SUPER MUSIC NERD STATUS CHALLENGE

Girl Talk - Feed the Animals [2008]

Girl Talk has finally dropped the follow up to 2006’s non-stop party machine Night Ripper. It’s called Feed the Animals, and about 45 seconds into my first spin this week I got that tingly feeling in the spine that means that everything might just be right with the world.

I’m not even sure what a mega mix is, but Girl Talk takes the mega mix to the next level. Let’s call it the ultra mix – no, even better – the mega ultra mix, the multra mix. Girl Talk is the multra mega phat pharty-starting white boy, Leisure Suit Laptop, the Sheik of Beat, the Cherry on Top of the Pops. He doesn’t so much mash up as mash on down – sure, there’s mash ups galore, but each lasts for about 5-25 seconds before being drowned or devoured by the next indie riff, rap beat, hip hop flow, pop hook, dance... thingo.

It’s hard with words to convey the sheer weight of hedonistic sampling that goes on in Feed the Animals. So here’s what I done. On my third spin the record (yes, first would have been better, but it’s too late now, isn’t it?) I conducted an experiment and a challenge. Of the 300 or so samples on this three quarters of an hour, could I name 100 songs, either by title or band?

Girl Talk draws so thick and fast from the last couple of decades of popular music, any music nerd worth his salt would anticipate a walk in the park in naming a mere 100 samples from Feed the Animals. But would I be up to it? In the days leading up to SUPER MUSIC NERD STATUS CHALLENGE, as it came to be known, I massaged my lobes raw and obsessively studied Spicks and Specks in anticipation. The stakes: any future claim to musical knowledge, and the enviable MUSIC NERD status that it entails.

The Rules:
Target: 100 points.

The Purported Nerd may name either band or song title, or both, of any song sampled. Each successful guess is rewarded with 1 point. A band and title combo is worth 2 points (yes, I'm cheating).

Random comments in (parentheses) will be tolerated.

Markers comments will appear in [square brackets].

No google. No mobile phones. Laptops ok. Girl Talk uses two.

And the result:

Track 1: "Play Your Part (Pt. 1)" - 4:45

“My Sharona” [ed: not actually sampled on this song, apparently. Way to false start]
Kiss: “We’re Not Gonna Take It” [ed: It’s by Twisted Sister. At least I got the men in heavy make up bit right]
(“Gettin’ some head; Gettin’ Gettin’ some head”)

2 "Shut the Club Down" - 3:07

Avril Levine: “You Don’t Need a Boyfriend” [ed: It’s called “Girlfriend”, but close enough]
Butthole Surfers [ed: song’s called “Pepper”]
NWA: “Fuck the Police” (Ice Cube rocks in right at the end here with a “Wit a little bit of gold and a pager”, some other rapper responds “We don’t give a damn, we don’t give a fuck”) [ed: Actually a Cool Kids song which samples NWA. Girl Talk samples Cool Kids sampling NWA. How postmodern]

3 "Still Here" - 3:57

(“Flash…lights”) [Ed: Kanye]
(“I like the way you work it (No diggity) I got to bag it up”) [ed: BLACKstreet feat. Dr Dre]
(That “20 dollar bill” club hit, over some country song)

4 "What It's All About" - 4:15

(“Na na na na na” song)
Faith No More [ed: song’s called “Epic”]
“Say a Little Prayer” [ed: No such song, apparently]
(“I grew up on the crime side/The New York Times side/Stayin’ alive was no jive”)
Outkast: “Miss Jackson”
Jackson 5: “2 and 2 is 4” [ed: It’s called “ABC”]
Queen: “Bohemian Rhapsody”

5 "Set It Off" - 3:42

Radiohead “Paranoid Android”
Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five [ed: Song’s “The Message”]

6 "No Pause" - 3:12

(That annoying road trip song) [ed: Len: “Steal my Sunshine” Bad song, but Girl Talk works it.]
“I want you to want me”
Eminem (This is a fucking great Eminem rap. Whatever happened to that guy?) [Ed: Song’s called “Shake That”. As for Eminem, isn't he dead?]

