The Rawness

Apropos of nothing…They don’t make them like Kool G Rap anymore Hell of a storyteller….

This is probably the first song I ever memorized all the lyrics to…

The Best, “Sugar Man” by Sixto Rodriguez:

Sugar man, won’t you hurry
’cause I’m tired of these scenes.
For a blue coin won’t you bring back
All those colors to my dreams.

Silver magic ships you carry
Jumpers, coke, sweet Mary Jane

Sugar man, met a false friend
On a lonely dusty road
Lost my heart, when i found it
It had turned to dead black coal

Silver magic ships you carry
Jumpers, coke, sweet Mary Jane

Sugar man, you’re the answer
That makes my questions disappear
Sugar man ’cause i’m weary
Of those double games l hear

Sugar man…sugar man…
Sugar man…sugar man…
Sugar man…sugar man…
Sugar man…

Sugar man, won’t you hurry
cause I’m tired of these scenes
For a blue coin won’t you bring back
All those colors to my dreams.

Silver magic ships you carry
Jumpers, coke, sweet Mary Jane

Sugar man met a false friend
On a lonely dusty road
Lost my heart when i found it
It had turned to dead black coal

Silver magic ships you carry
Jumpers, coke, sweet Mary Jane

Sugar man you’re the answer
That makes my questions disappear

2nd Best, “Waiting for My Man” by Velvet Underground

Bonus:

Paolo Nutini’s acoustic cover of Sugar Man:

You know, even as a kid I always had a strong attraction to Joan Jett. I’m talking as young as 8 years old. Growing up, I always thought I was the exception and not the norm. She’s pretty but she’s not especially curvy, is very pale, has a raspy voice a lot of guys may not find feminine, acts very tomboyish/dykey…yet she always drove me crazy. And not even in spite of those things, but almost because of those things. As an adult I realized a lot of other dudes feel the same way, though many straight women can’t see how a guy could like her because her vibe is so masculine.

I think there’s such a power that comes from androgyny, a power to simultaneously repel and attract. Any philosophers or social critics out there who have really tackled the subject of androgyny through the ages? I’m sure Robert Greene has discussed it in The Art of Seduction, but I’ve yet to read the book.

I love putting these two clips side by side because both performers are known for playing up androgyny and blending male and female archetypes in their presentation. Who comes off more manly? Who’s more feminine? Who makes it work better? I find it interesting and ballsy that Joan Jett doesn’t change the words and refers to herself as male (“I’m a natural man/Doin’ what I can”). Who has a better swagger? Who is the better seducer of the audience?

Judging this as a whole package (music, performance, stage show, presentation of self, emotional connection) rather than just judging on technical song composition and musicianship, who is ultimately more appealing and successful in their interpretation?

More things to consider: how would the context be different if Joan Jett was singing this song backed by a band of women like she was when she was in the Runaways rather than a bunch of guys? Does she ever successfully come off as “one of the guys?” There is, to me, a sense of male bonding that comes off in the Glitter version that I don’t quite feel in the Jett version. Maybe it’s because I’m a guy and she’s pretty, and on some level all guys can never forget a pretty woman is a woman. I feel her band is the same way, there’s is an emotional distance from the band and a way she stands apart from them that makes me think they never forget that fact either. Glitter’s performance however really feels like a group of guys bonding and having a blast. I also wonder how my feelings toward both performances would change if I was a straight woman, gay man, or gay female?

Also, even though I’ve always lusted after Joan Jett and never could forget she was sexy no matter how masculine she acted, it also felt weird and “too girly” to me when I saw her flash the camera in a bikini in this video. For most hot women, it would be awesome, but from her, it just seemed…wrong.

The chorus and the bridge just kill it, one of the best uses of the Bob James “Nautilus” sample ever. Terribly underrated.

Radar Magazine asks “Who Killed The Movie Star?“. It’s an article that ties in pretty well to one I wrote about the newest and most important type of celebrity of the modern era, The Tabloid Star. Radar Magazine points out:

For most of the century…having the right name on the marquee?be it Chaplin, Garbo, Grant, McQueen, Schwarzenegger, or Hanks?has been the most cruc predictor of a film’s success.

No longer. The past year has seen more falling stars than the skies above Roswell. Since 2007, with the notable exception of Will Smith, whose upcoming tent-pole flick Hancock is enjoying some of the best prerelease buzz of any summer film, virtually every star of note has tanked at the box office, sending a collective shiver down the industry’s spine. Tom Cruise, Adam Sandler, Jim Carrey, Reese Witherspoon, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Ben Stiller, and Will Ferrell have all starred in movies that made less than $40 million domestically, far from the magic number?$100 million?that’s become the standard measure of a successful release. Outside of their tried-and-true franchises, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Cameron Diaz, and Johnny Depp have fared little better, topping out, in some cases, at less than $70 million. Same thing for the presumably unbeatable duo of Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, whose widely praised political romp, Charlie Wilson’s War, took in a scant $66 million.

