Never mind that he’s just a nice, down-to-earth guy. I was reminded once again on Friday night during his performance at the Hidden House what a talent Mega Ran is — and he’s right here under our noses, lest any music fan in Phoenix take it for granted.
One need only to look at the ridiculous success of Mega Ran’s latest Kickstarter campaign to get a grasp of his popularity. For his multimedia Language Arts project — three EPs, a comic book and his own freakin’ video game (how cool is that?) — Mega Ran was aiming for a target total of $3,000. He’s reached $12,000. That includes eight people who have contributed $300 or more and one who has forked over $500 or more.
It’s an incredibly ambitious project — he was also hinting at a possible accompanying soundtrack for the video game — but if anyone can pull it off, Mega Ran is the guy. He describes Language Arts as “a story-driven album loosely based on my own life, showing the many struggles of a teacher who also juggles a music career as well as a personal life, while battling an evil much worse than he could ever imagine.”
While we await the fully formed product(s), our teacher/rapper/hero is celebrating the $12K success with a new track called “Up Up Down Down,” a play on the secret code that anyone who played Contra on Nintendo would know.
Like listening to his albums, conversations with Open Mike Eagle tend to be enlightening, thought-provoking and pretty damn hilarious. The L.A.-based emcee is due for a big year: After headlining our Friday bonanza at Hidden House as part of the Desert Viper tour with Has-Lo, he’ll head to Uganda for three weeks on a hip-hop education mission. Then he’ll drop his third full-length album, 4NMLHSPTL (“It’s the war on vowels,” he says), in June.
He discusses all this and then some in advance of Friday’s rap spectacular with Has-Lo and Random.
So tell me a bit about the Uganda trip. That’s coming up in a couple weeks. Yeah, the plane tickets are bought and immunizations are gotten. The program isn’t fully funded, but it’s funded enough that we’ll get there and make something happen. (Donations for the trip are still being accepted here.)
How did you get involved with the trip? There’s a non-profit I’ve been working with for a few years — that’s J.U.I.C.E. They saw a grant opportunity for an exchange and they knew about a Ugandan volunteer group.
Have you been outside the country? I’ve been to Japan for rap. But that’s really the only time I’ve been off this continent.
You’re a former teacher, so it’s great that this sort of brings together that and music. I’ve actually done some hip-hop education before, so it’s right up my alley.
What have you done before? There was a program in L.A. called For Real Hop. I would write curriculum for hip-hop — did a lot of media education, breaking down songs. Those kids had grown up infused with rap. I was definitely trying to get them to understand what they were hearing every day.
What are you going to be teaching in Uganda? It will be real basic in terms of how to construct rap music. I’m not able to do too much preparing because I’m not sure what they know. But we’ll break it down to basics, things like what cadence is and how to construct rhymes. Ras G will teach them how to produce beats. If I’m mistaken and they’re already super into it, we can get into some conceptual stuff and critical thinking. We really have to get there and see what we’re working with.
What can you tell us about the new album? I know it’s got a title. Yeah, it’s called 4NMLHSPTL. It’s coming out on Fake Four on June 26.
What’s the concept behind the title? It’s the place where rappers, or any artists, go when they try to know too much. It’s a place you end up at. I decided to call it the animal hospital — you go there when your head explodes.
You’re describing yourself? I’m describing a whole lot of rappers I know. It can be literary types or creative people. … You can get into this really crazy mental place and end up in this place that’s difficult to describe. I find I always have to go through this before I can make something. Just this last year I got caught up in how to talk about this place.
How about the production on the album … is it handled by multiple guys like you’ve done in the past? No. It’s all with one producer, Awkward. Me and Awkward had planned to do a record together. He’s one of the few producers who I’ve been able to build a good, strong working relationship with. I tend to make music kind of fast. Not all of it ends up being usable, but the way my process works is hyperproduction, and he’s been able to keep feeding me music so we can keep working. We’ve been able to get to a good place communication-wise.
With him being in UK, it had to be a bit of a challenge? It was. I never really felt time difference until we were actually finishing things. Little changes … it would be a little thing, but it would be three in the morning his time. But for the most part, everything has gone really well and really easy.
It seems like you’re on an album-per-year pace. Is that a part of being hyperproductive or do you feel like it’s necessary part of today’s Internet age where everything feels so fleeting? I think there was time when I felt that way, like I had to do that. But I don’t think so much right now. I might come out with an album next year, but at this time last year I was planning on coming out with this album.
I want to let this one breathe. I don’t want to cut off the development of it. I want to let it take its time and see what it can be without the pressure to do something immediately behind it.
Are you concerned that listeners’ attention spans are too short these days to sort of absorb everything from your albums?
