The Love/Hate News Report 11.17.11: Send Those Bed Bugs To Bieber's Fake Baby Momma
Posted by John Downey on 11.17.2011
News and thoughts on Katy Perry holding a free concert, Justin Bieber's baby momma case being dropped, 2Gether getting back together, Jay-Z trying to capitalize on Occupy Wall Street, Tyler the Creator discussing his next album, Rebecca Black's new song and more!
Welcome to the only music news report that has superpowers, the Love/Hate News Report! Indeed, it has the power to run on only caffeine! And of sleeping for four hours for six days straight! Have I mentioned how much training for a race while doing NaNoWriMo is wrecking with my sleep cycle? Oh, I think I just did!
On Monday, though, I actually had a good excuse for going to bed at an ungodly hour as I got to see Dessa, an extremely talented rapper/singer/poet who is part of the Doomtree rap collective, perform in Cambridge. Now, when I went to see the Dismemberment Plan play in New York this January, it happened to coincide with a major wrestling PPV, and resulted in a weird coincidence that saw my wrestling fans who reside in New York travel to Boston and me traveling from Boston to New York to see a music show. On Monday, I didn't suspect that my concert plans would coincide with another wrestling event until I saw a kid board my train wearing a Cena foam finger. I won't dwell on this too much, but I'd like to note that people of all ages and walks of life were wearing wrestling merchandise (including lots of Zach Ryder headbands) and made me remember that wrestling isn't just for the kind of folk who read 411mania all of the time. I saw a grandmother wearing a hat that said "You Can't C Me". That's one kickass grandma.
The Dessa show, to be brief, was amazing. It was the fastest eighty minutes I've ever experienced, and everyone was both familiar with Dessa and knew the words to most of her songs (including one enthusiastic young woman who repeatedly claimed proudly that she was from Minnesota, a brave thing to do so close to Boston). Dessa was both brilliant and personable; her banter in between songs was better than most albums I've heard this year, and she didn't hesitate to single out audience members that she felt deserved praise. It was the best show I've ever been to, and you'd do well to buy everything related to Doomtree and Dessa.
Okay, glowing over. It's plug time. Nick Krenn's Major Bands, Minor Labels remains one of the best columns on 411mania you aren't reading. Someone commented on his other column, The Music 3R's, saying that he was disappointed that 411mania wasn't going out of its way to recommend great music anymore. Well, MBML highlights a lot of great music, it's just that it gets shunted down the main page for reasons that escape me. Check it out, or, I don't know, keep blinding complaining because you don't want to look hard enough, whichever suits you better.
Random thought: training for a race and doing NaNoWriMo would be a lot easier if I didn't try to fit playing Skyrim into my routine. Yeah, like I'm going to do that. Anyway...
Okay, here's how this works: I find eight news bites per week, and complain about them. Except when I like them, in which case I'll rave about them. That is relatively speaking, of course. I'm a bit of a scoundrel who remains negative about most matters, so to let you know when I'm not trying to drown you in sarcasm/hate, I have helpful little visual reminders letting you know when I think something is a good thing. For reasons concerning symmetry, I've put indicators around the parts where I'm ranting.
If you don't agree with me, that's what the comment section is for. Go ahead and air your grievances in a matter that you find to be most appropriate. If you troll hard enough, I might cry. I will never admit to tearing up, of course, but you'll know when it happens when you get that warm feeling in your heart.
Tyler, The Creator Talks About His Next Album
Alright, so we've been over Odd Future a million times, and by now, you're either a fan of the group, vehemently oppose everything they do, or you view them as a talented group of kids who need to put out a defining piece of work if only to justify their braggadocio and shock tactics. I'd state my opinions about the group as a whole, but I already did that six months ago (by extension of talking about Goblin) and my opinions haven't changed much since. If anything, my opinion of Odd Future as a whole has worsened—outside of Tyler and Frank Ocean (and maybe Earl Sweatshirt), the members of Odd Future are essentially interchangeable. Hell, Tyler, the Creator has spent most of the year referencing his video for "Yonkers" as the reason why we should care about him, which, yeah, that was a great video, but there's only so far you can get by making Rugrats references and eating cockroaches.
Then again, I also said six months ago that Tyler's next album, Wolf, would be a make-or-break album, and could go a long way in determining whether Tyler is a flash in the pan or an artist who is going to be around for years to come. It seems as though Tyler is aware of these expectations and recently opened up about how he is trying to defy them. Cue quote machine:
Talking about rape and cutting bodies up, it just doesn't interest me anymore. What interests me is making weird hippie music for people to get high to. With 'Wolf,' I'll brag a little more, talk about money and buying shit. But not like any other rapper, I'll be a smart-ass about it. People who want the first album again, I can't do that…I was 18, broke as fuck. On my third album, I have money and I'm hanging out with my idols. I can't rap about the same shit.
