Posse!

by · March 17, 2015

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Glyph

Glyph is worse than some and better than others. He believes that life is just one damned thing after another, that only pop music can save us now, and that mercy is the mark of a great man (but he's just all right). Nothing he writes here should be taken as an indication that he knows anything about anything.

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11 Responses

  1. greginak says:
    March 18, 2015 at 1:18 am

    mmm Nice stuff, into the wish list for them.Report

    • Glyph in reply to greginak says:
      March 18, 2015 at 8:58 am

      So I fell down a wikipedia rabbit hole this AM, following my revelation that Andre the Giant Has A Posse was kind of a pre-internet internet meme – the grainy B&W, plus the inclusion of Andre’s stats (7’4″, 520 LB) made the image look a bit like a “WANTED” poster (the use of the word posse, just as the rise of gangsta rap was bringing that word back into the common lexicon, probably added to this faux-outlaw impression).

      It was something completely nonsensical, where the humor comes largely not just from its inherent absurdity, but by unexpectedly encountering the meme in weird places, wherever some skate rat would have tagged it – I remember there was one high up on a ski lift pylon that must have entailed real risk to life and limb to the goof that stickered it there (nobody ever broke their neck Rickrolling people.)

      Anyway, I remembered there was at least one huge prior example, and it made me realize humans have been trolling each other with stupid s*it on real or virtual walls, for as long as there have been humans and walls. You just know that some dumbass caveman was repeatedly tagging rocks with pictograms of a mammoth playing pinochle or something.Report

      • aaron david in reply to Glyph says:
        March 18, 2015 at 9:46 am

        @glyph
        Think of all the photos of old NY subway cars. 90% of that was just guys trolling each other (and the city.)Report

      • Glyph in reply to Glyph says:
        March 18, 2015 at 9:58 am

        Oh yeah, but I think this is a very specific form of “graffiti” – like I said, the message itself has to be completely meaningless (it’s not the artist’s literal signature, nor does it really refer to anything, though it APPEARS to).

        The point is to make a message that is intentionally-confounding, AND to place that message where people don’t expect it to be (on that Kilroy link, there is reference to a possibly-apocryphal shipbuilding inspector who would tag later-inaccessible bulkheads and stuff during construction, so it will only be found later if that section of the ship is ever cut open for repair).

        For a while a friend of mine was tagging physical objects (insides of toilet tank lids, etc.) with a URL (www.friend’sname.com); at the time (haven’t looked recently), there was no such site.Report

      • Mike Schilling in reply to Glyph says:
        March 18, 2015 at 10:44 am

        the use of the word posse

        Inconceivable!Report

  2. dhex says:
    March 18, 2015 at 10:23 am

    mostly winged victory and old brian eno this week. new venetian snares (from last year). looking forward to the cut hands / prurient collab later this year. prurient is very hit or miss but i do enjoy cut hands about a billion times more than whitehouse.Report

  3. Chris says:
    March 18, 2015 at 10:52 am

    Nice. Very nice, actually. 90s again.

    I’ve been listening to the new Kendrick Lamar album, because it is amazing (it’s getting some heat from people who I think might have expected something more like “I,” its first single, and less but still a bit like “Blacker the Berry,” its second single, but it’s mostly like that incredible untitled track he played with my musical crush, Anna Wise, as Colbert’s last musical guest (and which doesn’t actually appear on the album, though Wise does a few times). I’ve only been at it for 3 days, and I haven’t taken time to step away, but man, right now I think it’s a work of genuine genius.

    Also, SXSW. My phone just told me I’ve reached my step goal for the year, and music only officially begins today.Report

    • Glyph in reply to Chris says:
      March 18, 2015 at 11:09 am

      I saw some people on AVClub complaining that they hadn’t reviewed the Kendrick Lamar yet, and other people saying that maybe that was good because the album needs more than a cursory listen.

      I haven’t heard it, but I just pulled up “The Blacker the Berry” on YouTube, and I like that old-school stripped-down boom-bap going on. I tried to listen to Run the Jewels last week and found the production a bit overstuffed; obviously that style can grow on you, but I just wasn’t feeling it at the time.Report

      • Chris in reply to Glyph says:
        March 18, 2015 at 11:29 am

        We saw RTJ Monday. Aside from a guy rushing Killer Mike, they were underwhelming, and the crowd was awful. Lamar gives KM a shout out on the new album, though.

        Kendrick though, man, “old-school,” and “stripped-down” are definitely accurate. He’s really reaching for hip hop roots: lots of reggae and jazz, in particular. Almost analytic in the way he breaks down the various pieces. It’s also very political in a direct rather than a by-proxy-via-labels way (as “Blacker the Berry” probably suggests). Here’s that Colbert track (with a few minutes of interview):

        http://on.cc.com/1w0tJoF

        If you can listen to “Momma” or “Institutionalized” from the new album, I highly recommend doing so.Report

    • Chris in reply to Chris says:
      March 19, 2015 at 2:03 pm

      Saw Viet Cong yesterday and Chance the Rapper last night. Chance had more energy than the rest of the acts I’ve seen combined, and was pretty damn amazing.Report

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