Take Your Music With You!

A rolling turntable, radio thingy, so the Mrs. can sip on her purple stuff whilst she preps the food for her grateful crew, who are celebrating the birth of the baby Jesus with appropriate mirth and merriment.

Jollier

Original image from Shorpy, modified to the point of desecration by me, on a rainy day at work as I await the call for the pot luck lunch.

Open Mic Night: 80s White Australian Rap Edition

Steppin' aside again to give you an iPod tune that comes up once in a while and rarely gets skipped over.

Rick Rubin is credited with making rap music accessible (read:"Safe") to the white suburban masses with his Run-D.M.C./Aerosmith collaboration on "Walk this Way" in 1986. Personally, I think Mr. Rubin is a little overrated, and I'm probaby the last white man to wonder why everything he touches is somehow instantly regarded as gold/platinum. I heard one of the members of Run-D.M.C speak of that song in a very unflattering way, regarding the lyrics as nonsensical (he's right), but the money was good and the rest is history. Aerosmith got their careers back and the door to the dollars of white suburbia for rap acts (as well as the door to white rap) opened wider than the one left ajar by the Beastie Boys, who debuted with License to Ill the same year. (It can be argued that Blondie's "Rapture" beat them all by five years.)

Disregard the snap, crackle and pop of the high drum track on this tune and just listen to the voice and the industrial ambiance. Of course rap is about lyrics, so listen to those as well. Some find them sub-adolescent; I find them clever. Draw your own conclusions there, but I'll argue that rhyming every line in one song to "ate" is a nice trick. I personally think this song marked the mainstream crossover of rap to white audiences the world over, eclipsing the "Walk This Way" novelty of Rubin's. The Aussies of INXS pulled it off nicely in 1987. They're gone now, despite a pathetic ingenious attempt to revive their careers using some stupid ingenious "So you wanna be a Rockstar?" show.

Terrence Trent D'Arby also did a stint with INXS as their lead singer after Hutchence masturbated himself to death, but it went nowhere. D'Arby, he of the very impressive debut album, has since disappeared into relative obscurity in Munich, Germany and now goes by the name of some New Age Messiah.

The music of INXS is up in the top of the sidebar until next week's Open Mic Night music replaces it.

Archived Open Mic Night music is here.