Okay, so he's gone from talking about committing acts of violence to celebrating his wealth and possessions. That's not exactly the progress and change that I was hoping for, but, well, it is change, so there's that. Honestly, it's all about the execution, and I think Tyler understands that idea. I won't say that Wolf will be a surefire critical or commercial success (not without getting some sampling of the sound that Tyler is going for), but for now, I'm optimistic.
Oh Shit! Bed Bugs!
I haven't watched the American version of The X Factor yet, but from what I gather, it is basically American Idol but with even more explicit executive meddling and fewer redeeming qualities. I welcome any explanation as to why I should watch the show (or YouTube clips that highlight what I'm missing), but all the talk I've heard about it makes it out to be one of the worst television programs of the year. Then again, I can't remember who won American Idol this year, so maybe I just don't care about talent competitions anymore.
This past week, four contestants on The X Factor were bitten by bed bugs while staying at the Grafton Hotel in Los Angeles. These contestants notified the producers in short order and found another hotel to stay at. Nothing much to object to except for the hotel seemingly doing little to fix their bed bug problem, which…bleurgh.
Look, I know people who work in pest control, and for the most part, they are fearless people who have no qualms about dealing with any sort of animal or animal's remains. When one gets asked to deal with a case involving bed bugs, though, they come out of it with a horror story. Bed bugs are small things that can carry (and pass on) viruses, suck blood, hide pretty much anywhere, and can go without feeding for a year. It takes a thorough pest control technician to deal with these bastards in a simple apartment complex (to say nothing of a hotel, where there are even more people to infect and more places for these things to hide), and even the best are at risk of infecting their own home if even bed bug latches onto a bit of their clothing. The hotel kind of just said "eh, we're dealing with it" like it's no big deal, and from what I gather, this is far from the first health violation leveled against the Grafton. Yeah, this is kind of an inconsequential story, but I'm familiar with what it takes to get rid of bed bugs, and it doesn't look like the Grafton has done anything close to dealing with their problem. So…yeah, don't go to the Grafton. Ever.
This was the best video I could find about bed bugs:
2Gether 2 Reunite
Some of 411mania's younger readers might not be familiar with 2Gether and don't understand why they should care about this group. Well, 2Gether were to boy bands what Tenacious D was to metal and Lonely Island is to hip-hop—a parody of the genre done by people who didn't actively hate the work they were making fun of. They had a great show on MTV that lasted for two seasons and likely would have gone on longer if not for the passing of 2Gether member Michael Cuccione, who passed away in January of 2001 from complications with his cancer at the young age of sixteen. The group never formally split, but after Cuccione passed, the people involved in 2Gether moved on to other projects, and I can't fault them for that.
Recently, though, the surviving members of 2Gether have expressed interest in bringing the band back together. They hope to film a mocumentary detailing their reunion and also record a song or two, with most of the proceeds going to Cuccione's foundation. All they need is a blessing from the show's creators and MTV to sign off on it, which I don't think will be an issue since MTV isn't doing anything with the 2Gether name at the moment and the people who came up with 2Gether in the first place would do well to embrace the band coming back together. Granted, there aren't many boy bands left to make fun of, but as 2Gether were actually better than many of the boy bands they made fun of, I think most would welcome a 2Gether reunion. After all, they made this:
Mariah Yeater Drops Her Paternity Suit Against Justin Bieber
So Mariah Yeater got a couple of lawyers on her side and went on a press tour claiming that Justin Bieber had impregnated her and that she had definitive proof supporting her accusations. This goes on for some time until Bieber agrees to take a DNA test and announces that he plans a countersuit. In response, Yeater quietly dropped her paternity suit this week and her lawyers have run for the hills.
Good for Bieber, I suppose, but I said last week that this looked like it was going to be a massive waste of our time, and hey, I guess it was. You know what is also a massive waste of time? This video:
(Late update: apparently, the suit hasn't been dropped and is being pursued privately, only it isn't, and Bieber is still taking a DNA test and plans on countersuing against a lawsuit that does and doesn't exist. It might be faster to toss Yeater in a looney bin and have it done with.)
