already been chewed

my favorite TV show, based on what I watch the most regularly, would have to be World News Now. It's a lightweight news magazine that airs on ABC from like 1:55 to 4:00 in the morning, in between the rerun of the local nightly news and the similarly titled World News This Morning. It runs for a little less than an hour and repeats two-and-a-half times. The only thing I can really say in its favor is that wacky banter and entertainment news makes up less than ten per cent of each broadcast and that the newscasters or veejays or whatever the fuck you're supposed to call them don't give a fuck if I know who tthey are. For all I know they switch the smiling guy and ethnic girl every week and send the old ones back to the mailroom. Whoever they're using, they're familiar, can easily be placed in the background, and are far less unpleasant than the locals.

They just had some music industry dick with a sandblasted face and a Pat Riley haircut talking about the new acts to look for.

I hate when magazines like Rolling Stone and Spin do shit like this and I hate when TV stations do it. It's really easy to predict which 'underground' acts are going to make it when you're already privvy to who the labels have decided they're going to pour money into, and when you only need one or two of the artists to actually make it to pat yourself on the back a year later.

So they've got this man, who looks a little like a lizard who's got it in with the Brooks Brothers and he's talking about Matisyahu (who's already got songs on mainstream radio) and he says

It's all about the forelocks, not the dreadlocks with this guy

and for some reason that pisses me off. I think because it's a catchphrase, a catchphrase that no one would actually use. Not only that, but it's a catchphrase that was just a little too clever for this reptile. Some executive ordered it up and told him to say it. Obviously.

There's also something a little sinister about it, like finally, reggae without all those Jamaicans!

I'm fine with Matisyahu being a novelty act; he does some good shit and if novelty is the only way people are gonna hear it, that's fine. My sister was playing the cd for my Dad today. He hates reggae but he loves giving Jewish musicians a chance (as opposed to, you know, liking reggae while not being that fond of black people). He couldn't jive with his fellow Tribesman though, pondering for a second and saying, "you know, if Bob Marley had a couple of rockandroll Latinos, maybe a guitarist and a timbale player from Santana's band, I probably could've dug his music."

I was reading one of the Rolling Stone's my dad keeps around the can. Another music industry dick was talking about Matisyahu:

and Matisyahu's got some real reggae credibility, we're not talking about Snow, here!

That's another thing that sounds clever and in-the-know when some asshole tells some other asshole about it, but anybody who listened to Snow's album (the admittedly terribly-titled "12 Inches of Snow"), they would see that Snow wasn't just faking it. Snow came off as Vanilla Ice ..2, but he wasn't. His music hasn't aged well but he was serious about his reggae, working with cats like Ninjaman and Junior Reid. The reason he was dismissed so quickly is that half his album was much reggaer than his single "Informer" and half his album was poppier (think K7 and the Swing Kids).

Nevertheless, here are things I like about Matisyahu, that have nothing to do with music:

1. He's got a beard that no one else but Will Oldham or ZZ Top would leave the house with.
2. Because of his extreme, adopted orthodoxy, he has taken concessions that guarantee a poorer performance, i.e. refusing to do shows on Friday nights, not stagediving out of fear that he might come in contact with a woman he's unrelated to, not signing women's autographs for the same reason.
3. He's obviously not in anybody's pocket
4. His upcoming album with Bill Laswell will either develop his guitar heavy rasta sound or deepen the dub elements (though really, I think he should be working with someone like Manu Chao who could get some interesting shit out of his vocals)
5. Any Jewish-identified rap that can be taken seriously as real hiphop is a step up from Hip Hop Hoodios, Blood of Abraham, Remedy and the goofball JewBu dreck the Beastie Boys put out on 11/12ths of their last few albums.

still, he's not the best

I've been on a serious white-guilt, racial aggression trip lately, but it seems kinda suspect to me that Matisyahu is becoming a staple with the khakis-and-sandals crowds at dorms everywhere (see: Dave Mathews, Jack Johnson, and John Mayer, who isn't entirely terrible). For years, the familiar sounds of Bob Marley's Legend album have plagued quads and residence halls across the country. It's become nothing less than cliche but until now, no reggae crooners have come along to carry the torch.

No classics like Toots & the Maytals, the Wailers, Desmond Dekkers, Lee Perrys, or Peter Toshes. No 2-tones or third wavers like the Specials or the Skatalites. No crooners like Barrington Levy or Max Romeo. No scatmasters like Eek-A-Mouse or dubmasters like Lee "Scratch" Perry and Sly & Robbie.. No rap hybrids like Beenie Man, Just I.C.E. or Mad Lion. No dirty motherfuckers like Yellowman. No Pato Bantons or Mad Professors or Buju Bantons, most-if-not-all of them, better than Matisyahu and at least as good as Legend.

I want to decry the racial element, the inherent country clubbiness of the Greek System, but I've been doing that a lot these days and I don't want to be a one-trick pony. It's not most frat boys fault that they like reggae but have never heard it. Perhaps, it is just that none of these artists were lucky enough to have a record exec box them into a neat little phrase.

But please, please, don't call that forelocks