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There’s a reason I have avoided going to a U2 concert my entire life. It’s not because I can’t afford the ticket prices, I am extremely capable and have enough dedication to beat up 100 little kids for their lunch money. It’s not because I couldn’t get to a city they were playing, since I have driven 24 hours straight by myself before with only Red Bull and Andrew W.K. to keep me at the wheel.
It’s because they suck.
Plain and simple.
They blow.
Hard.
I can’t stress this enough.
But for all of those out there who couldn’t get to the U2/save the children from our rabid dogs with cowboy monkey riders throwing Polio dipped arrows benefit concert (better known as the PopMart tour), you can now see the giant douchebaggery that is Bono on the big screen AND in 3D!!!
That’s right! The film, cleverly titled U2-3D, was debuted at the Sundance Film Festival. Footage from the 2005-06 Vertigo tour, better known as the help float Africa across the ocean to link up with Florida to help elephants with shingles tour, was shot with 3D camera technology. There really was no other reason for this except that Bono wanted to make a movie about himself, his band and be able to watch it in a movie theater while still wearing some type of tinted glasses indoors.
So if you just never had the experience of Bono’s leather-pant-bound crotch thrusting towards you in real life at least you can take home all the same nightmares due to 3D technology.
Also, who willingly names themselves The Edge? I mean, honestly… Really?
PS - Click the links for yet another dose of my awesome MSPaint skills. You’ll love it.
There’s only one good thing that could come out of Barry Bonds’ steroid use…
I know this doesn’t seem like a music post, but stay with me…
I have a dream, that Barry Bonds’ steroid-enlarged head actually has festered a giant chemical bomb. One day, the Rock n Roll Comedy Jamboree starring Nickelback, Carlos Mencia, Larry the Cable Guy and Creed reuinon comes to San Francisco and Barry Bonds is the named guest of honor. All these acts together are exact combination to activate the chemical countdown of the bomb inside Barry’s head and while he’s on stage with all the acts doing their version of “Take Me Higher”, featuring Larry the Cable Guy on the moonshine jug, the last note causes the bomb to explode taking out everyone on stage, all the fans in the arena and all their monster trucks and tractors parked outside.
While this exact combination may not happen, my smaller dreams may come true some day at a 50 Cent or Mary J. Blige concert. These artists and more are under investigation in a steroids probe that are looking at doctors and clinics that provided athletes with steroids and they happen to go to the same doctors.
I mean, I can see the usage on 50 but Mary J? Can you imagine these two getting all pumped up and forming a WWE tag team or something? I think it would look a little bit… a’like this:
PS - Man, look at those awesome MS Paint skills!!!
Kevin Federline is giving up the dreams of being a world famous rap star.
Upon seeing this update scroll across the news ticker, the entire world immediately removed the blood-soaked cotton balls that were shoved into their ears after the release of Playing with Fire in 2006.
Instead, Kevin Federline is now becoming a producer and is going to nurture new artists from his home studio.
Upon this news, the entire world went to research ear drum surgery or checked out a book on Van Gogh from their local library (yes, that was an art joke).
Really, Kevin? You think that you really hold the key to an artist’s success when your album only sold 20,000 worldwide? I can only imagine some of the precious nuggets of advice coming from the Federline Studio & Waffle House:
- “Y’all got nice clothes? Trust me, throw em out and invest in Hanes tank tops.”
- “Know any hot rich babes? You should prolly fuck ‘em. Twice.”
- “The key is to look like you know nothing. Even better is actually knowing nothing. Here’s a hammer…”
- “What I think you… Jayden! Sean! Stop messing with my stuff or I’m gonna send you back to your Mom!”
Maybe some of the children’s crying will make it onto tape when the cardboard vocal booth’s duct tape finally wears out.
First and foremost: I love concept albums. I believe it makes the artist really think about an overall album and doesn’t allow them to just slop ten songs on a disc and go on their merry way (if you can call those things “songs” Ashlee Simpson). Yet unfortunately sometimes concept albums can overstep their boundaries and be pretentious. (see: prog rock in general).
The Streets’ A Grand Don’t Come for Free is a concept album with a grasp on reality… or it could be the script to a pretty run-of-the-mill Hollywood romantic comedy, I’m not quite sure. The main plot laid out by Mike Skinner is boy loses money, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy loses money forever in a fight (or) boy finds money. That’s right! This album even allows the listener to decide which ending they would like better, but more on that later (that’s your spoiler alert). So take that main plot and add life’s little trinkets such as talking to girls in takeaway restaurants, getting lucky by not placing a bet that would have lost, and getting completely fucked up and you have A Grand Don’t Come for Free.
Mike Skinner really took a chance by following up his debut album with a concept, but he made the right choice by going with what he knows. Each song itself is a story you could picture him telling you in a pub the day after it happened over a pint of Fuller’s. His delivery isn’t what one would call smooth but the offbeat flow draws you in more to that feeling of familiarity since it isn’t so polished. The opener of “It Was Supposed to Be So Easy” isn’t what you would expect to hear as the jump-off track of a hip-hop album with a jerky monotone chorus and a fairly laid-back tone in Skinner’s voice, but it only grows from there.
In relationship-based songs like “Could Well Be In” and “Dry Your Eyes” the more down tempo beats are accompanied by a softer voiced Skinner who shows his feelings for the apple of his eye with honest lyrics and sincerity in his voice that conveys true feelings without the sap. The exact opposite comes out in songs like “Get Out of My House” and “Fit But You Know It” where exasperation is shown with a more jacked up Mike (with the help of some liquid courage) showing that he can run the gamut and is no one trick pony.
So the whole troubled relationship story can get old, but A Grand… offers much more. Another story arc of the disc deals with Mike losing £1000 of his savings and becoming paranoid wondering who could have taken it in “What Is He Thinking?” The production builds up the frantic paranoia that the inner-monologues of the characters in the song are obviously feeling on both sides. “Empty Cans” is the song that takes the choose-your-own-adventure approach to rounding out the album. The first choice has Mike’s broken TV hauled off by a TV repairman who later tells him that he found something in the back of the TV which Mike thinks is a ploy to get more money out of the repair and fisticuffs are thrown. The second choice, signaled by a rewind sound cue and then accompanied by a similar beat to the former option, has Mike’s buddy Scott coming to help fix the TV and then finding that the £1000 had slipped through a crack in the back.
So maybe A Grand… isn’t romantic comedy script as it a multiple storyline TV series where all the characters are intertwined somehow, but either way, all the stories and antics combined on the disc make for one hell of an adventure. If you want a hip-hop disc without the bling and rims and with something more relatable (like stealing a tub of ice cream when you’re drunk) then this one’s for you.
The Streets - A Grand Don’t Come for Free
Vice/Atlantic
8 of 10
