Friday 29 May 2009

Really bad lieutenant

You may or may not remember that Bad Lieutenant gets all sorts of crazy love here at The Martorialist and we're quite fond of a few Werner Herzog flicks too so we're weirdly excited about the upcoming Bad Lieutenant remake by Herzog now we've seen the trailer which was released on wednesday :



Of course, it looks like an utter car-crash with Nicolas Cage (who's become the definition of a hack, but who we love due to the greatness of Raising Arizona, Wild At Heart, Leaving Las Vegas, the 10 minute long opening tracking shot of Snake Eyes and Face/Off, particularly the scene where he says he wants to take Travolta's face...off and gestures outwards from his mug with his hand in a triangular shaped motion) usurping Harvey Keitel in the lead role, Herzog remaking a movie he claims he hasn't even seen, basing it in New Orleans (this may replace Baller Blockin' as our favourite movie set in the N.O) instead of New York and a cast which includes those esteemed thespians Xzibit, Eva Mendes and Brad Dourif, BUT, damn, this shit looks entertaining and if it includes a new version of the scene where the Lieutenant pulls his pud in the middle of the street over two teenage rawk chickz in a parked car with the juxtaposition of Cage doing his trademark delirious wild-eyed schtick and Herzog urging him to "tueg harder at dast cawwwwk" behind the camera then how can it not be the movie of the summer?

Geto Boys - Crooked Officer

Tuesday 26 May 2009

Greatest movie scenes ever part 8

The fight scene edition.

Firstly, we're gonna have to lay down some rules here : no weaponry other than objects at hand or knuckledusters, meaning that The Warriors vs. The Punks subway bog battle in The Warriors, Matrix vs. Bennett in Commando, pretty much any scene from a Rambo movie, the mass brawl at the beginning of Gangs Of New York and the multi-network battle in Anchorman are all unfortunately disqualified.

Secondly, we're gonna be cruel and narrow it down to 5, which means cigars are not being placed into the respective mouths of Rowdy Roddy Piper vs. Keith David in They Live, Jake La Motta vs. Sugar Ray Robinson in Raging Bull and Daniel San vs. Johnny in The Karate Kid.

So, without further ado, here's our 5 favourite movie fight scenes :

Dolemite vs. the junkies in Dolemite



Instead of do-gooder social workers seeking more leanient sentences for their drug addled clients we're gonna campaign for this being an adequate treatment for smackheads. Here we find the original dapper don Dolemite single handedly taking on a triumvirate of junkies and their hoodrat cum-dumpster bitch after he catches them in the scouser-like act of stripping his car down, taking revenge by kicking supreme asshole with the sort of moves Mr Miyagi would be proud of and then sending the zonked-out dope fiends to return his car to its formerly pristine condition, all while dressed in an outfit which can only be described as amateur golfer meets Tim Wonnacott from Bargain Hunt.

Jerry vs. Buddy in 3 O'Clock High



Some real David and Goliath type shit always makes for an exhilerating fight scene and were it not for Rocky vs. Drago, which we'll get to in a minute, this would be the G.O.A.T of that particular sub-genre. This is probably the most expertly shot high school flick of the 80s with this key scene featuring Goddard style jump-cuts, lingering Leone-esque close-ups and, uh, whoever first used slow-mo-effect shots slow-mo action to accentuate tension and movement. If you can name a more potent movie punch than Jerry's knuckleduster clad valedictory knock-out thump then we'll paypal you a fiver.

Everybody vs. The Ducky Boys in The Wanderers



All our other choices here are one-on-one fights so it's only fair that we rep' for mass brawls too. We just can't get enough of The Wanderers here at The Martorialist so it's only fitting that the football field battle where the previously divided Wanderers, Del Bombers, Wongs etc finally unite to take on the non-stop barrage of creepy Catholics known as the Ducky Boys, with a little help from Joey's moustached musclehead psychopath of a father (who reminds us a little of da gawd Metin). While The Wanderers and The Del Bombers put in work here against the dreaded Ducky Boys we feel it's The Wongs ("27 guys all with the last name Wong who all know Jujutsu who can kill you with one judo chop") who make the difference, as they kick, punch and throw the zombie-like Ducky Boys around with aplomb.