I don’t think so. I used to think that would be issue. But I think I have begun to cultivate a kind of fandom that expects there to be layers and I expect that they’ll want to keep listening and keep finding new stuff. People with super-short attention spans are probably not going to like what I do anyway. It doesn’t translate very the well first time, so it doesn’t do me good to try to please them.
And letting it breathe is kind of about me, too — me wanting to take my time and just see what happens. I definitely feel like these first three records are an arc. Maybe next time I’ll feel like I want to do something different. But I don’t want to get so much into habit of a project a year that I miss a turn to explore some other avenues.
In the same regard, you’re a pretty accessible guy who’s on Twitter and Tumblr. Is that something you enjoy or also just a necessary product of being an independent musician? I don’t know. I don’t always enjoy it. I have a pretty good understanding of what the level of acceptable realm of things to discuss and not to discuss is. That doesn’t cover all the thing I want to talk about all the time. I end up in places psychologically or emotionally where I can’t exist in that realm when I’m going through certain things. I’ve seen some people have rants on Twitter and go back and delete it. But I’ve never been comfortable sharing past a certain point of what tact level is. So I treat it like it’s part of the job, but I do have fun doing it and engaging people.
To me, there’s psychological space that I haven’t figured out how to deal with it. I post stuff and run away. I don’t read my Facebook timeline. Twitter, to me, is a little more informative and a little more entertaining, despite the nature of it. Facebook is kind of other people’s business I don’t want to know all the time.
I know you’ve spoken highly of Has-Lo. What drew you to his music and had you guys talked about arranging a tour like this? He was the kind of person where, before I heard any of his music, I could tell by how people who knew me talked about him that he was making something interesting. … I heard his album and it just blew me away. It felt like it could have come out when I was the biggest hip-hop fan I’ve ever been, like in ‘96. But it didn’t feel dated, like someone trying to turn back the hands of time. It was just genuine, expressive and really dark in a way I hadn’t heard. It’s not over-the-top dark, just someone trying to work through something. It was refreshing for me to hear.
Then I met him in Philly when I was on tour last November and all our touring partners, like Zilla and Castro, hung out and it felt like a natural extension of people I hang out with here in L.A. It became apparent that we have a lot in common personality-wise.
You’ve been to Phoenix quite a bit in the past couple of years. Have you seen enough to develop any thoughts on our city? I feel like I should have (laughs). I’ll tell you the truth: There’s some markets where you keep going and seeing the same people. With Phoenix, I feel like every other time I come, it’s a completely different group I’m in front of. Maybe it’s just working with different promoters. I haven’t figured out how to get that consistency …. it hasn’t happened mathematically like it should,
But it seems to be a combination of who I’m playing with and who I’m working with on the ground there and what else is going on that night. For the Southwest, Phoenix is a pretty big spot and there seems to be a lot of rap shows and a lot going on there.
You have a 3-year-old son. Does he have a general idea of what you do? Yep. When his mommy asks what I do, he says, ‘Goes on tour, making the music.’
It sounds so easy. It’s a pretty accurate assessment. At least it’s half of my job.
Does he listen to your music? Yeah. He knows some words to some things. He’s pretty attentive listener. He’s big fan of guys I consider peers. He might like Serengeti more than he likes me. He likes Busdriver. He likes Billy Woods. He’s really into Shabazz Palaces. Also, he’s really into Yo Gabba Gabba.
Changing topics here, we’ve played some pretty intense Scrabble matches. Do you play Words With Friends as well? I keep trying. I had it on my phone for a while, but the board was weird. I felt like I was scoring 1,000 points every time. When I play on Facebook, it’s not so bad. But I can barely play all my Scrabble games right now. I’ve probably got a shit-ton of Words With Friends games people are deleting.
Do you have least favorite letter in Scrabble? I can’t stand “C.†I don’t like C’s. K’s I can deal with. The reason I hate C’s is because there’s no two-letter words. If someone ends word with a C, that whole area is fucked. I don’t like U’s and I don’t like I’s. But, yeah, C’s are terrible.
So you won’t be writing a song incorporating all the two-letter Scrabble words? I tend not to write like that (laughs). A band like They Might Be Giants … they have songs that are just plain writing exercises. I can’t even think to do that.
Paul Barman is probably a guy that could do it, the way he plays with words. He’s the first guy that made me realize I can’t do that. I wouldn’t even know how to start. It’s pushing the art form for sure. I’m a little stupider than that.
Something I’ve been meaning to ask you about is how you sing a hook on “The Processional” that came from Busta Rhymes’ “Abandon Ship” from The Coming:
That’s one of my favorite albums of all-time. For my money still and the more I learn about him, Busta Rhymes is one of the most talented rappers of all-time — just his rap ability and skill is ridiculous. … There’s like six or seven songs (on The Coming) that are just so incredible.
