In 1992 the ska punk band Sublime released their version of a classic reggae song from 1983: "Smoke Two Joints" by the Toyes (NOT by Bob Marley, as Google suggested search would lead me to believe. Come on people, not every reggae song is by Bob Marley.) Here's the original, along with some truly, um, interesting fan made illustrations:
And here's Sublime's more well known cover:
Listening to the awesome lyrics, you get the impression that the narrator of the song likes to smoke joints. In particular he likes to smoke joints two at a time. He smokes "two joints in the morning", "two joints in the evening", two joints in "time of peace" and "two in time of war." But most interestingly the narrator makes the following claim: "I smoke two joints before I smoke two joints, and then I smoke two more", which begs the question: how many joints does he smoke in total during this particular smoking session? Using the rules of logic I have found the answer, and I warn, the answer may shock you!
Let's think about this. If he "smokes two joints before he smokes two joints" and then smokes "two more", how many joints is this in total? two? four? six? When I first heard this song as a kid, I thought six joints, because he would smoke two joints before smoking two more joints, and then smoke two more after that for a total of six. But this can't be the case. Looking at the statement carefully, when he talks about the "two more" joints, he could only be referring to that second set of joints he already mentioned. Think of it this way, these are the things he does in order:
1. Smoke two joints before he smokes two joints.
2. Smoke the two more joints already mentioned in the statement above.
This gives us a total of four joints. This is perhaps a better reasoned answer than my first guess of six. But I shall now show that it is not the case either! The number of joints he smokes during this session is not six, it's not four. It is zero. He will smoke no joints. None.
I know this doesn't seem to make sense, but hear me out. If we accept as true the narrator's claim that he "smokes two joints before he smokes two joints," he will never smoke a single joint. Why? Because, in order to actually smoke two joints, he must first smoke two entirely different joints, and before smoking those two joints, he must first smoke two other joints, and before that two other joints, and so on and so on to infinity! So what will happen? The narrator will keep preparing (but not smoking) joint after joint after joint in an endless loop, and never once take a puff! He'll tell himself, "OK I've got two joints to smoke, gotta get two more to smoke before I smoke those... and gotta get two more before I smoke those... and gotta get two more before I smoke those..." and never smoke. For those who understand a little bit about algorithms, this is an endless recursive algorithm. In pseudo-code we could describe it as follows:
Procedure: smokeTwoJoints{
step 1: Do the procedure smokeTwoJoints;
step 2: smoke one joint;
step 3: smoke another joint;
end;
}
If you understand the algorithm you can see that this procedure will endlessly call itself. Step one will happen an infinite number of times, and the smoker will never get to the last two steps.
So ironically, when these lyrics are taken literally and broken down to their logical elements, in an attempt to smoke an infinite number of joints, this ultimate pot-smoker will not smoke any joints at all!! So let this be a warning to people out there. Never make it a rule that you smoke two joints before you smoke two joints, otherwise you will get stuck in an endless recursive loop. For that matter, don't make it a rule that you shampoo your hair before you shampoo your hair, or eat two pancakes before you eat two pancakes, or anything else.
In keeping with my lazy habit of writing about TV commercials too much, I want to bring to your attention a new(ish) trend in marketing. This is the trend in commercials of using bells and ukeleles, or bells and acoustic guitars as the go-to combo to convey happy moods. If you don't fast forward through all your commercials nowadays, you've probably heard some bell and ukelele filled music like this:
or this, with bells, whistles and ukeleles:
This kind of music is ubiquitous. For example the Lowe's chain of hardware stores really likes their bells and, well not ukeleles, but guitars. Anyway you can definitely recognize a style. Here's an example:
And another one:
And even cats love this music. Friskies uses it to advertise their (apparently hallucinogenic) cat food:
OK maybe these examples I found on Youtube mostly have bells and acoustic guitar and not ukelele, but I assure you the ukelele variety is out there, and best exemplifies this musical style. Just watch a little bit of TV and you'll see facsimiles of this music everywhere. It seems to me that at some point American advertisers decided that the combination of bells and ukeleles, or bells and acoustic guitars convey the sound of happiness. Why is this? Perhaps we associate ukeleles with Hawaiian vacations and Zooey Deschanel, and we associate bells with Christmas? I don't know why, but I do know this music is everywhere. Something's got to give. Pretty soon advertisers will need to stumble upon a new instrumental combo that we all can agree signifies a cheerful life. I suggest the tuba and xylophone.
