And The Nominees Are: Best Video of The Year

Continuing on with The Soul Kitchen End of Year Awards, or as they've now been dubbed, 'The Soulies', we've reached the nominees for Best Video of The Year award. Sadly we live in an age where the  art of the music video is often neglected by many artists in exchange for tasteless advertising (Cough Lady Gaga Cough) or mundane live performance montages. Or, at the very worst, slut and jock ridden house parties.

Thankfully though, there are still some artists who hold dear the integrity of the music video and give us reason to tune into one of MTV's endless stream of sub genre channels. And here we were thinking the Followills chasing children around in 'Radioactive' had killed the music video forever.

Anyway, the nominees . . .

The Black Keys - Lonely Boy

There may not be a cooler duo in rock 'n' roll right now than The Black Keys. Want proof? Rather than sit on their hands after the success of last year's barnstorming Brothers, Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney rock up at the 11th hour in December , just when every music writer and their mother is compiling their annual awards lists, and drop El Camino on us all. On top of that, they go ahead and deliver lead single 'Lonely Boy' accompanied by a video of the greatest dance routine since Fatboy Slim's 'Praise You'. Oh, and the vinyl release of the song plays from the inside out.

The Beastie Boys - Make Some Noise
From the above referenced, ground breaking 'Fight For Your Right' video, through cop show parody in 'Sabotage', Japanese Kaiju in 'Intergalactic' and Star Trek in 'Ch-Check It Out', The Beasties have always been top of the food chain when it comes to music videos. It's no surprise given they came along slap bang in the middle of the MTV boom in the mid to late 80's. Now, we see Ad-Rock, MCA and Mike D coming full circle in a video that has been dubbed 'Fight For Your Right. . . Revisited'. The above video is in fact five minutes of a half hour mini-epic, and so the big guns had to well and truly be brought out. Step forward Seth Rogen, Elijah Wood, Danny 'Kenny Fuckin Powers' McBride, Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Jack Black, Ted fucking Danson, Steve Buscemi and a glorious cameo from Will Arnett, channelling his inner Gob Bluth. COME ON!!!

Arctic Monkeys - Suck It and See

Luckily for the Arctics, despite the fact that both their music and live performances have stuttered to a simmer rather than the boiling hot to bubbling over days of 2006-2007, they still know how to turn a simple music video into an unmissable mini-movie. And, as Matt Helders leather pants prove, they've not lost their sense of humour either.

The Go! Team - T.O.R.N.A.D.O
Featured on our Jukebox a few weeks back, we described this tune as BOMBASTIC and well, it's got a BOMBASTIC video to match. Think The Avalanches meeting Daft Punk in the mind of an A.D.D sufferer in the 80's and you're sort of close to where this video is coming from.

DC Fontana - Abbesses

The Kingdom of Mercia's finest Mod octuplets are firm believers in 'Art and Soul' and nowhere is this more evident than in their series of promotional films. Taken from latest album La Contessa, the instrumental 'Abbesses' may not showcase lead singer Karla Milton's phenomenal singing talents, but it does showcase how well she and leading Parisian burlesque dancer Mimi De Montmarte can fill out a pair of catsuits while Kung Fu'ing everyone in their path. C'est fantastique.

Tomorrow we unveil the nominees for Newcomer of The Year and Film of The Year. Keep 'em peeled.

Until then,

Keep on Keepin' on,

Baia

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From The Vinyl Vault: Licensed To Ill

From The Vinyl Vault

Album: Licensed To Ill

Artist: The Beastie Boys

Original Release: November 1986

Label: Def Jam

Before shit jewellery, shit cars with shit spinning rims, shit collaborations with even shitter flavour of the month pop stars, Krunk, Pimp Juice and Snoop Dogg dressing up like Willy Wonka for a Katy Perry video, there was hip hop. More importantly, there was The Beastie Boys.

During the mid-1980’s, American guitar music was drowning in a sea of hairspray and acid wash denim. Fortunately the streets of Harlem, Brooklyn and Queens had the cure to this horrific overdose of Axl Rose and Bon Jovi. 

Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, Kurtis Blow and Run DMC took funk loops, drum machines and flawless MC’ing and brought about the most exciting musical revolution since punk fucked up the rulebook in the mid 70’s.

Ironically, it would be the punk revolution that inspired Mike D, MCA and Ad-Rock (there’s no need for real names is there?) to become The Beastie Boys, after MCA attended a Black Flag gig at the Peppermint Lounge in March, 1981. It would be two years and an appearance on punk compilation New York Thrash later that The Beasties finally incorporated rap into their act with the recording of ‘Cooky Puss’.

Fast forward another three years and The Beasties had aligned themselves with Def Jam co-founder and producer extraordinaire Rick Rubin and were in the studio creating their immature masterpiece.

From the opening hollers of “Because Mutiny on the bounty’s what we’re all about” on ‘Rhymin and Stealin’ you’re transported away from Adidas shell toes and basketball to Lydonesque chanting over Sabbath’s ‘Sweet Leaf’ and Zeppelin’s ‘When The Levee Breaks’. Then, if that wasn’t enough, The Beasties break down into a chant of “Ali Baba and the forty thieves!” It’s as if three nerdy white kids decided to record a punk album in a White Castle burger bar. Actually, that’s not that far removed from what actually happened.

From the now legendary MTV classics of ‘Fight For Your Right (To Party)’ and ‘No Sleep Til Brooklyn’ (which features Slayer’s Kerry King on guitar, no less) to the inane ramblings of ‘Brass Monkey’ (“Brass Monkey/ That funky monkey/Brass Monkey junkie/ That funky monkey”) and ‘Girls’, the most endearing quality of this glorious nonsense is how innocent it all is. 

 

There’s no status in The Beastie Boys music. No rep to protect or enemies to threaten. No bragging necessary. Licensed To Ill is the most unashamedly fun record you’re ever likely to hear. The lyrics are hardly air tight, in fact, a lot of the time they can be downright bollocks, but that’s what makes Licensed  . . . such an essential piece of work.

This is an album that on paper, should not work. It’s three scrawny white boys making black music by blending it with punk and heavy metal. They spend the entire 44 minutes and 33 seconds of the album rapping about girls, cartoons, pirates and getting hammered. 

Yet, it’s such an unapologetically refreshing blast of surrealism that it works outstandingly well. Rolling Stone put it best in their review of the album with the headline “Three Idiots Make a Masterpiece”. And that’s just what The Beasties were, and still are, in the greatest sense of the word, idiots. Not smack peddling gang members done good, but idiots with an ear for a tune and the confidence to do whatever the fuck they want.

Licensed To Ill became an overnight phenomenon. It was the first hip hop LP to hit the number one spot on the Billboard 200 chart and is still Columbia Records best-selling debut to date, with sales of nine million and counting. Not to mention being the only album by a white hip hop act to earn The Source’s coveted Five Mics rating.

In the modern world of soulless, “I’m worth more than you” rap music, Licensed To Ill is a striking testament to how important an art form hip hop can be when done properly. As Melody Maker so perfectly summed up Licensed . . . upon it’s release, “It’s an unshakably glorious celebration of being alive.”

Until next time,

Keep on Keepin’ on,

Baia

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