Troubled Rap Relief Program

“Elvis, was a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me you see”
–Public Enemy


Brushing the divisive politics of Chuck D aside, my mind reverts to its happy corner of audiophile amusement. And in this dusty rec room of preamps and pirated mp3 files, graver concerns materialize. The Obama administration and its messages of hope and change will annihilate the remnants of hip-hop, a once pioneering voice of the underprivileged, reduced to an Auto-Tune anthem for phony gangsters. Contentment breeds commercially derivative junk. And as politics turns a corner, racially and radically, so does the rage of inner city thugs deaden.

The presidency of Bush II, while a desultory experience for poor city dwellers (and those on the Louisiana bayou), did nothing to deter urban radio’s focus from connotations of women as submissive accessories; where sliding a credit card through the buttocks of a “ho” was a means to rack up frequent flyer miles, concurrent with preying on the insecurities of fatherless adolescents. Images of iced up pimps flashing diamond studded dental grills and slugging malt liquor – virtual how-to videos on profligate excess – were seared into our sockets by the media machine. Underprivileged ghetto youth idolized and aspired to the lifestyle, while their suburban peers accepted it as dystopian normality. Likewise, those who couldn’t keep a beat or dunk a basketball remained stuck in the morass, aspirations crushed and role models limited, perpetuating the business of hustling to desperate cohorts. Where future generations should advance, the sickness of the street bred stagnancy and reinforced defeat. Yet over the past decade, record companies did little to promote this yawning frustration on Billboard charts or MTV. Noticeably absent from the mainstream record bins were tirades on FEMA’s hurricane response, police brutality, or gang violence. And with the buoyancy related to our (half) black president leaking into every tumbledown tenement, these chest-thumping pimps are drinking 'Tron on ice and debating Tootsie Roll licks. What happened to fighting the power?

Give me the trickle-down economics of Reagan or Bush #1 when crack rock snowblinded neighborhoods like a assault virus and violent crime murdered the dignity of the underclass; not this Timbaland produced popcorn that plays in junior high gymnasiums. Years ago, for every hydraulic baller untying bikini knots there was a vengeful cop killer like Ice T ready to crush your skull with his lawless fist. Behind every Luke Campbell scoring cheap controversy was a lurking predator with an AK sidearm like Ice Cube. Every minstrel-like MC Hammer in parachute pants shared the block with an unapologetic Chuck D, scaring the crap out of white people while rearranging the status quo with the heft of a freight train. Politics, foreign affairs, even the daily grind of flipping burgers once occupied a place in the rap canon.

Sadly, an entire genre of music is becoming the laughable equivalent to over-produced 1980’s hair metal, a parody of its gritty past with lesser artists and copycat medium-talents. Just as the flannel layering, two shower-a-week crowd of early 1990s grunge extinguished the ozone hazard of tired Aqua Net axe men – backstage beer guts gushing over their leather pants – a similar revolution is inevitable as hip-hop swaggers toward its saturation point. It happened before, and will happen with increased speed in deference to our Ritalin-pumped culture. The young pelvis swinging Elvis of our grandparent’s ire became the rhinestone felled King of mom and dad's memory; the peanut-butter-and-banana-sandwich one, who refused to deviate from an outmoded formula, watching his audience age-out of desirable demos as he slurred through tired jukebox hits.

Four more years of George W. might be the prescription to flush out the stupor and slam back the soul. Can we find Barry O some communities to organize while Bush II stokes the vitriol and stuffs my iPod? Can we rattle a bunch of sleepwalking zombies into the studio without a chokehold of fashion glitz? Can we chase this genre out of the soccer mom minivan? Can everybody put their dicks in their pants for one goddamn second and revalue the urban music terrain before the last ghetto blaster goes dark?

“Yes we can.”

Navigating The Badlands of E Street

Tiring of the unabashed praise for Bruce Springsteen, The Bastard takes a more objective view in the below long-form piece.

