to pretend it didn't happen and just keep dancing. And so "Give It to Me" coats the nation (maybe even the world), and we're all nearly eleven layers thick (1 wk/layer).
"This Is Why I Rock." MIMS answers the other question America needs answered.
YouTube labelers have been more helpful, indicating it's the "(Rock Version)" of "This Is Why I Rock."
By what appears to be sheer serendipity, the video's graphic depicts professional skateboarder Terry Kennedy (no relation to Jamie or JF), known to people who watch Viva la Bam (by the way, adding to Bam's use of mascara, his heart-a-gram tatoos, and the sorta metro/emo steez of his sex tape is the use of feminine article "la" to as the article in the title of his TV show--sup Bam? U fem? Bi? What're you saying here?) as "Compton-Ass Terry." The image comes from a Krew skateboard clothing company ad appearing in Thrasher and Transworld Skateboarding magazines across the country.
Kennedy rose from obscurity during his teenage years when the Baker team was mining L.A. County for teenage amateur riders. They included Evan Hernandez, Knox Godoy, Brian Herman, and Terry. It was a bit over-hyped; neither Terry nor Knox have really roughed up the skating world in a while, but like most things skate, these guys were hot in their day.
Last I checked, Terry was riding for Element, but there's some news here that he now rides for Baker and Pharrell Williams's vanity skate shoe project called Ice Cream. I don't really know much about this but here's a Youtube promo of sorts.
According to a brief scan of Wikipedia, Kennedy has been featured in some rap videos and was even shot in the jaw in '05. So maybe the connection between Terry Kennedy and the world of hip-hop and MIMS isn't so astonishing as it first appeared.
BTW: As with most skate-related vanity cross-promotion projects (the Bam thing, the Fuel Network), the Ice Cream video is pretty boring: not enough skating, too much self-commentary. Terry Kennedy's never been a standout skater, but his ability to market himself as one "from the streets" has proven remarkably successful. I mean just check out those fronts! Maybe later a post about the respective virtues and vices of cross-polination between skating, hip-hop, punk, TV, etc.
