Ice-T -- "6 in the Mornin'" (1986)

Six in the morning, police at my door

Fresh Adidas squeak across the bathroom floor

Out the back window I make a escape

Don't even get a chance to grab my old school tape

Mad with no music, but happy 'cause I'm free

And the streets to a player is the place to be

Gotta knot in my pocket weighin' at least a grand

Gold on my neck, my pistols close at hand

I'm a self-made monster of the city streets

Remotely controlled by hard hip-hop beats

But just livin' in the city is a serious task

Didn't know what the cops wanted, didn't have the time to ask

It's time to leave New York City -- the birthplace of hip-hop -- and head to Los Angeles, where "gangsta" rap was invented.

Ice-T was not the best of the first generation of gangsta rappers, but his "6 in the Mornin'" was the first big gangsta rap hit.  And the album it appeared on -- Rhyme Pays -- was the first hip-hop album to carry a "Parental Advisory" warning label.

Ice-T was born Tracy Morrow.  His family lived in an affluent New Jersey suburb, but both his parents died of heart attacks when he was still a child.  So he moved to Los Angeles to live with an aunt.

Morrow graduated from Crenshaw High School, a poor, predominantly African-American high school.  Last year, according to the school district website, Crenshaw was about 2/3 black and 1/3 Hispanic.  It was 0.5% Asian and 0.2% white -- that means of its more than 1800 students, only about 10 were Asian and 4 were white.  

After high school, Morrow served in the U. S. Army for 4 years.  After his discharge, he was involved in a number of music-related projects.  For example, he wrote the "raps" for Mr. T's motivational video, Be Somebody . . . or Be Somebody's Fool!  Here's an excerpt from this video.

Ice-T eventually got a record deal and released Rhyme Pays in 1987.  "6 in the Mornin'" was released as a B side, but it is the only song that most people remember from this album.

The song is over 7 minutes long and consists of 32 4-line verses, the first 3 of which are quoted above.  Like many early rap songs, the song's basic building block is the rhyming couplet -- which means each pair of consecutive lines rhymes (AABBCCDD, etc.).

Rhyming couplets are one of the oldest and simplest rhyme schemes in poetry.  The Canterbury Tales are written in rhyming couplets.

The rhymes in rhyming couplets are often predictable, and poetry written in this form often sounds sing-songy.  "6 in the Mornin'" sounds like something my kids could have written when they were 12 years old or so.  

Rappers talk about "flow," which is the hip-hop equivalent of what jazz musicians mean when they talk about "swing."  Rap that flows (like jazz that swings) has a rhythmic momentum that is natural and irresistible.  Modern-day hip-hop tends to be much more complex and unpredictable than old-school rap, but it still can have flow.  

"6 in the Mornin'" does not have flow.  One reason for that is that every so often Ice-T tries to force way too many syllables into a line in order to complete a rhyme.  Most of the lines quoted above, for example, have 10 or 11 syllables.  A couple of them have 13 syllables, which pushes things pretty hard.  But the last line has 15 syllables, which is too many.

This song covers a lot of ground.  It begins with the singer hopping out the back window and escaping from the police who are knocking on his door.  He then hangs out on the corner, shooting dice and chatting up the fly girls.  

An Uzi

While cruising the streets later that day with a friend, the narrator is pulled over by the cops, who find a pistol, an Uzi, and a hand grenade in the car.  That lands him in the county jail, where he stabs another inmate in the eye and ends up spending 7 years in prison.

When he's released, his homeboys front some cash to him and he buys a Mercedes and starts pimping whores.  Here's perhaps the worst verse in the whole song:

I bought a Benz with the money, the rest went to clothes

Went to the strip, started pimpin' the hoes

My hair had grew long on my seven-year stay

And when I got it done, on my shoulders it lay

  

Tennyson

The worst part about this verse is the clumsy and artificial-sounding inversion of the natural sentence order in the last line.  "And when I got it done, on my shoulders it lay" -- are you kiddin' me?  Who talks like that?  That is right out of some lame 19th-century poem that your old-maid English teacher made you read in 1962.  (Alfred Lord Tennyson had better flow.)