In 1995, Jim Carrey was paid $20 million for The Cable Guy. For his next comedy, Yes Man, he’s receiving nothing up-front and shares in the profits only if there are any (Photo: Getty Images)

“We’re in a cycle where stars aren’t as important to a film’s success as they used to be,” says Variety editor in chief Peter Bart, echoing a May cover story in the Hollywood Reporter. Between 1990 and 2000, roughly two-thirds of the top 10 grossing films each year could chalk up their success to star power; since 2001, that number has declined by more than half. “There was a period of time when studio marketing departments could count on just hiring a movie star to open a movie,” says producer Lynda Obst?casting, for example, Arnold Schwarzenegger in the absurd Kindergarten Cop, and Julia Roberts in the aggressively mediocre Runaway Bride. “It’s not so easy anymore,” she adds.

Accordingly, movie star paychecks aren’t what they used to be. In 1995, the rubber-faced Jim Carrey was the first actor to be awarded a $20 million contract?for the ill-fated Cable Guy. (Soon after, Sandler, Smith, Cruise, Schwarzenegger, Willis, and others were commanding the same price.) At the time that Columbia Pictures made him the offer, the funnyman had never had a flop. Since then, he’s had plenty. As a result, Warner Bros. just financed his next comedy, Yes Man, with a very different sort of deal: Carrey will receive zippo up front, but is entitled to 36.2 percent of the movie’s profits … should any materialize.

Face it: The movie star as we’ve come to know him?an actor who can reliably put butts in seats on opening weekend?is dead.

Then the article goes into reasons why this may be the case. Culprit #1? The tabloids:

THEY’RE JUST LIKE US! So why would we pay $11.50 to watch them?

Call it death by a thousand crotch shots. The incredible success of the weekly tabs, an innovation credited to Bonnie Fuller, the former Us Weekly editrix (who went on to bring her dark magic to Star before stepping down in May), has reduced the movie star to someone who’s “just like us!” And if they are mere mortals?as we’re forever being reminded, one Starbucks run at a time?who needs them? By chronicling an actor’s every bad hair day, sartorial screwup, and debased love life, the tabs?joined by TMZ with its nightly curbside ambushes and Perez with his doodled penises?have ripped the veneer of glamour from one matinee idol after another, exposing the sad, unbalanced, attention-starved creatures underneath. As a result, we’ve adopted what Hollywood historian David Thomson calls “a bitter, acidic, vengeful attitude toward the stars.”

To see the carnage Fuller has wrought, look no further than former box-office golden boy?now perpetual superfreak?Tom Cruise. Or recall the horrifying fate of the original Bennifer, Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, who were poised to become Hollywood royalty and instead watched helplessly as their careers were shredded by the tabloids (granted, the couple all but invited the harpies into their bedroom, but still). In 2001, the year before they began dating, Lopez was the first star ever to have the country’s No. 1 album (J.Lo) and top-grossing film (The Wedding Planner) simultaneously. That same year, Affleck starred in the blockbuster Pearl Harbor, which grossed a gargantuan $198 million. In 2002, the duo hooked up and proceeded to hijack the media, flaunting their relationship in music videos, magazines, and a prime-time television special. After their breakup in 2004, blamed on “media scrutiny,” both went into virtual hiding for years. Now he’s bleeping Jimmy Kimmel, and she’s bleeping Marc Anthony. Ouch.

Like I said in my blog post, using tabloids to gain exposure seems to increase your fame and buzz, but actually destroys your primary career. It makes you too relatable to the masses thereby taking away much of your mystique. We all know how flawed many of our past matinee idols were, but we usually found out long after it mattered posthumously. At the time we didn’t know Marilyn Monroe’s demons, were unaware of Rock Hudson’s sexuality, were clueless about Joan Crawford’s child raising techniques, were oblivious to JFK’s affairs and Elvis’s drug habits, and Jayne Kennedy’s sex tape wasn’t readily available for purchase by the masses. Their handlers guarded their secrets religiously.