Face east, if you’re ever down the shore at the southern end of Kingsley Street, between Lake and Cookman Avenues in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Ocean leaning, this marks the 36,000 square foot graveyard of the flattened Palace Amusements. Alongside the ghosts of Ferris wheels and carousels, shrieks of bygone children swirl hauntingly in the drone of crashing tides; venerating an era when fun seekers by the thousands would soar, spin, and fly in this coastal escape, trading domestic banality for cotton candy and ice cream. Now derelict, the site’s lasting relevance is its link to preternatural runner and scrappy Freehold hero Bruce Frederick Springsteen, buried under the boardwalk and picked apart by gulls twenty-six years earlier, piece by piece.

Asbury Park, crumbling seaside resort and gritty music mecca, served as the inspirational canvas for a young E Street Band in the early 1970’s. Still blighted by the racial tension of that age, and victimized by industrial decay and blanketing economic ruin, the city is now enmeshed in a pseudo-rehabilitation; one where faceless luxury apartments abut yawning vacant lots, and the hulking steel skeletons of planned and abandoned projects lord mightily over empty streets. It was here, in this beachfront amalgamation of contradictions, playland of rusted amusement arcades, that the earliest embodiment of the band thrived. Mike Appel – original manager, producer, and master of ceremonies – encouraged the free wheeling spirit and Dylanesque rhyme which colored elegies to boardwalk life both seedy and romantic.

Each member of E Street was showcased powerfully in those days, permitted to excel as an individual force within an organically evolving milieu. In other words, this was no mere backing section told to shut up and support the lead man, but rather a juggernaut of equals, complementing the stream-of-consciousness poetry jammed so tightly into each stanza that it was suffocating. Appreciate the complex phrasing and challenging time changes of the early song canon, demanding more than a passive eavesdrop. This was anything but derivative verse-chorus-verse material, yet not without its flaws. Hacksawed passages coupled with awkward self-indulgence peppered the worn edges. Nonetheless, the sum of all parts remained genuine. It was real. It let the salty air fill your lungs if you took a deep enough breath.

The fables were born from experience, themselves a sagging portrait of the neon city by the sea beckoning fun seekers into its ever-morphing hall of mirrors. And woven in these threadbare tales were the cruelties of chewed dreams and spent chances. Behold the carnival of restless souls: Madame Marie got busted, Mary’s dress swayed, the Fish Lady baited, Wendy wrapped her legs, Jane said goodnight, Magic Rat lost his clout, Spanish Johnny drove in, Rosalita came out. Where the greasers tramped the street, where beneath the city two hearts beat, where Billy slowly dug in his cleats and took Diamond Jackie in the Cadillac seat. We heard the Vibes Man play his deepest blue while Bad Scooter tried like hell to find his groove. Through death traps, suicide raps, turnpike operas and alley ballets. Barefoot boys kissing good night and golden heeled fairies in a real bitch fight. No saints in this city, no nickels, no pity. Just bruised arms, broken rhythm, and beat up old Buicks, and girls dressed like dynamite.

Sadly, the vision which engendered Springsteen’s first album trifecta was quashed in the mid 1970s. A lawsuit waged against Appel cited, among other things, contractual fraud. Of course, each coin has two sides, each argument its biases, but the judicial combat left our singer hardened, cynical, and sick. Enter Jon Landau with a new promise, a revamped vision extending beyond the trappings of familiar hemi-powered drones. Unlike his predecessor, Landau favored a decidedly streamlined approach. A dumbed-down, commercially viable, mainstream sound which would earn Springsteen worldwide acclaim and enormous riches while decimating the collaborative instincts of E Street. Stripped away, record by record, were the lively narratives, vibrant lyricism, and unique instrumental workouts in favor of clichéd generality. Artistic merit was fast eclipsed by rocketing superstardom; a deal with the devil for a comfortable life. And as part of that treaty, a loss of the defining boardwalk localism for a broad-stroked attempt at becoming the red, white, and blue, bandana clad American Highwayman.

