Playing Catch Up

Summer has bitten me with the worst case of procrastination imaginable. I think when you have little to do, your brain shuts down. My time has been spent catching up on reading, practicing my remediable guitar skills, geeking out over House M.D., and counting down the days until I return to Rohnert Park for my summer class. As such, I apologize for offering sparse content in a schedule that affords me the time to provide it.

However, I'm going to change that. Slightly.

Starting tomorrow, I'll be instituting an ongoing series on this blog called "Classic Videos." Quite simply, with the help of the wonderful streaming capabilities available on the Internet, I'll be posting music videos 4 times a month on this blog. These are videos that I feel have stood the test of time, and hold a special place in my memory and heart. Hopefully, they'll do the same for others and even inspire some sort of nostalgia for a time where the medium of the music video meant something more than just flashing how big your rims are, or how many bottles of Cristal you can waste.

Secondly, I'll be reviewing the new Beck album Modern Guilt very very soon. I feel this is worth mentioning only because I'm still digesting the album's nuances but I'm really excited to review it.

Oh, and it's pretty good.

Lastly, a good friend of mine, Nathanial Garrod, asked my opinion on something and I thought blogging would be the perfect medium to answer his question. A few weeks ago, Nathanial asked me if I heard the song "Handlebars" by The Flobots, and what I thought about it/them. Knowing nothing (and never hearing) this band before, I turned to YouTube to aide me in understanding what had peaked Nathanial's interest.



At first listen, I was a tad taken back by Jonny 5's less than stellar delivery behind the microphone, but I suppose if Kanye West can get away with being an underdeveloped MC so can this guy. 5's delivery is choppy and rather than flowing effortlessly to allow his purple prose through, he crams as many metaphors as he can into his rhymes. Lyrically, he seems to be preoccupied with humanity's infinite potential being trapped within our self-defeating cycles of violence and hate. He uses the metaphor of "riding a bike with no handle bars" as merely a small feat of achievement and goes on to list many more testing everything from his academia to his compassion.

Bottome line, it's lyrically hit or miss.

But the music itself is where The Flobots really shine. Beginning from nimbly plucked violin strings, "Handlebars" plods along with with scratchy bass, bold trumpets, and scrambling snare patterns that will keep listeners interested long after the rhymes bore them. There are touches of fuzzy, overdriven, guitar that lace the chorus, but it's mostly done just to make the hook seem bigger than it actually is. However, The Flobots unconventional take on alternative hip-hop reminds me of some other noteworthy bands from the 90s such as Digable Planets and Arrested Development; if nothing else, their half-baked politics about peace and love were always well supported by great musical compositions.

And that's always worth checking out.