Beat Dis

Music videos are now superfluous. VH1 Classic reminds me that it wasn't always this way. And that in certain cases, the music video is still intrinsically linked to many many songs of bygone days.

Yep, I'm old.







RJD2
The Third Hand
Homeboy goes Beastie Boys & I'm guessing he's playing all the instruments & singing all the parts. Y'know, it's like someone said to him: dude, why don't you sample your OWN SHIT this time? I'm guessing it's him on drums because most folks wouldn't opt for a floor-tom-and-double-kick pattern on the opening track of a non heavy metal album. If the songwriting is good enough, this album might even have more legs than RJ's usual beat-fuckery. Or whatever his usual deal is. I only heard his other shit last week for the first time. & hell yes I'm jealous of him, it should've been me to break out of Columbus with my humorous beats & antics. And I can play the drums.




X-CLAN
Return from Mecca
Man, it just ain't the same without the dude saying "sissy". I think he died in the past couple of years or something. Someone else says "sissy" and it's close but it's just not the same. "Voodoo" features RBX & this is the first time I've heard him in a long time. This album is nice & modern. So many of the dudes from the early 1990s can't hang in the present sense. But X-Clan does.


CONSEQUENCES
Consequences
"Parasite" opens with what I'm calling The Coldplay Maneuver. I'm not hip on Coldplay enough to say what song that rhythm originated in, but it's been a meme in modern music for like the past five years. Kinda like you had yer Madchester drum beat in the early 1990s. The singer sounds like Thurston Moore if he grew up listening to Mandy Moore.

BABY SWEETCORN
New Low
Um, aggressively wimpy pop rock with clean guitars. Even though it rubs me the wrong way on first listen, I'll probably end up liking it. Due to, yeah, the clean piano & general wimpiness. Unless they get really popular, in which case, I've never heard 'em before.

DO THE UNDO
Do the Undo
More aggressively wimpy pop that's so smarmy up front that I'll probably have to play it several times with the lights off just to get through it. Or, like, wearing sunglasses or something. It might be cool as crap, I don't know. How's that for a pointless review.






+++++




Now watch one of my favorite & most obscure bands of the early 1990s, since it's all about the early 1990s today, Levitation.


Levitation - Against Nature (live)

Levitation - Bedlam (live)


And Ultramarine - Happy Land (featuring Robert Wyatt) just for fun. Even though it's one of my least favorite Ultramarine tracks.