So it’s kind of like a personal homage?
Yeah. I mean, there’s weird rules in rap about things which you can and can’t do. The moment I realized that a lot of things people would say in rap would borrow from older rap songs I hadn’t heard simultaneously weirded me out and opened my head. They’re reinterpreting lyrics. It’s a whole sampling culture. The new album has four or five instances of pieces of other songs as hooks or bridges. There’s They Might Be Giants, Ben Folds Five, Sly Stone.
You’ve talked before about They Might Be Giants being one of your favorites. When were you first turned on to them? I was 9 the first time I heard one of their songs. It was “Birdhouse In Your Soul” … I just saw the video from when I was super-duper young. As far as I was concerned it was perfect music. Just the songwriting … and I’m a huge melody fiend. There’s these huge, sweeping chord progressions in that song. … I got that album a year after that and was in love with them ever since.
Are people surprised to hear you like that band?
I love rap a lot, too. But it’s becoming hard to love the genre that I’m in just because I’m just hypercritical of everything. So listening to some jazz or rock just gives me distance to appreciate something and not be picking it apart.
It’s hard to believe, but this year marks the 20th anniversary of the release of the Gin Blossoms’ hugely successful album New Miserable Experience.
I am and forever will be curious about how time treats this album and its well of pop hits, especially because the band is from my home state. The whole thing gave me pause when my wife and I were in Henderson, Nev., a few months ago and randomly flipped around the local FM stations in the car — and what should pop up on the radio but a Gin Blossoms song. It really offered a bit of perspective and got me thinking about how the Gin Blossoms are viewed outside of my sometimes insular take on the Phoenix/Tempe music scene. How many times a day in countless other cities, big and small, will you hear Gin Blossoms on the radio?
It’s interesting to consider, and this cover of “Hey Jealousy” for the Onion’s A.V. Undercover series by a “one-off supergroup” made up of members of Cursive and Cymbals Eat Guitars sort of speaks to the general sentiment of the Gin Blossoms. As Jason Woodbury pointed out at New Times, you’ve got Cursive frontman Tim Kasher offering the elitist indie vibe: “I love that you guys put these types of songs on this list … I’m the kind of person who pounces on that brand of humor.” Then there’s Cymbals Eat Guitars’ Joseph D’Agostino, who says: “If Teenage Fanclub played it, it would be like ‘Oh, it’s a classic.'”
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure?
Friend of the site Scott Hessel left his gig as drummer for Source Victoria to tour with Gin Blossoms, so I’ll have to check with him to see if the band has any thoughts on this deconstructed cover.
There’s rap songs, and then there are rap songs that make you wanna learn every word – the cadence, the flow, the rhythm. The songs that you wanna bump in your crappy car factory stereo system and pound your steering wheel to (and who cares if you end a sentence in a preposition?). There’s rap songs so good you don’t even need a proper chorus – just some mean-mug humming. That’s Homeboy Sandman’s “Mine All Mine.”
The Queens, N.Y.-based MC dropped his Chimera EP via Stones Throw on Tuesday, but “Mine All Mine” came out earlier in the year on the Subject: Matter EP.
Homeboy Sandman uses his two-plus minutes on “Mine All Mine” to rap about (per the EP cover) “the things that belong to me that rappers never rap about when they rap about things that belong to them. This song is not about my chain, or my money, or my car, or my skills, or my girls. It’s about my socks, and my toothpaste, and my lotion, and my favorite television programs.”
If lines like “My insurance is WebMD” don’t sell you on his everyman approach, then seeing Homeboy Sandman rock this track with his family (and his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles notebook) surely should do the trick.
Cut Chemist is back with his first single since 2007, and the L.A.-based turntablist (people still using that word?) has gone all aggro on “Outro (Revisited).”
He tells Rolling Stone, which premiered the track, that he created “Outro” after being released from jail (though it never says what he was in for): “I had a strong urge to run so I made a song that made me feel like I was being chased.” The rap-meets-rock vibe brings the Judgment Night soundtrack to mind, and I’m not one to say if that’s a good or bad thing since I still have my copy of the soundtrack on cassette.
The “Outro” single was released today (iTunes link) and the song will appear on Cut Chemist’s upcoming album, A Die Cut, due out on his own label A Stable Sound (haven’t seen a release date).
I’m a long-suffering Cubs fan – there is no other kind – and I can still remember watching Game 6 of the 2003 National League Championship Series, the surreal feeling that my Cubbies were (repeat after me) five outs away from going to the World Series and then the utter despair when it all unraveled after some guy named Steve Bartman inserted his name into their miserable history.