Frank Dux vs. Chong Li in Bloodsport



Though we may prefer Steven Seagal to Jean Claude Van Damme it's hard to deny VD in his prime. We mentioned Van Damme punching out the snake in Hard Target in a post the other day in regards to the effect once hot pregnant chicks have on our cocks but as far as actual fights go then it's all about the final clash against Bolo Yeung as Chong Li from his '88 classic Bloodsport. It's difficult to choose a favourite part of this scene but we're gonna plump for where cheating chinky Chong Li throws white powder in Frank's eyes which allows Van Damme to get his Brando on by pulling constipated faces and lashing out into thin-air as he pretends to be temporarily blinded being the Pièce de résistance.

Rocky vs. Drago in Rocky 4





The best movie ever? Can't decide between Heathers, Once Upon A Time In The West or Rocky 4 but today we're going with the latter option. While we slightly prefer the Driving Reflections montage scene set to Robert Tepper's No Easy Way (AKA the best song ever) as the finest moment Rocky 4 has to offer we'd be hard pressed to disagree with anyone who prefers the epicly brutal Rocky vs. the near-inhuman Drago match in Russia. Geeks will drone on this flick making a heavy-handed point about America's relationship with Russia during the Cold War but Rocky 4 is actually all about heart and balls. Sly was an expert in manipulating the emotions of his audience and after witnessing Drago beating Apollo to death ("if he dies..he dies") this is a scene which can turn usually placid chick-flick loving wenches into bloodthirsty, foul mouthed, screaming lunatics baying for our dopey dago hero to knock the fucking big commie cunt's head off.

Negative Approach - Ready To Fight (Live, 1981)

Sunday 24 May 2009

"We're too big a club to get relegated"

Lindsay LOLZhan.







The world can only be a better place now the sight of fat white men removing their replica shirts to reveal badly tattooed beer bellies which hang beneath their genitalia has been consigned to the occasional game against Cardiff, Doncaster or Swansea on Sky Sports 3.

Danzig - Going Down To Die



If only this sweaty, fake-tanned, Matalan-Mourinho of a cunt could have been cast off back into the championship hell where he belongs too, eh?

Thursday 21 May 2009

Great songs from forgotten rap albums part 5


C-Bo - Realer Than Real



C-Bo - Bald Head Nut



C-Bo : one of the greatest living human beings alongside Daily Express racing tipster Computerman. After discovering him via his Mob Figaz connection I copped a bunch of C-Bo albums on the cheap off eBay strictly on the strength of whether I liked the cover or not and since the one for 1993's Gas Chamber set kinda reminded me of Shocker this was the first CD of his I scooped up. The album itself is somewhat of a Northern California G-Funk classic and features one of the definitive C-Bo tracks in Realer Than Real, while the very 'Cube-esque Bald Head Nut, fortunately not an ode to wanking over Gail Porter, is a thorough detailing of his trife exploits, though one assume he must have been plagued by a bout of alopecia himself during recording as he has a full 'doo on the cover.



Casual - I Gotta (Get Down)



Casual - Turf Dirt



Here at The Martorialist we consider Casual's debut Fear Itself to be the Hiero equivalent of Only Built 4 Cuban Linx so it was fitting that, after a couple of late 90s follow-up singles which included bangers like Turkey And Dressing, I Gotta (Get Down) and Turf Dirt, his long-awaited sophomore set He Think He Raw was a disappointment of Immobilarity type proportions. Turkey And Dressing didn't even make the album for reasons I still can't fathom and the aforementioned other tracks from the singles were, to put it politely, on a whole 'nother planet to the rest of the shite on the album when it finally materialised in 2001. I Gotta (Get Down) gave us one of Casual's most LOLlerskates inducing lines in "When i fuck around and be rippin' off the top like a rapist" (rape isn't a funny subject, obviously, unless you count when Robson got arse-raped with a spoon in OZ) and should be nestled in any self-respecting rap-nerd's top ten favourite Alchemist tracks, while Turf Dirt found Cas' cussin' out the type of stank hoodrat we're actually rather fond of over the sort of stark thumper which'll always make me go "ahhh, Sucker M.C's.