I'm about to tell a story. Please bear with me. The story begins back in 1987, when a little movie called Dirty Dancing captured the imagination of American audiences. The unabashedly cheerful song "(I've Had) The Time of My Life", sung by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes provided the soundtrack to the final dance number.
Isn't there something magical about that? The time of your life. What better song could there be to sell people on the idea of a magical vacation? And, skipping ahead to the mid-to-late 1990s, Sandals, the Caribbean based resort company started making commercials like this (here's the reggae version):
And here's the pop-punk version.
And here's the original version.
Meanwhile, in those mid-to-late 1990s, a little underground hip hop group in Los Angeles called The Black Eyed Peas was producing positive, fun rap songs like this:
Somewhere along the line in the early 2000s, the Black Eyed Peas picked up a new member. An attractive, statuesque white girl named Fergie:
No, not that Fergie, the other one:
The Peas had always been about having a good time, but with the addition of Fergie, they took on a more Pop/Commercial Hip-Hop/Electro sound. And started making songs about Fergie's "Humps". I'm not sure what she's referring to, but my take on it is that the song is told from the perspective of a sassy female camel. Listen:
And if you listen closely to "My Humps", you can catch a little piece of musical inspiration from an unexpected source, namely composer Antonín Dvořák's "New World Symphony":
"SHEEE'S... GOT-ME-SPENN... DING-IT." Do you hear it?
Now, am I going to spend the rest of this blog article talking about how The Black Eyed Peas sold out and betrayed hip hop? Hell no. I'm not ashamed to say I like the later Black Eyed Peas and much of their silly dance music. And if you like their silly dance music, you shouldn't be ashamed to say it either. And if you don't like their silly dance music, well, don't listen to it. Though, in all fairness, not listening to the Black Eyed Peas wasn't really possible in 2009, as I shall explain.
In the spring of 2009, the Peas unleashed the single "I Gotta Feeling", and for what seemed like the whole year, the song was unavoidable. It was a piece of electronica influenced rap and R&B, with that classic pounding house/techno kick drum pattern of "thump, thump, thump...". The auto-tuned vocals sang devotional odes to partying. The inane lyrics, "I gotta feeling... that tonight's gonna be a good night", made it the perfect song for preparing to go out and drink too much. The song was so unavoidable, that on any given Saturday in the summer of 2009, you would probably hear the song before, during, and after your "good night" out, and the next day, and the next night. Apparently every night was a good night in 2009. Anyway, here it is. Click it at your own peril if you're worried about this song being stuck in your head again:
I use this song to mark the beginning of pop's current "Electronic Dance Music craze." After this song came out, the tempos of popular rap and R&B songs increased, electro influence was everywhere, and even country musicians were using dance beats. It was a major change, and I think the Black Eyed Peas were the prime musical mover to make this happen. For good or bad, you can credit the Peas for this.
The message of "I Gotta Feeling" (and 90% of rap and r&b songs nowadays) is "carpe diem". Go out and have a good night, every night, they say. Go have the time of your life.
