So to add to my technological woes (RIP ipod: your memory lives on!) I have been unable to post youtube videos to my blog. This is seriously annoying because there are two amazing videos you must see. Would you mind following links to see them?
The Good:
Viorica in Clejani
I've been trying to post this for at least a month. My friend Ljova recently helped score a big Hollywood movie in Romania. Before returning to Budapest, he went with the film's director and composer to Clejani, the home village of world-famous gypsy band Taraf des Haidouks. (If you don't know Taraf, you should. When I was working as propsmaster for Big Apple Circus I used to listen to their album over and over while we "made the jump" from race track parking lot to race track parking lot.) Ljova took this video during an all-night jam with the guys from Taraf (my dream of dreams!) The singer is one of Romania's most famous gypsy performers, and for good reason. Daaaaamn!
The Amazingly, Amazingly Bad:
Speak the Hungarian Rapper
We've had occasion to speak before about Hungarian rap. This out-craps the crappiest. It's as if Puff Daddy mated with a cyborg and produced a retarded son. Enjoy!
Transmutation
7 years ago
1 comment:
One of the best records I ever found during my years of crate hunting was a vanity-pressed 12" single by a 40-something Maryland cop who fancied himself a rapper. His record label was called Broccoli Rabe Recrods, and there was an insert (for a 12" single!) that included his photo and a clearly self-penned bio.
He looked like what you might imagine: a dumpy, lank-haired, moutachioed, white cop leaning up against a police cruiser with his arms crossed. His bio retold the whole of his music history, beginning with flute lessons at age 8, to harmonizing in a doo wop group, to a turn playing folk music, etc.
In a cretinous yet frankly ballsy move, this dumpy putz had nicknamed himself "The Cool Rahim."
The song wasn't really a rap song. It was sort of a lo-fi disco tune marred by staccato narrration. If foget the song's name—it was something like: "Don't Break the Law" or "Justice Rap" or "Rap Sheet" something. It contained lines like:
I'm the Cool Rahim
The ladies' dream
I can stop on a dime
and give you nine cents change
The Cool Rahim's rap was about twenty lines, no chorus or anything, just this stream of babble, and then there was a keyboard fill . . . and then he just rapped it all over again.
The B-side was an instrumental. Which is somehow even funnier, because it assumes that a DJ might actually play this in a club, and an MC might actually grab the mic and come up with their own rhymes about law enforcement.
Needless to say, I treasure this record. It's even worse than Dee Dee Ramone's glorious rap album, which containes lines like:
Ever see a glider floatin' in the wind?
Betcha didn't know I'm half German!
Slap me five, gimme some skin
I was born, in Berlin!
But this Hungarian guy—hold the phone. THIS is the worst rap song that has ever existed. It's so bad that it's kind of awesome—it's like a Platonically perfect bad rap tune. And the video is priceless.
Some of my favorite bits:
*His unearned shout out to deceased hip hop greats. Are you allowed to just do that? I mean, don't you have to pay some kind of dues before invoking Tupac? What balls!
*His nerdy little friends, the four most unqualified hypemen/backup singers/whatever in the universe. Where did he find these guys? I'm fairly sure I've seen them drunk in an Albany bar in 1997, tearily singing along to Pearl Jam songs on the jukebox.
*The teeny, tiny little cemetary they're in. If you watch carefully, you'll notice that he walks through the same set of tombstones like half a dozen times. Couldn't they find a bigger cemetary? I just don't understand what they're doing there.
*His stumble-shit delivery. It sounds like he's reading off of cue cards with phonetically-rendered lyrics on them. He looks so uncertain of himself, I just want to climb into the video and lead him back to his car and send him home.
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