Swizz In Space
BX goes Britpop, just as the scrolls foretold...
In Boston for the weekend.
Not to rob Fenway, or engage in deep cover investigation of organized crime that forces all involved to grapple with existential concepts of identity and self-knowledge.
I lost my leg!
JK, just here for my cousin’s wedding (where the band played it into “Dirty Water,” of course).
I used to be up here regularly this time of year, courtesy (nerd alert) a high school speech and debate tournament held at Harvard every February.
That is a whole separate post. BUT!
I am here RN and can somehow smell the millennium.
Part of it is just Boston pretending to be a modern city (sorry). But you can imagine why four years of marginally supervised co-ed field trips would imprint a time period on an area so indelibly.
Siri, play Cassidy “Hotel!”
(It’s ok, we’re time traveling and Kelz wasn’t cancelled yet. Although everyone really, really should have known better…)
Cassidy!
The flagship artist of Swizz Beatz’ erstwhile Full Surface label, home to the collected works of Yung Wun and more than a few 90-105bpm bangers you can revisit whenever there is a live DJ at Applebees (non-derogatory).
Before he was known primarily as an art collector / camel racing entrepreneur, Swizz tossed off good-to-great club cuts with astonishing regularity.
Before THAT, he was the legit groundbreaking and divisive figure behind digi rap anthems like this Casio-descending-a-staircase triumph.
Vol 2 and its jiggy neighbors in the Case Logic binder would soundtrack our annual Amtrak ride.
Concurrently, this was also peak Britpop; pulling into South Station meant Au Bon Pain apple thingies and a fresh issue of Select from Hudson News.
In those pre-internet, HMV listening station times, it was fun to flip pages and wonder: WHAT DO THE BOO RADLEYS SOUND LIKE?!?
Occasionally a band would jump from back cover ads into domestic rotation, like the deeply SEO-unfriendly Liverpool trio Space, whose “Female Of The Species” is among a handful of quirked-out, retro-leaning “ya had to be there” cuts that entered mainstream consciousness at the tail end of the last century.
Shout to Edwyn Collins, Cake, and “How Bizarre” (RIP OMC).
Fast forward a decade-plus later.
Blog era, baby!
Which sounds cooler than it actually was. For all the new weirdos who may have found their way into your Top 8, radio remained profoundly Fergie’d out, and the Akon epidemic had yet to be contained.
So you can imagine how loudly my head exploded when Swizz and my close personal friend Lil Wayne dropped their Space-sampling “Up In This Club” into this wasteland as an uncleared loosie.
How bizarre indeed…
Was our boy up watching Austin Powers one night until inspiration shouted yeahhhhh baby?
SB’s most LOL sample remains Coldplay jack “That Oprah,” and the weirdest Wayne flip is still that time Ringo showed up on Drought Is Over 2. But “Up In This Club” retains a kind of brain-damaged, auto-tuned je ne sais quoi to this day.
And that’s even before we get to the 2 Live Crew scratches!
No deeper point here besides I love all this dumb old stuff.
It’s goofy to live in the past. But every now and then it’s nice to graze the tail of that inherently uncatchable dragon.
Would be even nicer to still metabolize room service chicken fingers…
Beggars can’t be choosers!
If you are able to find joy anywhere on a burning planet — fingies or otherwise — please grab it, love it, and share it.
John Flansburgh Wisdom — I feel fortunate to exist on the same timeline as They Might Be Giants, even more so while reading the tall one break down their history so candidly.
Riff Raff, CHERRY CHUPACABRA (Chopped Not Slopped) — “your mileage may vary” should be the bio of this page, but if CHOPPED N SCREWED RIFF RAFF ALBUM holds literally any appeal for you… this is much better than it needs to be!
Sally Hastings Art — a woman on Instagram paints scenes from Jurassic Park, except all the dinosaurs are replaced by their gummy counterparts. Give her a Kennedy Center honor ASAP.
Trevor Spitta, “Where U Been?” — don’t know much about this fella but respect to rocking Tommy glasses with the sticker on and that haircut.
The History Of Tax Scam Albums — cratediggers meet Hesh from The Sopranos.
Halina Reijn x Spike Jonze — Babygirl… it does a body good!
Playlists updated…