And this level of insight into celebrity lives leads into the other reason tabloid exposure hurts the stars: the lurid details of their real lives form narratives become more compelling than the fake narratives they create onscreen. The details of Lindsey Lohan’s train wreck of a life, along with the cast of outrageous characters that come along with it like her parents and sister and lovers, are much more interesting and fascinating than any of the characters or storylines I’ve seen described for her recent movies. When the truth becomes more fascinating than fiction, people will choose the truth. Compare this to old newsreels of past matinee idols where they strove to create the illusion of a glamorous but relatively bland drama-free personal life that paled in comparison to the roles they played on the screen. Why pay $11.50 to see a celebrity act out a fake story when you can keep track of their real life stories that are a lot more salacious, fast-paced and outrageous for a fraction of the price? The movie roles almost seem to be a distraction to audiences from the more compelling drama that is the actor’s real life shenanigans.
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Remember when I linked to this video of Madonna emasculating her husband?

Now it turns out they may be getting divorced. No surprise there.
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I also declared that the Pete Wentz/Ashlee Simpson pregnancy may be the highest concentration of douche genes ever seen in a single human being, a long-awaited (dreaded?) messiah of douchedom even. This latest public statement by Pete Wentz just confirms my worst fears:

Dad-to-be Pete Wentz has a confession: He’s made out with dudes.

He tells Out magazine he first smooched a guy when he was 16 or 17, probably on a dare.

He experimented again around 18 and 19, he says.

His last same-sex make out?

“A long time ago,” Wentz, 29, says. “Probably when I was 22?”

The Fall Out Boy bassist ? who wed Ashlee Simpson in May ? puts all his experimenting in perspective.

“When I said that I make out with dudes, there was a slight sense of sexual rebellion in that,” he tells Out. “And I probably even made it a bigger deal than it was.”

Lordy, has edginess ever come off as more forced and contrived? Do people really still get impressed with stuff like this at this point?

What’s he doing in this picture? Is that supposed to be a sneer or something? I remember when punks and alt-rockers actually used to be fuck ups. I mean, real-deal fuck ups. Not normal, suburban whitebread clean cut kids trying hard to seem fucked up and edgy in order to emulate their punk heroes from decades past. The traditional symbols of rebellion from bisexuality to tattoos to piercings have been so co-opted and resold that no one even takes them seriously as symbols of rebellion anymore. Even asexual hipster geeks now have more sleeve tattoos than heroin and meth-addicted z-list metal road bands, but instead of the tattoo making them look edgy they just end up sucking the cool out of the tattoo. With every new tattooed and pierced Pete Wentz and Joel Madden that hits the big time, the more douchey that old punk aesthetic becomes. No amount of tattoos and piercings and spikey hair will ever erase this level of lame geekiness:

Remember that old Sesame Street sketch “One of these things is not like the other?” Read I Need More, the autobiography of Iggy Pop or the book Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (An Evergreen book) by Legs McNeil and then watch that clip again and tell me which one it is.

I’ve become convinced that the most edgy, daring and rebellious show of the past decade was actually 7th Heaven, because it was probably the only one that was willing to go against the mainstream grain and didn’t care how much criticism and backlash it got from the masses. People think it was mainstream because it was uncynical and focused on family values and religion and morality. But mainstream simply means what the majority finds socially acceptable, and nowadays with the widespread pornification of pop culture, the majority of entertainment celebrating piercings, the pornstar aesthetic, debauchery, binge drinking, promiscuous women and tattoos the idea of a repressive society is now a myth, if anything our current problem is that our society is too permissive. It’s probably the most daring thing that will ever grace Jessica Biel’s acting resume.

If being punk rock is about going against the grain and doing stuff that actually shocks and outrages people, I think Charlton Heston with his unabashedly pro-gun and outspoken conservative views as a member of the ultraliberal entertainment community and the scorn it won him probably made him one of the most punk rock celebrity in recent years. I’m sure he’s garnered more scorn, shock and outrage from the mainstream than Good Charlotte, Green Day and Fall Out Boy combined. Madonna doing another statement against Christianity and sexual prudes? *Yawn* Brigitte Bardot bashing Muslims and multiculturalism? That’s “punk.” Kirk Cameron suddenly becoming a born-again christian at the height of his fame is way more “punk” than Wentz and his homo makeout sessions.

Now my problem isn’t that I think that clean-cut goody-goody geeks don’t have a right to make rock music. I’m all for it. But don’t go around trying to portray yourself as this gritty, edgy bad boy because you aren’t fooling anyone worth fooling. Be yourself. Live what you know. It’s one of those things I always liked about Will Smith, even when his music wasn’t my cup of tea. The guy was ridiculously comfortable in his own skin and never tried to be anything he wasn’t. He did wholesome rap ditties about high school, the suburbs, his parents and trying to meet girls. And this is during the height of West Coast gangster rap and East Coast afrocentric rap when everyone thought you had to be either a stone cold gangster or a black revolutionary to have any validity in hip-hop. And people embraced him for being true to himself and he spun that sincerity off into one of the most illustrious Hollywood careers ever. It’s probably why he’s one of the few A-list actors left that can make a move huge just by attaching his name to it. It’s a beautiful thing to behold.