Katy Perry Plans On Holding Free Concert
Okay, so Katy Perry is this chick who makes music that is popular with 16-year-old girls and is also really hot so she's popular with straight dudes, and therefore she has all of the necessary tools to take over the entertainment industry. She's also a charitable person, but hey, whatever. She was recently on Ellen and had a few things to announce. Cue quote machine:
This is my big announcement on Ellen that no one has heard about or knows about. I played 121 shows up in to the (Nov.) 23rd date, and I want to finish it off by renting out Staples (Center) myself and giving a free concert to anyone in the world that wants to come to the 'California Dreams' Tour as my last show.
That's a nice gesture that is hard to hate, though I have to wonder about the logistics of a free show of this scale and the possibility of turning people away from a free show. It's really the kind of things that…ah, screw it, you're already looking at the Katy Perry picture.
Jay-Z Sells Occupy Wall Street T-Shirts
I haven't expressed my views on Occupy Wall Street, and I'm not about to share them here. This isn't a political column, and I don't want to open a can of worms by upsetting someone with my beliefs. Okay, I don't mind pissing off people by expressing my opinions as they relate to music, but politics aren't really my thing and I don't feel comfortable discussing it here. You can probably guess from my writing how I feel about OWS anyway.
Regardless of how you may feel about OWS, Jay-Z's attempt at capitalizing on it by selling t-shirts rubbed everyone the wrong way. It pissed off the people who are part of the movement as OWS claims to be against rampant capitalism, and OWS dissenters rightly claimed that the head of a music label selling t-shirts on behalf of such a cause was hypocrisy at its worst. I know that Jay-Z is a great businessman, and it is entirely possible that he really wanted to support OWS in some way, but this was the wrong way to go about it.
Oh, and then he basically admitted that he was wrong by taking the shirts off of his website. Geez, if you're going to be a hypocrite, at least stand up for yourself and not admit that you're wrong.
Couldn't resist.
Kylie Minogue To Release New Album In 2012
Ahem….
YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
…That's all I've got for this story. Oh, there's also this:
What's to argue?
A Fate Worse Than Death
It's usually at this point in the column when I talk about people involved in the music business who passed away in the last seven days. Thing is, though, there were no noteworthy deaths in the music world. I'm not saying that absolutely nobody involved in music died, just that the persons who did pass didn't make enough of an impact to deserve an obituary. When there are no deaths to report, someone involved in the sort of "crap pop" that was "popularized" by Rebecca Black releases a new video for me to make fun of. This time, though, it was Black herself who released a new video:
It's worth noting that a 411mania staffer/ex-writer (don't ask, I'm not sure of his status myself) questioned why I would even watch this thing in the first place, saying "wouldn't a spiked leather strap be more efficient?" and "I think this is how war correspondents get started". I have no good rebuttal. I knew the song would suck, and I knew that the video would be even worse. By watching the video even once, I am building Rebecca Black's ego, making me part of the problem. I can't absolve myself, but I can point out my own hypocrisy and gracefully move on to the next paragraph.
Being objective for a second here, "Person of Interest" is almost a good song—the backbeat is the kind of thing that dozens of teeny-boppers have sung over to great effect, and the subject matter is vaguely relatable. Of the three Rebecca Black songs to have seen release this year (remember, the album is still coming—be very afraid), this is easily the best of the bunch. It still sucks, though, and most of that can be attributed to Black's vocals. I'll grant that she is a better singer than she was at the beginning of the year (I know, I know), but she still can't hold a high note and she still doesn't project any sort of charisma. On top of that, the song is entirely about her "person of interest", which is her fancy way of saying "the boy I like". It wouldn't be a bad turn of phrase if she didn't keep likening her love for this boy to being some sort of murder victim—"There's a chalk line on the dance floor/In the shape of my heart/Crime scene tape on the front door"—and if the video didn't have her being questioned by a police officer. Honestly, it wouldn't take much reworking to make this song and concept acceptable, if not good. But…yeah, it sucks, and I wish that Rebecca Black would stop making music.
And with that, we come to this week's playlist. After the Dessa show on Monday, I think you kind of need to listen to her first album, A Badly Broken Code, in full. I've put snippets of the song in past playlists, but really, the whole thing is awesome. Enjoy.
If the widget doesn't work, click here. If the widget doesn't show up, then it REALLY didn't work
Albums To Love
January: Kaputt, Destroyer
February: Higher Learning 2, Fashawn
March: All Eternals Deck, Mountain Goats
April: Return Of 4eva, Big K.R.I.T.
May: Own Your Ghost, 13 & God
June: Blacked Up, Shabazz Palaces
July: Punch Perm, Dream Jefferson
August: Watch The Throne, Jay-Z and Kanye West
September: Father, Son, Holy Ghost, Girls
October: Hurry Up, We're Dreaming, M83
Tyler, The Creator Talks About His Next Album
Oh Shit! Bed Bugs!