Parental Advisory -Ghetto Head Hunter



Parental Advisory - Manifest



Mostly known for being the first album Organized Noize helmed before they went on to produce OutKast, TLC, Goodie Mob etc and having a song playing in the background of an interlude on OutKast's debut, Parental Advisory's first album is actually quite a dandy little release which deserves more love than it currently receives. There's a lyric on Ghetto Head Hunter where the Dres sounding one raps about trying to find his identity as an ATLanta resident amongst his east and west coast peers by asking "Grand Puba or Eazy E - you confused, yo?/I look for skinz and still be cruisin' in a six-fo'" which almost manages to capture the entire steez's of both Parental Advisory and OutKast in a single line, but I guess a more mundane comparison would be Black Sheep-meets-Above-The-Law-And-RBX-through-the-eyes-of-an-ATLien. Ghetto Head Hunter is the song from the 'Kast interlude and, predictably, it's the best track on here; Manifest, meanwhile, is one of the innumerable great rap songs with the word Manifest in its title and includes the lyrical gem that is "those who front are like cunts : they must get wet". Sounds like a philosophy to live by, doggie.

Thursday 14 May 2009

Bay Area rappers make the best songs about garms

OH YES THEY DO!



Yukmouth - Stuntastic



Back in 1995 when the majority of New York rappers were wandering around in godawful fatigues and Timbs, The Luniz were lookin' especially dipped in fresh gear in the I Got 5 On It video. Fast foward 8 years to 2003 and Yukmouth was geared up in generic NY garb and rhyming about clobber you'd usually associate with Dipset (Dapper Dan in the Bay?) on Stuntastic. Small beef as the song banged regardless, with Dame Grease lacing Yuk' with maybe the best Neptunes rip-off you're ever likely to hear.



Turf Talk - 24 Feeling Way O.G



Turf Talk featuring Jelly Roll & Cartoon - Back In The Day



If you want a better represenation of Bay area fashion then look no further than Turf Talk. It's difficult to decide whether to go for the obligatory gear-track on Turf's debut The Street Novelist or the one on it's classic follow-up West Coast Vaccine : The Cure so we went for both. 24 Feeling Way O.G is the track from where the immortal "..wasn't shit without a Michael Jackson coat" adorning this blog's banner comes from and Back In The Day has a song stealing cameo verse by Jelly Roll which ends in one of our favourite couplets ever as Jelly reminisces about the times we was "either on the handlebars or the back of the pegs/shootin' an uzi tryna keep the curl bag on my head".



C-Bo's Mob Figaz - Mob Fashion



We're cheating with this one here as Mob Figaz use the word fashion to describe their demeanour in the streets rather than the contents of their wardrobe, but it does include references to clothing like "I pack the tek-9 in the waistline of my Polo's, no doubt/with a mob coat so the white folks can't see it bulging out" and and they rhyme "bulletproof glasses" with "mob fashion" and "tommy gun's blastin'" on the chorus so we're sneaking it in here anyway.



Husalah - Gear



It was tempting to go for So Ill, So Dope here, but sometimes the obvious choice really is the correct one since Gear is Hus's ultimate garms-joint lyrically and a far superior song in pretty much every other way. It's comforting to know that Hus' hits up eBay too and while we don't quite agree with him when he states "I don't love bitches, I love sneakers/British Knights and Filas, Jam Master Jay Adidas" we appreciate the sentiment all the same. Not quite sure about the "shockin' Stan Smiths with 501s", though, because they're some baby-momma kicks and a pair of butta suede States or Clydes would be a far cleaner look with the same silhouette (no homo.)

Tuesday 12 May 2009

I hate smart chicks but i love brains # 3

Alternative title : Suzi And The Broadbandshees.