Thanks to Landau’s lowest common denominator framework, our hero was hastily transformed, even appending an uncomfortable bible-belt affect to his voice. The consequent sound was syndicated not only for the swamps of Jersey, but for the small towns dotting every prairie crevice of flyover country. Spartan tales of woe became difficult to swallow as Springsteen’s balance sheet ballooned exponentially, blinded by the light of celebrity. He was now a brand, a marketable shill for every independent farmer facing agricultural conglomeration, each Midwestern auto mechanic staring down the barrel of an assembly plant closure, and every long-haul trucker praying for his last load. Hypocrisy at its ugliest. But it didn’t fool me. Not for an instant. I knew Bruce was sick. Mentally debilitated, physically wracked, and emotionally deluded. One wonders if the boys at Billboard caught the ironic adjustment as he burned up their charts. All too suddenly the revamped E Street Band became, to borrow our Asbury allegory, a lavish condo encroaching on the spirited funhouse. And look, I get it. He did it for the money.

You would’ve too.

In late 1982, the real Bruce Springsteen passed away at the age of 33, replaced ad infinitum by The Boss, a howling American icon of small town car washes and Main Street parades, of glitter face paint and flag waving corner stores; a political, controlling egotist with a jarring rockabilly wail. Earlier relevance abandoned, E Street now functions as a tight, rhythmic shell, an affluent troop of session players shuffling blindfolded through the motions – albeit with remarkable versatility – tour after tour after tour.

Admittedly, I bought into The Boss. I still do. He’s shrewd, charismatic, and in fairness has penned enough radio-friendly anthems and introspective slow burners to fill a few shoeboxes. Given the opportunity, this writer would gladly soak in an acclaimed concert. After all, The Boss believes he’s creating his best work. Now. And he makes us want to believe him, peppering his records with integrity in our age of bubble gum pop dreck. If you look hard enough, some semblance of the old magic even exists, it’s just been repackaged with a slicker sheen: less frilly accoutrements, more meat and potatoes. That’s how business works, no hard feelings. Nevertheless, it’s a long way from Thunder Road when you’ve sold out in a back room palm greasing; your very own “meeting across the river,” desperate for fame, elastic with image, but killed in the darkness on the edge of town.

Earth To Aliens: Where Is Steve Perry?

Can the extra-terrestrials who snatched Steve Perry from our planet, please return him to the Journey microphone? No one steered mulletted devotees toward truck-stop euphoria quite like that prancing fool. No one. So it’s anybody’s guess why the NASCAR militias haven’t threatened intergalactic reconnaissance. That said, while our beloved Portuguese son now hangs by the ankles in a cryogenic chamber, a succession of open-chested burnouts keep the Bay Area chicken rock rolling faithfully along. Hipsters be damned, Journey still dispenses overproduced kitsch as reliably as the milkman leaves quarts for grandma, the UPS guy tags your wife, and your semi-retarded friend (who never split town) offers you rides to the mall. Given that moustached meat eaters and their spawn continue ejaculating to “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)”at fist pumping decibel levels, IROC-Z’s will forever roar in tribute to the 28th best-selling band. And the rest of us, well, we’ll remain mired in our daily routines, living just to find emotion.

Nonetheless, for intelligent aliens, nothing says “sloppy work” like beaming Steve’s larynx into a shaggy-haired Filipino at the NFL Super Bowl Tailgate Party. Envision the chaos of “ERROR! ERROR!” echoing throughout the spaceship command center, warning sirens ablare as E.T.’s kinfolk hurriedly yank levers and bang flashing buttons; a vexing dread hanging over their antennae. Meanwhile, our Philippine hero – trademark tenor perfected – vamps it up for thousands of city boys and small town girls, never aware of how narrowly he escaped laser incineration.

And please (deep sigh), let’s not have the racial conversation today. Let’s just not go there; it’s too pedestrian for the high-minded types perusing this treasure trove of influence. Everyone knows I love Asian people. Positively love the bastards. Believe me, I’d never let a white man within fifty feet of the engine assembly for my automobile, and I damn well wouldn’t trust a horde of Caucasians to manufacture my audiophile gear, serve me a plate of runny Chow Mein, or remove embarrassing stains from my dry cleaning. Entire dissertations could be penned on the marvels of nail salons, massage parlors, and bukkake, if only I wasn’t preoccupied writing this nonsense. Hell, General Tso even gets the occasional dinner nod in my outdated kitchen, assuming his soldierly place at what always feels like The Last Supper once greasy indigestion roils the innards.

