Trash Talk
SpaceGhostPurrp
Monday, July 16, 2012
Better than: Shows where they don't find random shoes, watches, and other detachable items strewn about afterward.
Last night, the rising Sacramento hardcore band Trash Talk and freaky Florida rapper SpaceGhostPurrp shared an unusual billing at Slim's. While avoiding the moshpit and most of the cups, shoes, and other items flying out of the near-constant storm at the foot of the stage, we learned a few interesting things about these artists and their fans. Here are five of them:
1. Hardcore punk and hardcore rap are both after a similar kind of hideous transcendence.
There's been some discussion of the apparent oddness of billing a furious hardcore punk outfit like Trash Talk along with a dark, foreboding rapper like SpaceGhostPurrp. Why was that, again? Watched in sequence, it was clear that these artists used their disparate musical styles to pursue similar ends. They seek new frontiers of ugliness -- transgressions so crudely extreme they're liberating. SpaceGhostPurrp invites the whole room to chant "suck a nigga dick" repeatedly over a blackened bass throb, eliciting a gross-but-infectious reptilian delight from the mob. Trash Talk cultivates a semiviolent (yet totally egalitarian) free-for-all through pounding guitar, bass, and drums at inhuman speed, while a man shreds his vocal chords live onstage.
See also:
* Live Review, 7/16/12: Frank Ocean Meets a Sea of Support at the Regency Ballroom
* Frank Ocean: The Only Band That Matters
In music this year, the moment that has meant the most to me didn't happen while playing a record or attending a show. It happened while reading a Tumblr. On July 4, when Frank Ocean posted an open letter at his website in which for the first time he referred to his relationship with another man, I was reminded why pop matters, after all.
Hip-hop remains one of the few genres where homosexuality is still taboo. A memorable 2008 book by former MTV executive Terrence Dean painted a picture of a gay hip-hop underground that read like an Edmund White novel: the complex interweaving of secrets and codes brings to mind the paranoid and besieged community of homosexual New Yorkers before the Stonewall Riots in 1969.
Four years on from Dean's book, if the situation has changed at all it's been at a glacial, almost imperceptible pace. Hip-hop's willful ignorance toward homosexuality has always been its least defensible blight (though some women might rightly disagree). So it wasn't your typical Adam Lambert moment when Ocean, who first gained notoriety as part of the somewhat gay-bashing Odd Future, revealed the details of his relationship and heartbreak.
See also:
* How Frank Ocean's Sexual Openness Could Help Liberate His Fans
* Frank Ocean: The Only Band That Matters
Frank Ocean
July 16, 2012
Better than: Streaming Channel Orange
Last night, it felt like the most natural move in the world to hear Frank Ocean sing, "You run my mind, boy . . . Running on my mind, boy."
It was in a new song called "Forrest Gump," part of a sonic concept that could be cheesy in the wrong hands, but here evoked the unselfconsciously positive, feelgood vibe of the film. Only there was a rather brilliant twist that Tom Hanks never saw coming.
On the cusp of Independence Day, 24-year-old Ocean became one of the bravest artists in the music world when he took to his Tumblr to post what amounted to a public admission that he is bisexual, and that his first unrequited love was for a man.
"I don't know what happens now," he wrote, "and that's alrite. I don't have any secrets I need kept anymore. . . I feel like a free man."
The digital version of Ocean's official debut album Channel Orange also just came out last week, but between the big pockets of the sold-out audience who already knew every word of the new songs and Ocean's unflappable poise, it already felt like a well-loved classic. If Ocean had any hesitations about coming out, the overwhelmingly positive critical and popular response is hopefully reassuring him that he was right to take such a beautiful and honest step.
Remember how, after he thought it'd been long enough for everyone to forget about Pinkerton, Weezer's Rivers Cuomo put out the green album, went back on MTV, and sang a bunch of frothy pop songs that never even pretended to mean anything? Catchy, featherweight singles like "Hash Pipe" and "Island in the Sun" marked the band's transition from a young, cultish group with some seriously awkward feelings to a simple-minded pop-rock band that was fun (sorta) but no longer dangerous. No more redheads shredding the cello or incendiary crushes on lesbians -- Weezer became one more radio staple, another vaguely quirky hit factory that happened to play guitars.
After a few listens to Green Day's new single, "Oh Love" -- the first taste of the band's trio of upcoming albums -- we're wondering if the Bay Area punk trio isn't heading for a similar place. It's too early to say exactly what Green Day's new vibe will be, but a new one is certainly in order: These guys just spent almost a decade hawking the operatic angst of American Idiot -- maybe their most important album of all -- and its follow-up, 21st Century Breakdown. Both of these records were born of the high-contrast distress of the Bush era, and tried to wrestle with a warring, oppressively unfair world using anarchy signs, stadium rock, and cute red ties.
By ANDREW LOPEZ
See also:
* US Air Guitar Championships: Witness the Madness of People Rawking on Thin Air
The U.S. Air Guitar Championships San Francisco Regionals brought rockers and headbangers from all around to the Independent last Saturday for a ridiculous combination of booze, ass-less chaps and hard-hitting guitar licks. Here the five of the best air guitar moves from the finalists in GIF form.
Warning: These are professional air shredders. Please do not try rocking out this hard at home.