Recommended Reading:

As I mentioned before, I went to see the Cool Kids last week. And it was really the first time where, at 33 years old, I actually felt old for a bit.

I got into the Cool Kids from music blogs and their Myspace page, and once they got that Rhapsody commercial I knew I had to act fast and see them before they blew up and their shows got huge and impersonal. I’m big into catching acts before they get too big, because otherwise their shows become pricy and bloated and are never quite as good again.

So we show up to Studio B in Brooklyn and I’m shocked at how young the crowd looks. The show is 18 and older. We get those wristbands that mark us as 21 and over but a decent amount of the crowd is wristband-free. As we’re on line my boy Grip talks about seeing Rakim recently. The little young white girls behind us on line are increasingly leaning into our conversation in quiet awe and trying to hear the conversation. They talk to each other (a little too loudly) about how much they know about rap, an obvious ploy to impress with cred. I started talking about a Nice and Smooth show I saw recently, and how I saw them before 18 years ago. Then these white girls come up again and seem to really be trying to impress us with their hip-hop knowledge. They looked so young and hipsterish that it really caught me off guard that they’d be so into 80s hip-hop rather than Fall Out Boy. That’s when I realized that the hip-hop I grew up with is to today’s hipsters what late ’70s New York punk was to them in 2001: a long gone golden era of creativity that they mostly missed out on the first time and want to research obsessively and recreate today.

I checked out the rest of the line and saw all these young hipsters wearing fat gold ropes, baggy acid wash jeans, leather bombers, and Yo MTV Raps! shirts. These kids had to be 5 years old or younger when this stuff was out the first time, yet the astounding thing was how accurate the outfits were. One thing about retro movements is that they try to dress in an old style, but it ends up being filtered through modern fashion sensibility. For example when the electroclash movement was big a few years back, it looked more like a parody of new wave fashion than an authentic recreation. Or when you see a modern movie that’s supposed to flash back to the 80s, but the track suits and shorts are being worn baggy the way we’d wear them today rather than outrageously tight and borderline homoerotic like they used to be worn back then? Same goes for modern movies set in the 70s. Actors only go so far, but don’t go all out for fear of being embarassed, so they have a big collar and some bellbottoms, but shy away from the truly garish and ugly fashion insanity that dominated the era.

But these kids had none of these issues.  They really committed to being accurate.  They nailed the correct fit, and they didn’t overdo it by trying to reference to many retro trends in a single outfit.  It really impressed me.

Pickup artists have one of the best definition for charisma that I think I’ve ever heard: Charisma is the ability to suck other people into your reality. People enter into every interaction with a frame: for example a dominant frame, a submissive frame, a negative frame, a positive frame, whatever. Every interaction between two people is a collision of frames. What happens when the two frames collide determines the dynamic between the two people.

For example, when an aggressively hostile frame meets a submissive and meek frame, the dynamic is dominance or outright bullying. Another way to dominate without resorting to outright bullying is to have a confident, yet larger than life frame that attracts people and sucks them into your reality. This dynamic is charisma.

If you actively and overtly try too hard to actively drag people into your reality, you’ll drive them away because you’re being too pushy or come off desperate or insecure. People who want to be charismatic but keep failing often can’t tell the difference between sucking people into their reality by being appealing and interesting and imposing their reality on people by being loud, bragadocious and eager to impress. The frame needed for charisma is like the movie Field of Dreams: if you build it right, people will come on their own, almost unconsciously and against their will. It’s the difference between “Hey, I’m acting crazy and over-the-top because I think it will impress you and I want you to like me” and “Hey, I’m acting crazy and over-the-top because that’s unapologetically who I am and what I enjoy. I’m just bringing you along for the ride, if you want to come. If not, no skin off my back.”

Some people use charm and charisma interchangeably, but they aren’t the same thing. Charm is when you try to get people to like you. When you have charisma, though, people try to get you to like them. Charm is an external set of behaviors calculated to impress people. Charisma is an internalized way of being that naturally makes people want to impress you.

Using rap as an example, this is one reason why I think in the hip-hop world Nas was always inferior overall as a public persona to Jay-Z, regardless of what you may think of their individual talents.