Yet Steve Perry continues to rot in a hellish vortex. Joking aside, if anyone has the customer service number for NASA, or better yet, Stephen Hawking’s cell, now would mark an opportune time for disclosure. With Hawking’s comprehension of the space-time continuum and black holes (not to mention his thoroughly awesome DECTalk DTC01 voice synthesizer which would give Frampton and Sambora wet dreams for decades), he’s the reigning scientific colossus among mere mortals. Doc Brown excluded, I wouldn’t trust anyone else to manage Perry’s interstellar rescue and atmospheric re-entry in a DeLorean DMC-12 – flux capacitor in tow, Mr. Fusion in trunk – careening into the last Fotomat on earth. Because frankly, Steve, it’d be good to have you back. Lovin’ a music man ain’t always what it’s supposed to be. But I’m holding onto the feeling with the rest of the streetlight people.

S.O.S. To The World

The 2009 Golden Globes marked the disquieting re-appearance of Sting – master of pretention, occasional jazz bullshitter, and reluctant Police vocalist (yes, money talks) – modeling an uncomfortable beard. Uncomfortable for his audience, it should be clarified. And in fairness, I’m not making comparisons to the questionable panache of Rutherford B. Hayes, who sported a gnarled bird’s nest on his face while proudly serving in the Oval Office, mouth buried beneath years of knotty twine, happily wearing the sandwich crumbs of a decade; but for those who know Mr. Sumner as a fair-haired musician famous for his ode to prostitution, not to mention as an epic sexual deity to be feared by mortals and porn stars, this new adventure down the hirsute highway seemed to raise more than a few eyebrows in the Beverly Hilton.

Bizarrely, the new carpet was dyed a powerful black, along with the rest of his thinning mane. And when I say black, understand that I mean black as fuck, matte finish. As in Just For Men Black As Fuck, or Grecian Formula Machine Shop Blend. You know, the one that requires a haz-mat license at point of purchase (ask for it behind the spray paint cage). Squint hard, and it looks like a tantric fungus is devouring our favorite egotistical bassist’s head. Sweep history aside, and it’s too easy to assume that the Coast Guard found him lying beneath the Exxon Valdez, bottle smashed, message lost.

Fortunately most children were asleep as the network waited until nine before airing the feed, smartly avoiding FCC ire. Now I don’t have kids, but I’d imagine the sight of a wolfen man who looked like he just gargled tar could scare the bejesus out of most kindergartners. Be afraid.

Christmas In January

So really, who needs a job when I’ve just begun cataloging my Christmas music collection like a raging autodidact; clad in pajama pants and a white terrycloth robe, playing the role of a man who detests the very notion of financial security. Hell, not only am I cataloging, but I’m removing the hiss from older recordings via audio-editing software, locating original 45rpm cover artwork for reasons unknown, and hunting for year of release. In aggregate, this gives me clearance for OCD bragging rights in the most severe support circles. For whatever it’s worth, my wildest act of "Damn The Man" rebellion has been a carefully groomed goatee, cultivated with a Norelco #3 blade setting, precision trimmer, and beard scissor. When coupled with the robe and checked pants, I’m a 'Pulp Fiction'-era Eric Stoltz, minus the crackwhore girlfriend. “Use the opportunity,” people have encouraged me. “Don’t just sit around. Take a vacation. Take a broadcasting class. Start painting.” If not for concerns regarding my mortgage payment and electric bill, perhaps a weekend in Fiji might clear my head, thanks for the suggestion.

Of course, I’m more inclined to begin a strict bottle recycling plan. Growing up, the “can man,” presumably by some divine act of the Lord, put his kid through college by combing the trash bins of Main Street on a quest for aluminum booty. His weekly take, the perfect thumb in the eye for the hacks at the IRS. In retrospect, I suppose that kid of his got a massive financial aid handout, and thirteen years of bottle deposits scored a new toaster. For the record, guess who’s unemployed, who’s got a job, and who’s still busting his ass for nickels. The poor guy'll be dead before he ever gets that espresso machine. But he's banking coin. I'm not. Game over.