New rule.

The new rule is that you are not allowed to compare any record or band to another record or band "on [some drug]" unless you have done the drug you are referencing. The other day I saw a quote on some singer-songwriter's one-sheet that said he sounded "like Elvis Costello on angel dust." Which is wrong. Elvis Costello on angel dust would sound like Elvis Costello yelling at a wall. Needless to say, this dude in particular did not sound like Elvis Costello yelling at a wall.*
It really is true that you don't have to do drugs to be cool. I know a lot of good people who have only ever like tried weed a couple of times and decided they didn't like being on drugs, and getting busted on drug-frontin is way worse than saying, "Sorry, I was totally straight-edge until I turned 26 and decided to start drinking martinis because they looked fun," or whatever your experience was. People dropping references to someone "tripping on heroin" give me extreme "bags of sand"-style douche chills.

*Another thing: ODB, Sly Stone, and Shaun Ryder are the only people to have ever made a decent recording while smoking cocaine, so unless you're trying to compare an artist to one of these three musicians, do not say they sound like "[somebody] on crack." Crack doesn't make you automatically start rocking out spazzy, artsy music; it just makes you want to smoke more crack.

Kthnx

I feel kinda chumpish recommending something so completely obvious, but I just subscribed to the Fader podcast, and the newest edition has like every song that's wrecked me at any DJ night in the past month or so, specifically Raje Shwari's "Average Bitch" and "Teri Baaton" by Raghav. Jams is right. But seriously, I feel like yesterday's Red Eye where the two biggest features were about airlines losing your luggage and how if you're thinking about marrying someone you should learn stuff about them. Derrrrrrrr.

Bang on.

Dead Prez has the best merch. What you know about signature lines of soap?
Their set last night at Intonation was wall-to-wall bonkers. A half-acapella version of "Walk Like a Warrior," a cover of "Another Brick in the Wall," the weekend's only onstage commentary on white people hip-hop fans (condensed: It's okay, but you have a responsibility to look out for black people if you're gonna ride for free on their culture.), and the hands-down best banter of the whole fest: "I see these vampires sucking my blood. I ain't wit it."
DEAD PREZ IS OFFICIALLY ANTI-VAMPIRE. DEAL WITH IT.

Jesus Freakin'

Hello.
My review of Andrew Beaujon's book about Christian rock in online here.

Typo of the Day

"NAS: Earth hottest it's been in 400 years, humans responsible"
BoingBoing.net

And then he starts a "who's the world's best spokesperson for global warming" beef with Al Gore.

"Aging": America's hottest new trend?

"30 is the new 20."
-New York Times, Dec. 23, 2004

"Thirty is the new forty."
-New Yorker, Jun. 26, 2006

I don't know which of these is correct--or if 30 is the new anything besides 30--but I feel like just to be safe I should probably buy a new beer bong and get someone pregnant before next year.
Optimally I would be able to do both things simultaneously.

When your MySpace "Pending Friend Requests" folder tells you the truth.

"Currently awaiting approval from Stevie Nicks"
I think in a way I've been waiting for Stevie Nicks' approval for most of my life.
Breakthrough.

The fetishized gun violence web portal is open for business.

My friend Josh ran off with my "Bird Flu" post and dug up some goods on the deejay,Sample King, who sings it. He's got an official website, but the real goods are on his Myspace page, and by "goods" I mean "songs that test the very limits of how much MIDI gunfire can one song contain." To bear witness to "Weh Dem Know Bout That," (he is Canadian, so despite himself he pronounces "about" correctly, if accented) on the beat to TI's "What You Know," is to know exactly how many gunfire samples his friend who produced the song has on his keyboard. Two things Sample King might want to consider are that there are websites out there that you can download things like that from--nothing says "scraping the bottom of the MIDI barrel" like an old-timey whistling bomb--and that shouting out "sniper rifles" and other shit from Goldeneye is the "they feel like bags of sand" of violent rap lyrics.
More artfully (and more Nate Dogg-ingly) done is the Kadalack Boyz' "Never Slippin'" (mp3 link), which starts off with a beat built out of gun-cocking sounds and cannon blasts. When you get to hear a rap song that uses some of the same ideas the Flaming Lips were fucking with when they were still good you call that "an awesome day."

I say, "H5," you say, "N1"!

I don't know that I personally would've put the "Dancin' disease I spread it," line in there (a little too real, dudes), but I fully approve of the insane "shrieking eagle" sound, which I think about 5000x more songs should be incorportating. The latest proof that dancehall can take any trend, fad, or potential globally catastrophic pandemic, and make a song out of it: the Bird Flu song
via the Vice blog. Go here to see the dance that goes with it.

