IDFC 8.1.1

 Forgot to put this up, like some kind of chump. I've started the dispiriting process of picking apart Picard.

D CDs #469: Scoring The Score

Spacesquid's "White Boy Rap-Noodling Corner" returns. Sorry.

The Score was fucking everywhere in '96. In the UK at least, though, it'd be fairer to say "Killing Me Softly With His Song" was fucking everywhere. "Fu-Gee-La" had done decent numbers, and "Ready Or Not" would be the Fugees' second UK number 1, but "Killing Me Softly..." was just inescapable.

In many ways, it seemed an odd advert for the album. I mean, it clearly worked; the song was never released separately in the US, meaning people had to buy the album entire if they wanted to buy it. That's a move even Billy Corgan might label as overly arrogant, but the platter want platinum seven times over there, so: point proved.

But the stripped back, almost barren arrangement of a straight-up cover (they'd wanted to take more liberties with the source material, and end up doing so on the album, but technically they only had the rights to a cover version) are a world away from the fast beats and faster wordplay of the broader work. It's really just - "just" - a showcase for Lauryn Hill's phenomenal voice, Jean's occasionally interjections feeling less like actual contributions, and more like a naughty brother objecting to big sister's song getting her all the attention.

Which of course means the single is actually a perfect ad for the album: Hill will dominate, Jean will try to keep up, and Pras will be smart enough to mostly just stay out of the way.

One of the most illuminating comments on the making of The Score comes from producer Jerry "Wonder" Duplessi, who told Complex that: 

If I remember correctly, that song was the last record we did. Everybody was rapping,  rapping, rap, rap, rap. And we’re like. “Hold up, man, we have to have a song on this shit.".

The big joke here is that there are two songs on the album. Either Duplessi didn't really think Jean's "No Woman, No Cry" rewrite really counted as such (though it certainly isn't a rap), or - the funnier option - Jean insisted on getting his own song after Lauren recorded hers, and Duplessi simply completely forgot that this was a thing that had happened.

Not that Jean disgraces himself here. The first side of The Score ranks among some of the best rap I've come across in this project so far, and Hill isn't the only reason why. Ambitiously dense rhyme schemes, a constant flow of references that are clever, funny, and expansive, and all in the pursuit of making its point, it'd all feel like showing off if they weren't making it seem so easy. Lyrically, the album is less distant from the prevailing hip-hop concerns of the time than others have made out. The Haitian seasoning here is certainly tasty, but ultimately we're still presented with stories of surely fictitious felonies and extended treaties on how every other rapper in existence sucks in comparison to the ones currently holding the mics.

But then, you can't master a form if you're not going to work within it. And masterful seems the term here. Hell, the record does more with Hill's laugh than most can manage with anyone's voice. True, the momentum doesn't quite keep up - holding the two ballads for the back half helps hide the fact that the trio were running out of steam after the headlong charge through to the end of "Fu-Gee-La" (though Hill never really stops shining). At its best, though - and The Score is frequently, effortlessly at its best - it's hard to imagine how anyone could do this better. 

Except it turned out that Hill could.

Eight tentacles.

Friday Talisman: The Southest Paw

It's the guy who never skips the first half of arm day: The Possessed. 

Look at him! He's furious! His absurdly swollen limb has torn right through his regulation Naughty Cultist (Generic) robe. It gets chilly down in the damp cave where they perform their brazen rites to Nghtha-Ky'Badan, and his goosebumps are now the size of blood oranges.

Plus, female fiddler crabs keep giving him the wink, and that's just not right.

Friday Dreadfleet: Iron And Ale

Halfway through the big ships, lads! Grimnir's Thunder, reporting for cannonades and chunder.

I love the tiny little sub that's come along. He just wants to feel included. 

Also painted: free bonus blimp, because if you're going to drink until you're sick, you might as well try to hit a few seagulls with your toxic vomit.

A More Final Frontier

Happy New Year, everybody. I'm delighted to announce that IDFC is back on its bullshit. I'm going to be covering the first seasons of Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, Prodigy, and Strange New Worlds over the next (sigh) six years. We kicked off yesterday with "The Vulcan Hello": check it out!

No Apologies For The Infinite Radness 1.3.4 - "Walk Idiot Walk" (The Hives)

The joke is that the Hives only ever write one song. They've had some fun with this accusation in the past - Howlin' Pelle Almqvist once told Rolling Stone that the band was like a school of sharks. "Sharks have been the same for billions of years, and they still rule. You have no need for development if you're a shark".

This is both true and funny, but the truth is the original charge never quite stuck in the first place. The Hives certainly have a very simple template, but - as with the various two-tone suits they've sported over the years - there's plenty you can do within simplicity. Sonically they've - well, not matured, obviously, but they've shifted, from snotty garage punk to snotty pop-flecked rock. In terms of their lyrics, meanwhile, it's true that basically every good Hives song is about how they are smart, and someone else is an idiot.

But it matters who the idiot is.

In this case, the Hives set their sights on teachers and politicians, making the case that they're both ultimately the same job - people pretending they want to help, but really just want private fiefdoms where they can talk at people unable to talk back.

I don't know why I decided to be a teacher. I despised much of my time in secondary school, and indeed suffered what could fairly be called a nervous breakdown at age twelve because my maths teacher at the time was so relentlessly unpleasant to me (and everyone else in the class) that I simply couldn't handle it. I've had a lifelong phobia of electronic alarms because I would lie awake every morning, terrified of when the sound would begin and I'd have to get up for school.

Maybe I just wanted to better than her. More likely, I just have a marrow-deep need to break things apart in front of people to show them how they work, and an equally ingrained need to not use my hands. What else was I going to end up doing but teaching a theoretical subject?

"Walk Idiot Walk" came out in the final days of my NQT year (for the uninitiated, this is the year after you finish your training, where you basically find out if you have any chance of being able to do the job long-term). I'd just decided to give the job at least one more year, a few months before the words "at least" got deleted from the plan.

I'm not saying this song influenced that decision, but it was a timely reminder of whose shoulders I was rubbing against. "I'm one of the good ones" isn't just an excuse for remaining a cop. The education system prefers to do its damage over a much longer period, chronic afflictions rather than discrete incidents of assault and murder, but a lot of people still come out the other end at least as injured as they were informed.

And for what? Online lyrics sheets be damned, the line here is "Still you never learn nothing, and nothing is enough". Your school teaches you nothing of value, except by accident. Your teachers are idiots. They're robots, programmed to program you to accept incoherent and petty power moves from gurning bullies at every stage of your life. They tick your name on the register, you tick their name at the ballot box. Just say you're present - nothing else is wanted or required.

Is all that true? No. Not any more than it's true that the Hives have the technological base to declare nuclear war. But here's what it all boils down to: it was fucking true enough.

Within a few months, I'd handed in my resignation. My pupils would have to watch some other idiot chalk up his name on the blackboard.

B-Side

People are still Bezzing in the post COVID age. Amazing.

Infinite Diversity, Finite Combinations Volume 1.1

 I done a book.