Thank fuck Jason Bradbury announced that Suzi Perry is finally return to The Gadget Show next week in last night's episode. Streetz been missin' you, baby, and your replacement Gail Porter (who should be held directly responsible for ushering in an era of utterly braindead bints like Fearne Cotton) was bad enough with hair so she's utterly intolerable now she's got the Goody chrome-dome. Why didn't they hire my favourite low-brow satellite channel presenter bogtrotter-babe Suzanne Cowie as Suzi's temporary replacement instead? It would have made perfect sense since The Gadget Show is basically a dumping ground for ex-Trouble presenters like Jason and Ortis.

Anyway, we have mad love for Suzi here at The Martorialist for a variety of reasons, with the principal one being that she looks exactly like some bird in a Razzle Romp which we nicked from our old pal Bate sometime in 1996 or 1997 :





Here's a pic of Suzi in her bikini as a comparison :



*Schwing*



Mac Dre - Me Damac

Sunday 10 May 2009

Greatest movie scenes ever part 7

Back when I procured my first pair of Jordans I'd barely seen Michael Jordan play and the references to 'ballers like and Kareem and Barkley on 80s/early 90s rap records were totally lost on me at the time as the only exposure we had to basketball in those pre-Sky Sports days was in American high school flicks. Pretty much every classic 80s teen movie from Heathers to The Breakfast Club has a basketball scene but none were more memorable than the scene from Teen Wolf where Michael J. Fox first transmogrifies into wolfie in public during a particularly painful game when his team were being obliterated by a rival high school's team :



The caterpillar becomes the butterfly and all that. Of course, this scene was completely unrealistic, though; Not because Michael J. Box was playing a kid who could transform into a werewolf (it seems plausible as I've met hairier women who claimed to be fully human) but because, lycanthropic powers or not, there's no fucking way a dood as short as him would even get into a high school basketball team, let alone be able to dunk like that, is there? Whigga please.

And on a lycanthropic 80s movie related note, here's the beyond classic Wolfman's got nards!!! scene from The Monster Squad :



The Cramps - I Was A Teenage Werewolf

Wednesday 6 May 2009

Great songs from forgotten rap albums part 4



Lay-Lo - Take It Like A Gee



Lay-Lo - Simple And Plain



Came up on this 1999 album by Louisiana duo Max Minelli and J-Von from the Concentration Camp click a couple of years back when perusing Discogs for Young Bleed's guest appearances and it turned out to be a Baton Rogue gem with hazy classicist country-rap production by the bizarrely nom-de-plumed Happy Perez. I can't tell you much else about the group other than Max Minelli also featured heavily on Bleed's My Balls And My Word and Lil' Boosie's Youngest Of Da Camp debut before going on to carve out a very respectable solo career with the Me And My Hustle album being pretty essential if you dig this kinda thing, so let's just say this : if you're a fan of Young Bleed and Boosie & Webbie's 2 albums together or standard country-rap deities like UGK and 8Ball & MJG then this one will be right up your boulevard.



New Kingdom - Mexico Or Bust



New Kingdom - Animal



Back in the Wu, Mobb, Biggie 'n' 'Pac and old-skool revival obsessed days of 1996 these guys were just too strange to fit in anywhere. It's not like there wasn't weird-rap back then too, but it fell into 2 distinct camps : Kool Keith projects (mostly still good at that point) or drooling dreadlocked vagabonds rapping about how their third eye was a lyrical spherical emperial miracle over tepid trip-hop (bad, very bad); thankfully, this Brooklyn duo took an altogether different approach by firing gamma-rays at Redman's quasi-psychedelic Dare Iz A Dark Side album until it mutated and Hulked the fuck up into a full-on gnarled rap version of early Funkadelic/Hendrix. Mexico Or Bust was one of my favourite singles in a year which included alltime classics like Daytona 500 and Elevators, and Animal is some fuzzed-up and funked-out Maggot Brain type shit with one of the best opening lines you'll find this side of Shook Ones. Noz posted an excellent reappraisal about these guys recently but the general rap-nerd blogosphere still hasn't caught on yet, so I'm guessing it's pencilled in for 2011 right after we've all decided that Tricks Of The Shade by The Goats is better than AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted and Only Built 4 Cuban Linx?



