Review: !!! - Louden Up Fast
Strike one is naming your band a punctuation mark repeated three times. Strike one and a half is pronouncing it "chk chk chk". How can you say that without being embarrassed? Someone brought to work a box of Yum Yum Donuts. Imagine working the phone there and constantly chirping "Yum Yum!"
Strike two is cursing all the time for no reason except to curse. This proves what exactly, if you're not 15 years old? As politics it doesn't accomplish anything. And if you're so damn street why release an extra disc of clean versions? Strike two and a half is having this review written about you: "Rhythm is rebellion. From the first blasts of rhythm and blues to the beat generation right up to acid house, the simple act of dancing has constantly been sidelined by society as an extreme act of defiance." Gack.
Strike three is playing white funk/disco/dub/reggae/no wave and singing like The Clash on "Rock The Cash Bar". Strike three and a half is resorting to endless electronic handclaps.
2004's Louden Up Fast came recommended since with many caveats I like Gang Of Four. It's more like Gang Of One plus a raver, a dubber and a weirdo. I give !!! credit for being clever electronic alchemists and for throwing in a few bizarre horn blurts, but disco sucks and white people shouldn't pretend they're black when it comes to funk. White people's hips don't have what it takes. The Talking Heads recorded underplayed white funk while GOF, before they loved a man in uniform, were too angry and spastic to get down to.
I listened to the whole thing. It's a mishmash style I can see being popular, and if I didn't hate disco so much maybe I'd get into its finer points. A long time ago I got over the inclusive laziness of people who call everything they like "punk". I hold my ground on this: disco is not punk and it will never be. Asexual white funk is new wave, but James Brown is the King Of Soul and it's an insult to relabel what it is into something it is not.
posted by emerson at 11:22 AM
2 Comments:
I saw The James Brown Review live at the Montreal Forum in 1968. All the players from New York city used to come up for the show due to the lack of racial hassles in Canada. I, in my ratty jeans and denim jacket couldn't count the number of women in mink coats and stoles. It was one of the coolest shows I ever saw. Mr. Brown did "Please Please Me" where he kept collapsing on stage, each time led off by a huge attendant with a stole - one time zebra skin, the next time leopard etc. etc.. Just as he was about to reach the curtains he would throw off the stole and come back singing. I don't care how much angel dust he smoked or how many times he let off his handguns in his neighbourhood, the man is the GODFATHER OF SOUL.
Disco was and is soul lite. If you like lite rock, I guess somewhere there must be a punk lite
and maybe a band called "chk chk chk" fills the bill". All I can say is if you were around in '77 and were a punk you had a "disco sucks" sticker. For me, it was worse, I had a disco queen girlfriend. Well, she liked reggae, at least we could agree on that.
As for Prince, or whatever he is known as today, go see "Purple Rain" it is still a good movie. It cleans "Saturday Night Fever"'s clock.
I think you have too much time on your hands Emerson.
2:16 PM
Of course I have too much free time on my hands. Jeez, isn't that obvious?
6:40 PM
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