Later, the narrator is involved in a shootout with rival gang members -- "Six punks hit, two punks died/All casualties applied to their side."  He then escapes from a SWAT team raid on his house, eludes the police in a high-speed chase, has a zesty session with his girlfriend ("She ran her tongue over each and every part of me/Then she rocked my amadeus as I watched TV"), and finally hops on a flight to New York City with a bail-jumping pal of his.

I'm exhausted and all I did was listen to "6 in the Mornin'."

Ice-T later became the poster boy for everything that parents and other authority figures hated about rap music when he released the song "Cop Killer," which is told from the point of view of a criminal plotting revenge against some racist cops.  We'll save that story for a future "Hip Hop 101" lecture.

Ice-T's first major motion-picture role was as one of the good guys in New Jack City, a film about a crack kingpin that co-starred Wesley Snipes, Mario Van Peebles, and a very young Chris Rock.  He's been a regular on Law & Order since 2000.

Here's the cover of Gangsta Rap, the only album he's released in the last decade.  That's his wife, Nicole "Coco" Austin, with him on the cover:

Ice-T was arrested in New York City in 2010 for not wearing a seatbelt while driving his bulldog to the veterinarian for knee surgery.  I don't know about you, but I'm a little disappointed this original gangsta rapper didn't pull out an Uzi and shoot it out with the cops, or at least lead them on a high-speed chase through the streets of New York.  

Here's "6 in the Mornin'":

Here's a link you can use to order an abridged version of the song from iTunes:

Here's a link you can use to order it from Amazon:

Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel -- "Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)" (1975)

Blue eyes, blue eyes

How can you tell so many lies?

It's so strange to hear a record you used to listen to over and over, but haven't heard in decades.  Of course, it's strange to be old enough to remember doing anything decades ago.  

Until I got married and settled down in Washington, I packed up and moved frequently – from school to my parents' house every summer and back to school every fall for seven years, then from one apartment to another every year or so when I got out of school and was single and ready to mingle.

What I took with me when I packed up and headed out was usually what would fit in my car, and that meant stuff was constantly getting left behind.

I must have left my Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel album at my parents' house at some point, although it could be squirreled away somewhere in my basement.  

In any event, I haven't seen it in years – it's probably been at least 30 or 35 years since I heard this song.  Until tonight, that is, when I decided to write a post for my series about the records I listened to in law school.

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Steve Harley was a Londoner.  He attended a very highly regarded secondary school that specialized in music education.  Its name – I kid you not – was Haberdashers' Aske's Hatcham College.  (I'm telling you, those Brits are wack!)

Haberdashers' Aske's Hatcham College today

He formed Cockney Rebel in 1972, and the band quickly became popular.  But after a UK tour in support of its second album, The Psychomodo, most of the other band members quit – apparently Harley was a bit hard to take.  

He formed a new Cockney Rebel in 1974 (putting his name out in front) and released The Best Years of Our Lives album–- which included "Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)" – early the next year.

Steve Harley

"Make Me Smile" was a #1 hit single in the UK, and sold over a million copies worldwide.  But it peaked at #96 in the U.S.  

I must have heard it on good ol' WBCN in Boston – my go-to rock station in those days – and probably bought the A Closer Look album (a 1975 album consisting of songs selected from Harley's earlier UK albums that was released only in the US) at the Harvard Co-op.  But I wouldn't swear to it.

*     *     *     *     *

"Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)" is a very odd song.  It's very dated – perhaps not as dated as Harley's haircut and outfit – but very dated nonetheless.  

It's been used on the soundtracks of at least half a dozen movies (most notably The Full Monty), and there have been an amazing 120-odd cover versions of the song recorded.  The most well-known cover version is Duran Duran's, which is pretty awful.