AP.9 - Snitch's Worst Nightmare



The Jacka - Cocaine Race



Last year's Mob Trial 3 : The Verdict album is pretty much your garden variety cobbled together Mob Figaz compilation : a couple of good group tracks, a grip of filler, the obligatory barely audible interviews set to beats and 2 incredible solo joints. These albums tend to appear at a rate or about two per year and, unless you're a Mob Figaz die-hard, you probably don't pay them much attention but they're always worth trawling through to fish out those couple of joints like these 2 stand-out moments here, which are both on that late 80s Ice-T sinister-synth steez we talked about a while back; AP.9's jam is a good ol' fashioned Bay Area standard about killing snitches, while Jacka's song is little more than a handful of vocal samples and sound effects with a quick Jack' verse which sounds like it was written and recorded in under 10 minutes that, combined, somehow manages to amount to some stone-cold classic Mob shit. Bring on Tear Gas.



King Geedorah - Fazers



King Geedorah featuring Mr. Fantastik - Anti-Matter



I recently read a DOOM message board thread where a bunch of dudes were comparing and contrasting Born Like This with his previous releases before the discussion broke down into an eyewateringly inane back-and-forth between 4 plebeian arguing the merits of crap like the Vaudeville Villain albums or the godawful DangerDoom long player. The thread finally petered out after 8 pages without a single mention of Doom's King Geedorah album from 2003 and this absolutely appalls me since it contained some of his best work since I Hear Voices. I mean, sure, it was a patchy overall producer-album affair with a couple of great beats wasted on tracks which were beds for corny monster movie samples, and the much heralded Arrow Root instrumental was nullified by those unworthy backpacker dullards Scienz Of Life, but the album still featured 4 cuts of Dumile gold in Fazers, Anti-Matter with Mr. Fantastik, Final Hour and Fast Lane with Kurious. In a desert island disc scramble for DOOM discs, after Operation Doomsday I'd take this CD for those 4 songs over Madvillain or Mmm.. Food in a Lindsay Lohan cocaine heartbeat every damn time.

Sunday 3 May 2009

Martorial elegance # 20

Not a good look : the once great Giant Gonzalez now forced to lumber around the streets in the sort of cheap generic sportswear only found in Pakistani Del Boy owned market stalls in the most low-rent of grubby shopping precincts across the UK.



Also not a good look : being sussed taking sly snaps of mongoloids by the mongloids themselves due to the unfortunate combination of me fumbling with the crap button on my 2001 digi-cam and my associates repeatedly asking me if i'd got the picture yet which alerted Giant Gonzalez and his mate to our clandestine activities and his mate turning around at the exact moment the flash on the camera went off.

Young Jeezy - Don't Get Caught



Definately also not a good look material :



ROFL4ZAGGIHW at this embarrassing Mancunian clown catchin' a critical beatdown.

Friday 1 May 2009

Reasons why i <3 Youtube

Finally seeing the clip of Serge Gainsbourg telling Whitney Houston that he vants to fuck her live on French telly and watching girls blow up balloons with their arses are obviously the primary and secondary reasons why Youtube is the best site ever but it's also a fine tool for discovering videos you never knew existed for songs which you love.

Back in 1994 my folks got Sky for the football but, as someone who has listened to a steady diet of 90% American music since the abominable stench of Band Aid, i was more pleased that i'd no longer have to pay/bribe/beg people to tape me Yo! MTV Raps, 120 Minutes and Headbangers Ball anymore, but even then it was possible for videos to slip between the cracks (or to forget to set the video to tape 'em) and there was a plethora of stuff from the 80s which never made it onto European tv in the first place. Here's some favourites which i've discovered on Youtube during the past 4 or so years :

YZ - In Control Of Things



Y'know, i can never decide whether i prefer this or Freedom Of Speech by Above The Law. The one thing i am certain of is that both tunes bump. YZ's Batman Sucks tee and yellow coat are fresh but i could really do without his mate in the yellow speedos with the boom-box gettin' his Ravishing Rick Rude on in the background. R.I.P Tony D.