In 2010 The Black Eyed Peas took the carpe diem message a step further, and released their single "The Time (Dirty Bit)", a full-on 80s inspired retro-futuristic electro rap cover of, you guessed it, "(I've Had) The Time of my Life" from Dirty Dancing:
But what exactly is a "Dirty Bit"? An homage to Dirty Dancing? A play on words with the pejorative term "Dirty B*tch"? A computer science term? Wait... maybe it's all of these things. See this from M. Morris Mano and Charles Kime's "Logic and Computer Design Fundamentals, Fourth Edition":
Yes, a dirty bit is actually something inside a microchip. I don't know what the Peas were getting at with this weird computer science reference, though it probably has something to do with the different number of bits (binary digits in computer memory) used to produce digital sounds. A lower number of bits, like 8 or 16 bits, as was the only technological possibility in earlier digital music, will get you a dirtier, more unpolished Nintendo-esque sound, and I guess that's what they were going for, and what a lot of electronic musicians have been going for in recent years. See the album cover for "The Beginning" with 8-bit caricatures of the Peas:
Anyway, this song was a success. Not quite as big a success as "I Gotta Feeling", but enough of a success to get the attention of the people at Sandals Resorts. Pretty soon after the release of "The Time (Dirty Bit)", Sandals released yet another "Time of My Life" themed TV advertisement, this time suited to the "EDM Craze". The Black Eyed Peas influence is um, prominent, to say the least. Check it out:
Basically it's a Black Eyed Peas "sound-alike" composition. But, interestingly, it's not a rip off of the "The Time." Rather, it's a rip-off of the Peas even bigger hit "I Gotta Feeling." It's got those same guitar chords, and the refrain "Do it all again!" is almost verbatim lifted from the Peas' song. I guess those electro synths found in "The Time" were a bit too dirty for a commercial selling a relaxing vacation. The whole thing, that started with Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey, came "full circle". Well, not really full circle, but some kind of circular or elliptical motion.
So what was the point of me telling you this story? I don't really know. Maybe there wasn't a point. But it's fascinating to see, in the age of the internet, how people and pieces of culture; from songs to films to commercials to music to music videos and back to commercials, from computer science to Nintendo to Hip Hop, from Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes, Patrick Swayze and Dvořák to Will.I.Am, these people and things all bounce around each other, making new bizarre combinations. For good or bad, the time of our lives is a time of bizarre, technologically facilitated musical combinations.
Why does PM Dawn's hip hop hit from 1991 "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss" so capture my imagination? Is it the refreshingly indecisive tone of the lyrics and vocals? Is it the breakbeat that totally funkafies a sample of Spandau Ballet's very un-funky song "True"? There are many things that make it a good song, but for me, what really pushes this one into classic territory is the contrast between the easy listening vibe throughout most of the song, and the awesomely sinister, jangling rhythmic sample it suddenly breaks into at 2:28 and 3:26. Listen:
Just like being set adrift on your own memories, this beat is bittersweet and complex. And that discordant little breakdown turns this one from just a chilled out track into a real headbanger.
Music is, and has always been a huge part of my life, and human life in general. So, to celebrate music, all kinds of music, I have created this blog. I shall throw out into the vastness of the internet, my insignificant thoughts on this very significant subject. But more important than me blathering on about music, I will link to tons of music, maybe some musicians or styles of music you've never heard before. Maybe some musicians and styles of music that might change your life!!! Seriously!!
So to begin, I must warn that my musical taste encompasses a lot of things, including some things that most people might consider to be total crap, or that music snobs might consider anathema. But maybe, just maybe some readers out there, (if anyone ends up reading this blog), might get the same feeling I get when listening to awesome pieces of music like this by Maurice Ravel:
Or even this by Omar Santana and Neophyte:
I'm not yet sure what this blog will be, but I know what it won't be. It won't be a place for me to bitch about whatever musicians I don't like or the often repeated mantra of "oh my god, people have such bad musical taste nowadays blah blah blah", because that's just ridiculous. If people like the music they listen to, I think, by definition, it is good music. If you don't like a piece of music or a certain musician, just don't listen, and certainly don't waste your time complaining or getting into messageboard fights about who's better than who. This blog is just for what I consider to be good music, and also why. Hope it can turn you towards some stuff you enjoy too.
(Postscript: if you love music, in addition to listening to the vast quantities of free music on sites like Youtube, support your musicians by choosing to buy their stuff!!! especially if you have the money for it!!!!)