Or maybe it wasn’t Bartman. Did the hand of fate that reached into the sky and interfere with that foul ball with one out in the top of the eighth inning come from Kenny Dennis? Almost nine years later, Serengeti’s alter ego has come clean in “Don’t Blame Steve,” a track off the new Kenny Dennis EP.
We’ve already seen Chicago superfan Kenny Dennis dis Shaq, but here he’s taking on 100-plus years of futility. Leave Bartman alone. Dennis instead points the finger at a long list of former players that will make Cubs fans both nostalgic and nauseated (and it shows Serengeti’s encyclopedic knowledge of Cubs lore): “Blame Assenmacher, blame Jeff Pico, blame Damon Berryhill, blame Lloyd McClendon … ”
I’ve never been one to blame Bartman (the Cubs still could have won Game 7), but the controversy will live on forever, and the irrational vitriol was documented nicely in Catching Hell, part of ESPN’s 30 for 30 series. Time (and perhaps a World Series title for the Cubs) will heal Bartman’s wounds, in the same way the relationship between Bill Buckner and Red Sox fans was eventually repaired. And like the Baseball Project revisiting history in their sympathetic song “Buckner’s Bolero,” Serengeti is equally forgiving of Bartman.
Maybe Kenny Dennis’ mustache is to blame. We’ll never know.
My first must-have release for Record Store Day is here: Richard Buckner, whose husky baritone has shaken me since I saw him for the first time in Tempe in 1995, is releasing a 7-inch for the song “Willow,” which, from what I can understand, was a pre-order bonus track from his 2011 album Our Blood.
The 7-inch (via Merge Records), the first-ever in Buckner’s rich catalog, features a B-side for “Lost” and will include a digital-only cover of The Cars’ “Candy-O.â€
I’ll be at Stinkweeds tracking that one down (among others), but in the meantime, Merge has made a stream of “Willow” available via Soundcloud. And in even better news – I never thought this day would come – Buckner is tweeting. Seriously.
I’m far from a professional show promoter – and the Valley is in verycapablehands anyway – but a perk of writing this blog (inching ever closer to its seven-year anniversary in July) is getting to know some of the artists I admire – and, once a year or so, putting together a night with them to showcase what I haven’t sufficiently described with words.
I’ll hopefully have more with each of these guys as the show gets nearer, but here’s a quick primer:
Open Mike Eagle: Project Blowed alum and former teacher who is thoughtful and self-aware, friendly and accessible, a lover of They Might Be Giants and a hater of LeBron. Follow him on Twitter.
MegaRan: You’d be hard-pressed to find a musician who works harder than Random (also a former teacher). If he’s not on the road, Ran is either dropping something new or in the studio preparing to drop something new, whether solo or with his Writer’s Guild crew. He’s a former Philadelphian who lives in Phoenix, and we’re glad to call him one of our own. Follow him on Twitter.
I somehow totally missed this: Retribution Gospel Choir, the rockier side project of Low’s Alan Sparhawk, released a new EP as a free download last month. On Tuesday, Sub Pop birthed a physical release of The Revoltuion EP in 7-inch format – the first new music from the band since the 2010 album 2.
Cough up your email address below to get the four-song, 10-minute EP for free.
The band also released a video for “The Stone (Revolution!),” all full of hand claps and marching-band bass drums.
In September, Japandroids played a show with Bass Drum of Death at Trunk Space in a set that appeared to be riddled with technical issues that left the Vancouver duo a tad frustrated. They powered through but promised free entry to their next Phoenix show for anyone who held on to the ticket stub. I was hoping I’d get to cash in when I saw the band had announced a new tour on Monday, but alas, no Arizona dates were included on this leg (though they seem like the sort of guys to make good on this promise).
But all’s not lost: Brian King and Dave Prowse also dropped a new song that will be on the forthcoming album Celebration Rock, due out June 5 on Polyvinyl (pre-order here). “The House That Heaven Built” will be released as the A-side on the fourth installment of the band’s 7-inch series it started two years ago. (This B-side will feature a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds cover of “Jack The Ripper.”)
With “The House That Heaven Built,” Japandroids really make no bones about reaching for a bigger dynamic – the sort of uninhibited, call-and-response anthem that bands like the Hold Steady perfected. “On a lot of this new record, we actually tried to simulate the sound of what we thought the crowd would do during the songs,” King told Pitchfork.
I also love Japandroids’ commitment to their minimal, punk aesthetic. Celebration Rock sticks to the eight-track length of Post-Nothing and keeps its predecessor’s stripped-down album-cover design.
Here’s the Celebration Rock tracklisting:
1. The Nights Of Wine And Roses
2. Fire’s Highway
3. Evil’s Sway
4. For The Love Of Ivy
5. Adrenaline Nightshift
6. Younger Us
7. The House That Heaven Built
8. Continuous Thunder