7 "Like This" - 3:21

Beastie Boys: “Bodymovin”
“Ghetto Superstar” over Yo La Tengo: “Autumn Sweater”
Metallica: “One” (the super fast guitar bridge bit - matched with this awesome chick rapper) [ed: She’s called Lil’ Mama]

8 "Give Me a Beat" - 4:12

Air: “Sexy Boy”
Of Montreal (“foooorgeeeet” goes the lyric, apt because I’ve forgotten the song name) [ed: “Gronlandic Edit”]
“America’s Most Wanted” [ed: it’s “AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted”, but close enough]

9 "Hands in the Air" - 4:20

“Woop there is it” [ed: Apparently it’s “Whoomp”]
Cardigans: “Love Fool” with Hot Chip
(a dance sample – that fucking song with the video clip of the kid running around with a model airplane that gets sampled fucking all the time!) [ed: Stardust “Music Sounds Better with You”. Der.]

10 "In Step" - 3:23

(A hella Jane Fonda workout song, oh hang on, it’s):
“You got it!”
(That wacky whistling sound. Can’t believe I can’t remember the name of this) [ed: Deee-Lite: “Groove is in the Heart”]
Nirvana “Smells Like Teen Spirit” [ed: “Lithium”, you tool]
“Dancing in September” [ed: Just “September”]
The Beatles: “God only knows” [ed: Beach Boys! Lennon is rolling over in his grave! I hate you!]

11 "Let Me See You" - 4:04

(woo-oo, wee-oo)
(Sounds like a young Shaggy singing “I’m a flirt”) [ed: it’s R Kelly]
Daft Punk: “Harder Better Faster Stronger”
Devo: “Whip It” [ed: nope.]
MIA: “Boys Say” [ed: “Boyz”. Close enough]
(Some new wave revival wonderfully mashed up with MIA) [ed: It’s the Cranberries: “Dreams”]

12 "Here's the Thing" - 4:46

“Choo choo Ride” [ed: It’s called “C’mon Ride It (The Train)”. Perhaps even more inane a title than “Choo choo ride” would have been]
Skank Ho: “Since U Been Gone” [ed: Correct! Two points. Also would have accepted Kelly Clarkson]
Prodigy: “Breathe/Firestarter” [ed: yep, Firestarter. Those songs are indeed indistinguishable, so no penalty]
“Jessie’s Girl” (Best call and response sample mix ever. Faggy white boy [ed: Rick Springfield] sings: “I want Jessie’s Girl”. Rapper responds: “But I’d rather get some head”)

13 "Don't Stop" - 2:58

Underworld: “Born Slippy”
The Cure [ed: Nice! “In Between Days” is the song. The Cure’s “Close to Me” also sampled on earlier track “What It’s All About”]

14 "Play Your Part (Pt. 2)" - 3:25

Red Hot Chili Peppers: “Under the Bridge”
ACDC: “Thunderstruck”
(very Family Ties opening sequence piano bit with lage scale synth action… Whitney Houston?) [ed: It’s Journey “Faithfully”. Interestingly, David Chase also chose to end the final episode of The Sopranos with a Journey song. Coincidence?]

The Score:

Named 29 bands + 31 songs = 60.

A “pass”, but shatteringly short of the target. See the work of a real nerd here. Download the album (pay what you want) here.

Maintaining the Rage

or
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Machine

Plenty of disgruntled kids first got hooked on Rage Against the Machine with the video clip for "Bulls on Parade". The song was a like big pot of crack-spiked honey to countless testosterone-happy teenage boys, and listening to it now, that’s no surprise. It bludgeons the listener from the outset with a heavy, see-sawing hook which segues into a nasty-as-fuck Zach De La Rocha rap backed by ominous funk. The clip was pretty sick too, combining Cliff Notes style left-wing political messages with MTV-friendly, sleekly produced rawk footage. I was fourteen years old when I first saw that clip, and I was a Rage junkie within weeks.

Thousands of black t-shirt wearing former teenagers of the 90’s would attest to the gratuitous stupor with which they embraced Rage. In what was a lazy, warless, beige era the band was pissed off, eloquent, loud, hard and fast. Like the early punks they deftly straddled left-wing elitism ("Tha power pendulum swings by tha umbilical cord") and meathead rebellion ("Fuck you I won't do what you tell me"). But instead of hocking tired three chord sanctimony like Green Day or The Offspring, they combined, like none before them, those two most archetypal of teenage genres: metal and hip hop. A veritable wet dream for angry, pubescent suburbanites like myself. Uncomfortable questions like why Rage were signed to a major record label didn't really come up.

