bob tarantino

The Deep Funk 12.31.2007

Damn - been a while, eh?  Belatedly, my favourite songs of 2007.  In no particular order.  I had been aiming for ten, but, um, couldn't think of any others.  Andrew Potter, one of the country's brightest commentators, frowns on year-end "best of" lists because it's "like trying to shoehorn the stream of sense-data into the artificial January-to-December format".  Which is correct, and yet terribly lame.  This is about bringing down the house.  Here goes.

• Linkin Park, Bleed It Out - I like hearing Binnington shred his throat into certain polyp territory, but what really puts this over the top is when Shinoda suppresses a laugh at about 0:17 - like he knows just how good this is going to get.

• Rihanna, Umbrella - one day, someone will do an acoustic cover version of this song that will rule the world.  They just need to eliminate the "ella, ella, ella" bit.  Really.

• Kanye West, Stronger - oh!

• White Stripes, You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As Your Told) - not as strong an album as their previous two, but the best band of this decade keeps crafting perfect pop tunes.

• Avril Lavigne, Hot - in a very deep and fundamental way, I cannot stand Avril Lavigne.  Notwithstanding, this song kicks.

• Matchbox 20 (or however they're spelling their name this year), How Far We've Come - the video also helpfully (if inexplicably) functions as a Democratic Party ad.

• Feist, 1,2,3,4 - yes, the most annoying song of the year, but, hey, you try writing one this good 

• Finger Eleven, Paralyzer - does anyone else remember when this band was called Rainbow Butt Monkeys? Can anyone tell what song they pinched the riff from?

The Deep Funk 12.06.07

The 1980s were a profoundly debilitating decade for the Rolling Stones: not once during those years, and never again, would they be capable of putting together a strong album - it was the decade in which they were reduced to (or returned to being) a strong singles band (it would be in the late 1990s that they would be humbled from even that reduced position).  But those ten years are entirely underappreciated - some of their strongest songs were released.  Herewith, in a unique three-fer, highlights from an otherwise lost decade:

• Waiting On a Friend (actually recorded in the 1970s, but not released until 1981 - featuring a gloriously zonked Ron Wood)

• One Hit to the Body (without debate, a hell of a song - featuring Mick with eyeliner)

• Mixed Emotions (a lost classic - featuring Mick sans eyeliner but inexplicably with that blue and yellow leotard getup (we put up with alot, us Stones fans...))

The Deep Funk 11.18.07

The 15-year old Bob Tarantino contained somewhere inside me just died in a fit of gnarliness: check out this two-part interview of Guns N' Roses from 1987, taking place at CBGB's.  Slash is completely out of his gourd, and still chugging more from a fifth of Jack Daniel's - watching his multiple failed attempts to put on his sunglasses is alone worth the wait.  Steven Adler eventually apparently just wanders away from the table, and Axl comes across as a surprisingly decent guy - at one point he punches the air in apparently genuine joy at the prospect of opening up for Motley Crue a few days after the interview. It's about twenty minutes out of your life, but so worth it.

The Deep Funk 05.18.07

For the long week-end, The Joel Plaskett Emergency's Nowhere With You (sometimes known as the Zellers song, but I prefer to call it the the-fact-that-this-song-was-not-a-massive-worldwide-number-one-hit-is-yet-further-proof-that-the-music-industry-blows song) (oh, you'll need to ignore the fact that the video montage consists of Pirates of the Caribbean stills, and the fact that an entirely different song comes up at the end of the track - such are the joys of YouTube):

The Deep Funk 04.03.07

It's been a while since the last installment of The Deep Funk, but this video certainly warrants attention - we present "White Chicks & Gang Signs".  Awesome.

The Deep Funk 03.17.07

Here's another one for the "Things I Never Thought I'd Write" folder: Carrie Underwood rocking the holy hell out of "Sweet Child O' Mine".  No, seriously.

The Deep Funk 03.03.07

It's been a while.  Anyways.  While hip hop pretty much owns the patent on the diss track, let the record show that there was significant prior art: "Sweet Home Alabama" was such a devastating response to "Southern Man" that Neil Young's essentially been irrelevant ever since.  History doesn't record who the poor bastard was that prompted the Dandy Warhols' recording of "Not If You Were the Last Junkie On Earth", but this is as good an example as you'll find of a band too smart to enjoy significant commercial success.

The Deep Funk 02.01.07

You've just released an album which will go on to sell more than ten million copies and you've become one of the biggest rock stars of late-90s rip n' read boom America.  What do you do for an encore?  Sample a Metallica song, gather up a bunch of rednecks, muscle cars, explosions, fur coats, porn stars and your "midget" sidekick Joe C., and let loose with some of the flyest boasts a white guy from Detroit ever did see.

The Deep Funk 01.09.07

In 1999, the band Buckcherry released a pretty decent rawk album which contained the absolutely phenomenal song "Lit Up", which, if you're in any kind of bar which is worth visiting, will completely bring down the house when it gets played. 

In a somewhat bizarre illustration of the different American and Canadian audiences for music, in 2006 Buckcherry released a song which, if anything, managed to top their previous effort, and was probably the best rock single of the year.  It sorta revived their career in the US; in Canada, nobody heard it.  Here's the completely gratuitous video, which is wicked, wicked NSFW.  I've been unable to find a version which doesn't censor the lyrics, but it's not like reading Pynchon or anything - you'll get the idea pretty quick.  When I was growing up, this was the kind of band I wanted to be in.  Then I went bald.

The Deep Funk 01.05.07

People say the Bee Gees suck.  People don't know.

The Deep Funk 12.24.06

So, we'll be going dark for a couple of days.  To tide you over, here's the greatest Christmas song ever written.  Or at least the greatest Christmas song that appeared in Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

The Deep Funk 12.16.06

And more: Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards cover the sh*t out of Billy Bragg's "To Have and Have Not".

The Deep Funk 12.15.06

The latest installment in our tour of music awesomeness: Weezer's "Perfect Situation".

Video highlight: 3:08-3:15.  You'll figure it out.

The Deep Funk 12.10.06

Based on a very late-night conversation with a number of very fine individuals at the legendary New Ho King (for a strongly dissenting opinion, see Torontoist), I learned a number of things:

• never order the tilapia
• the hot chili-looking things in the spicy shredded beef really are hot chili-looking things, and should not be eaten
• people clearly require my assistance in finding good music

Hence, the inaugural edition of The Deep Funk, you helpful guide to the music you've probably been overlooking.  But no more!  TDF will only deliver songs that are guaranteed to mess you up.  First up, "Bringin' on the Heartbreak" by the Lep - bonus features: this is such an early video that they eventually give up bothering to try and synch the band's actions with the song - at about the two minute mark, nothing matches up.  Also, the drummer still has two arms.