Bl'ast! - Surf And Destroy



What do i want from a Bl'ast! video? Clifford shaving his head and attacking the camera with a surfboard? Check. Scenes of the Santa Cruz skate team in action? Check. Stock news footage about the threat of nuclear war? Check. Mock-live scenes with the band thrashing about in a garage and Mike Neider in a Run Dmc shirt? Check. Some random chick who resembles Elke Sommers? Check.

UGK - Wood Wheel



If this ain't better than Pocket Full Of Stones remix then it's the closest one. It's a damn shame that a group who lasted from 1989 to 2007 have so few videos, with those crackers at Jive not even giving them the funds to shoot one for any song from Ridin' Dirty. Anyhoo, this was the first video they shot after Jay's Big Pimpin' gave them global exposure and any video which features Pimp and Bun riding horses and wearing cowboy hats is automatically the greatest cinematic achievement since Citizen Kane.

Handsome - Needles



Back in '93 a band consisting of members of Quicksand and Helmet was a wet dream for some of us but few years later it was a reality when both bands combined to form the short-lived but incredible Handsome. This was the solitary video they shot for their mini-album so it was nice of them to choose the best song from it as their single.

CPO & MC Ren - Ballad Of A Menace



These guys yet again. It's weird when you finally see people you're only familiar with from pictures on LP sleeves actually movin' around and stuff in videos, innit? Lil' Nation, it has to be said, is not a lil' bloke and this video is particularly notable as it features Donovan "The Dirt Biker" Sound AKA the Jake "The Snake" Roberts resembling cracker studio engineer (OMG - the gang$ta rap Rick Rubin/Paul C) who featured on pretty much every NWA/Ruthless Records related album from that era. The entire video is dripping in amazing vintage Raiders gear too.

Kyuss - One Inch Man



It was seeing the video to Green Machine which made sitting through hours of Faster Pussycat, Mordred, Ugly Kid Joe, Stone Temple Pilots and Dog Eat Dog videos and toadying,awkward interviews with the likes of Alice In Chains conducted by the braindead duo of Riki Rachtman and Vanessa Warwick on Headbangers Ball justifiable but i can't remember ever seeing any more Kyuss videos on there. Pretty much anything you'd expect from a Kyuss video (deserts, trippy effects, hair) is present and correct here.

Z-Ro & Trae - I Found Me



Hands up those of you who also used to trawl Blastro.com streaming Suga Free, Kingpin Skinny Pimp and Project Pat videos in the 2002 - 2004 pre-Youtube internet era? After discovering Z-Ro on 'Face's Snitch N*ggaz and devouring any of his catalogue i could find i was sorely disappointed that none of his videos were on Blastro. Thankfully when Youtube appeared a year or so later i was privvy to everything from videos for his classics like I Found Me to live footage of Mo City Don where the entire crowd chants every single line acapella.

The Cramps - Garbageman



Back in her prime Poison Ivy was a top 3 redhead of all time and the early records by The Cramps when they were taking trips to Memphis to record with Alex Chilton are still some of of the most deliriously fucked up scuzz-rock you'll ever hear. This is the one video they shot for their classic debut LP and, again, this is another one of those weird-seeing-people-you're-only-familiar-with-from-pictures-on-album-sleeves-moving-around-and-shit moments as, although i've seen Bryan Gregory throwin' rock god poses in grainy black & white super-8 cam footage on the supremely demented Live at Napa State mental institution dvd this is the first time i've ever seen video footage of him in colour.

Akinyele - I Luh Hur



Not only was Ak's Vagina Diner LP Large Pro's production peak but this is probably the best song about getting a bird up the duff ever made in any genre. The video captured the initial horror of getting some chickenhead pregnant and the resulting contradictory impulses of the male psyche which the song revolves around perfectly. The actual acting scenes with Ak' delivering lines with all the grace and pathos of a Channel 5 soap actor are the syrup on an already tasty cake.