Shoot up or shut up...........

........is a line from a Dead Milkmen song called "Junkie". Cuz that's what we're gonna talk about for a minute.

So everyone is a youtube junkie. Everyone. But you gotta understand there are categories, subgenres of addiction. Not everyone is shootin' heroin, ya feel me, some people go down the K-hole. It's the same with youtube, there's a lot of heavy hands in the alley. Some people are "drunk interview" junkies, always chasing the dragon of Iggy and James Brown. Some people get their fix with offensive bugs bunny cartoons from WWII. Others are "after school fight" junkies, and hey, I don't judge them. Sure, they're the $5 monkey-nut rock smokers of the analogy, but at least they're not the paint sniffers, a.k.a. "baby laugh" junkies.

Me? I'm a junkie for a lot of things on youtube. Japanese punk videos, cheesy trailers from 70's movies that will never have a DVD release date, Charlie Rose episodes, indecipherable Russian animation that just seems anti-american but who knows. I got a lot on my plate. Or heated spoon.

But one addiction sits apart from the rest, if only because it's kind of a holy grail and requires a lot more hard work to find than the others. You can't just type this one into the search tab. I'm talkin' about low quality youtube videos of live performances, so unintentionally full of white noise and muffled bass that it actually makes the song and performance kinda hypnotic. Case in point......this 1984 Tipper Irie performance on some TV show. That bass tone rumble is not in the original track, trust me. There's a bonus here though. The clip also highlights what me and my brother Lowkey like to call the "one person on stage effect". It's a formula destined to make everyone in the room uncomfortable. You just can't look cool on stage by yourself, no matter what genre of music you make, save maybe singer/songwriter or some other stool-and-water setup that allows you to use your massive ego as a hypeman.





This video brings up another interesting idea too, though. Maybe..........and this a big ass maybe...........the distortion on the low sound quality on Jamaican/British TV during these live reggae performances influenced the whole scene to start producing genuinely bassed-the-fuck-out tracks like the Sleng Teng riddim, probably best used by Tenor Saw with "Pumpkin Belly". I know this totally irrelevant 80's dancehall muscle flex will impress exactly one person, hopefully a sexy thick ethiopian rasta queen with dreadlocks thicker than my calf that smell like super silver haze weed and can make you see the future of babylon's fall if you hold 'em just right.

Anyway.............

I'm also a junkie for horrible youtube covers by white kids with guitars. This one is not horrible. But still very white. It takes a special kinda mayonaisse-and-cheddar talent to make James Mercer and The Shins even whiter than they already are, but I think a combination of ingrown blonde roots and 15 centuries of anglo-protestant history somehow bred a chick who can sing "Young Pilgrims" with a country twinge and make it worth hearing twice.




How about........something great just for the fuck of it? Ok. You got it, friends (sorry, watched too many McCain speeches these last months).

Bobbie Smith- Walk On Into My Heart (click)


And last but not least..............a rare and rarely heard 1980 audio interview from the man who influenced every rock critic in the last 30 years who ever wrote a review even Tom Robbins couldn't understand, much less the band who made the goddamn album..............yeah, it's Lester Bangs. Think Philip Seymour Hoffman in Almost Famous. That guy. This is his real voice. Here he talks about the evils of the music industry, why the Rolling Stones should retire (remember, this is 1980) and the newfound "hipness" of New Wave/Punk.

Part 1

Part 2



Speaker Madness Blog Question of the Day:

What kind of "Youtube junkie" are you?