Rage’s break-up in 2000 devastated fans, but no one was too surprised. Front man Zach's ill-temper is obvious to anyone who spins a Rage album, and by all accounts his anger was democratic: the band copped it almost as bad as his favoured lyrical targets. Famously, Rage had to be forced into an EMI imposed group house arrest to record 1996's Evil Empire, a full five years after their self-titled debut hit. This was no happy union.

But, more than that, Rage just wouldn’t have made sense in the Bush era. That’s not to say that their messages – distrust of government, anti-Americanism, rebellion, et al – weren’t appropriate for those eight vile years of international politics. On the contrary, Rage’s ideas have of late been more than appropriate, much more so than they were in the 90’s. But the point is that Rage pushed left-wing revolution at a time when liberal academics were blowing their loads over the ruined Berlin Wall. They were always fated to be a lone voice of dissent in mainstream music, and could never have survived the sycophantic violence of Bush’s first term or the gush of celebrity driven anti-war posturing a few years later.

So the break-up was long coming. Realistic fans were basically stoked that such a volatile group had managed to release three albums and a covers record. As with any break-up, though, there was the regret – in my case, the regret that I’d never seen them live. Like so many Aussie Rage fans, I missed them at the 1996 Big Day Out, and they never came back to Australia.

For a scary while there, the remaining members of Rage looked for a singer to replace Zach, with a view to maintaining the RATM franchise. But rather than signing up an angry rapper (among others, the names Chuck D and B-Real were thrown around) they went with Chris Cornell, the dastardly mustachioed prima donna who looked all weird in Soundgarden’s clip for “Black Hole Sun”. Audioslave were always pedestrian, dividing Rage fans between loyalists pissed-off at the watering down of the music and desperados clinging to anything produced by three members of their favourite band. After initially falling into the latter camp, I’ve accepted that the former had it right: Audioslave sucked.

And then, out of the blue and after a number of progressively shoddier Audioslave albums, Rage's 2007 "one-off" reunion to play Coachella. That show resulted in a dummy-spit by either Cornell or three-quarters of Rage, depending on who you believe, resulting in the dissolution of the supergroup and the sudden reformation of Rage. Next came the announcement that they were headlining Big Day Out. The concept of Rage back together was strange somehow, but die-hard Aussie fans were pissing their pants with excitement, and I couldn’t help but share it.

As Big Day Out approached, though, I had this weird dread about seeing Rage. Some of it was concrete: for example, accounts had it that Zach congratulated fans at some of the east coast shows for electing Kevin Rudd, a patently ludicrous position for someone so hard-left he’s lived with Mexican revolutionaries EZLN. But most of it was a vague looming apprehension. For the first time I was to see a band who’d meant so much to me as a teenager, but, truth be told, they didn’t mean so much anymore. After so many years, I’d gotten bored, kicked the habit, and moved on.

Rage took the stage at exactly 9:20pm on that stifling Perth evening of 2008’s final Big Day Out, right on schedule. Their sound cut out mid-intro, but they continued playing, oblivious, for a good couple of minutes before the boos of the crowd cut through their amps. It was about the most surprising moment of the show. Rage put on a workhorse effort, Zach leaping maniacally and stalking the stage like a giant-killer, his mic a sling; Tom Morello flawlessly executing ridiculous solos, his guitar screaming, moaning and breaking like Slash put through a DJ scratch set. Thing was, I’d seen and heard all this before.

Rage were just like they were on their live videos, only, something was missing. Or maybe it wasn’t, maybe it was just me: the sweaty sea of shirtless, ripped, moshing bogans seemed to be enjoying themselves. But there was a palpable sense of death and nostalgia about the show. This was only enhanced by the fact that Rage played no new songs, nor did they do anything at all surprising or different. This was a bigger problem than it might be for other bands: for so long Rage demanded revolution, so it felt cheap that they’d decided to stick with formula.

Morello’s excuse is that Rage’s music hasn’t dated, and hell, maybe it hasn’t. But I was listening to it a decade ago, so it feels dated to me. Maybe fans should be thankful that we got to see Rage at all, or that they’re not going to release some terrible new album that will destroy their legacy. These are fair points. But nostalgia is a beast from hell. You’ve probably changed, but the music hasn’t.