Stop looking like you're going to use that baby to make out with me somehow.

Hi. I'm Common. I stole your baby. Does that make you feel...sexy?

Sex on the Beach without Mr. De

Everyone's already bagging on the new Paris Hilton video (it's a music video this time, not more creepy porn), but that's fine. It gives the opportunity to say the first nice thing on the internet about it: To Paris' credit it takes her nearly one-and-a-half minutes to--by all appearances--begin fellating her co-star in public. Look at the 1:29 mark and tell me I'm wrong.

Because I'm not. I've been watching this thing all day.

Party jams.

Say what you will about the moral/ethical problem of keeping wild animals as pets, but you really can't hate on someone for rolling up on a party in a posse that's partially composed of the hands-down cutest predator in the Sahara desert.
I learned two things over the weekend: that the fennec fox version of yelling "woooo!" at a party is like a kind of meow-y yelp, and that watching people try to hit a pinata with a pair of panties over their eyes is really funny.
Actually, the second part of that isn't as much learning as confirming a suspicion.

An honest piece of truth told with the worst words:

"The real war is between those who are turned on, and those who are uptight."
-Timothy Leary
via Boing Boing

Fierce beards

Ever notice how you never see Al Burian and Gary Oldman as Bram Stoker's Dracula in the same room at the same time?

That’s just what it is, G.

The best rock crit rubbernecking opportunities recently have been Q&As with Ghostface Killah, who has decided to become the worst interview subject ever. There's a certain schadenfreud-style thrill that I get in seeing another journalist having their weakest interview questions backhanded into their faces by a guy who wears a robe in public on the regular.
Also nice is Ghostface getting a little meta on the interview process:
Lately you and many other East Coast artists have been criticizing Southern hip-hop, in particular songs such as “Laffy Taffy.”
Ghostface Killah: Man, that’s all y’all be talking about lately.

Is he commenting on the media's overexamination of artists' gestures, or critiquing the laziness of the pop culture press? Or is he just mad?
"Right now, I say fuck New York. Yeah, I’m from New York, but fuck New York. Because niggas is pussy. They is so quick to jump on the next man’s dick and can’t even deal with what they got in front of they face."
One day I will learn how to hate as hard as Ghostface Killah, and I will become totally powerful. On that day I will buy a robe and a cranberry Snapple and get to hating full-time. It will be the best day of my life.

Does not liking glitchtronica make you racist against nerds?

If you like glitchtronica and Top 40 hip-hop, then this will be your favorite. If you don't like that stuff, I don't know. Eat a burrito. You like burritos, don't you?

A moment of downtime during the Great Internet Indie Rock Racism War of 2006

Hopper: 1800 people come to my blog suddenly now thinking I think they are racists because they are into pavement, not cam'ron.
Me: hahaha
Hopper: whatever, they are.
Hopper: Maybe I should go on a crazy tear and say that "crooked rain crooked rain" is a symbol of the holocaust?
Me: stephen malkmus explicitly endorses the tuskegee syphilis experiments
Hopper: I AM GOING TO PEE I AM LAUGHING SO HARD
Hopper: Gary, the first drummer actually quit once he found out that Malkamus takes shit on known indian grave yards.
Hopper: yelling "fuck you injuns" and stuff.
Me: malkmus will have sex with jewish chicks, but only in the butt
Hopper: I think you should cut and paste it and make a blog post of it.
Hopper: of this, not Steve Malkamus' HASID HATER ANALJAM VOL 3

If it wasn't for press releases I wouldn't know anything.

"We are not supposed to rub food over our naked bodies."
Thank you, art. I was confused on this point.
"Marshmallow Fluff helps create the union between the natural and the inert by its dense, gelatinous consistency metamorphisizing and overwhelming the human and object into one."
Wait, you're just making this up.

Moet or PBR?

Propers to our boy Kanye for taking the hipster neckerchief to its furthest, flossiest end, Louis Vuitton-style:

I wanna seem him get on some nouveau hippie shit next, with like a Jakob dreamcatcher pendant. That would be fly.

Photo by Gina Erdmann of Brooklyn, New York.

Woooo. Woooo.

Do you have a summer project planned?
Mine is putting together a Lifter Puller tribute band, potentially called Lonely In a Limousine, or maybe the Wristbands. I already have dibs on the Craig role, and if Morgan ever comes back from Africa she's going to be Steve Dude, because she wants to play bass and she's always talking about vagina, but if you want to be in it, you should myspace me. We still need a lead guitar and a drummer and we're probably going to end up needing a horn section and some groupies.