I do still like the song.  But I don't plan to dig through the old albums in my parents' garage the next time I visit them so I can repatriate it to my house.  I've got a turntable, but I haven't played a vinyl LP on it in 10 or 15 years.  And if I ever do break that fast and play a record on it again, it won't be this one.

Do any of you remember Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel?  I have a feeling someone among my friends will – but I wouldn't be shocked if all I got in reaction to this post was shrugs and blank looks.

Click here to watch the official music video for "Make Me Smile."  It features some of the least convincing lip-synching you'll ever see.

Click on the link below to buy the record from Amazon:

Boogie Down Productions -- "The Bridge Is Over" (1987)

What's the matter with your MC, Marley Marl?

Don't know you know that he's out of touch?

What's the matter with your DJ, MC Shan?

On the wheels of steel Marlon sucks

You'd better change what comes out your speaker

You're better off talkin' 'bout your wack Puma sneaker

Cause Bronx created hip-hop

Queens will only get dropped

You're still tellin' lies to me

Everybody's talkin' 'bout the Juice Crew

Funny, but you're still tellin' lies to me

Do those last two lines remind you of the last two lines of another song?

That song was a #1 hit by a singer whose music was about as far from hip-hop as popular music can be.  Surprisingly, it's not featured in the 2002 "jukebox musical" based on many of his hits.

If that's not enough of a clue, here are the two final lines from that singer's song:

Everybody's talkin' 'bout the new sound

Funny, but it's still rock and roll to me

If you still don't get it, don't worry -- I'll embed both songs at the end of this post.

In a previous "Hip Hop 101" lecture, we discussed the numerous "Roxanne" answer songs.  The first and most successful of those songs resulted from a collaboration between 15-year-old Roxanne Shanté and Marley Marl, a very influential DJ and early hip-hop "superproducer."

DJ Marley Marl

Marley Marl is responsible for a number of innovations in the art of sampling, and was the greatest beatmaker of his day -- he was one of the first producers to lift beats from James Brown's opus.  He founded a record label that released records by Big Daddy Kane, Biz Markie, and other first-rate New York City rappers.

When the Juice Crew -- a hip-hop collective that Marley Marl had helped to found, and which was best known for its many answer records -- released a song titled "The Bridge," they found themselves the target of this answer song from rival Boogie Down Productions.

KRS-One in 1984

Boogie Down Productions -- let's call them BDP -- was a South Bronx rap group with something of a Jamaican sound.  Its membership changed constantly over the years, but the two most prominent BDP members during "The Bridge Wars" were KRS-One and Scott La Rock.   They interpreted "The Bridge" as claiming that hip-hop had originated in the Queensbridge section of Queens, which was the home of Marley Marl, Roxanne Shanté, and most of the other members of the Juice Crew.

The lyrics quoted above question the DJ'ing skills of Marley Marl (who was born Marlon Williams) and also diss MC Shan.  The dissing gets very personal:

You can't sound like Shan or the one Marley

Because Shan and Marley Marl dem-a-rhymin' like they gay

It gets worse than that, boys and girls -- when you listen to "The Bridge Is Over" in its entirety, make sure the kiddies aren't listening.

"The Bridge Wars" was one of the classic rap "beefs," and quickly escalated.  It cooled somewhat when Scott La Rock was shot and killed shortly after "The Bridge" was released -- his death was unrelated to "The Bridge Wars" -- and his BDP partner, KRS-One, became heavily involved in the "Stop the Violence Movement" after a young fan was killed at a BDP concert a year later.

But the hatchet wasn't officially buried until 2007, when KRS-One and Marley Marl collaborated on the Hip-Hop Lives album.

Here's a lengthy Wikipedia article on "The Bridge Wars."

And here's a brief excerpt from the Beef video about "The Bridge Wars" -- it will at least give you a taste of the personalities involved.

Here's "The Bridge Is Over":

And here's Billy Joel's "It's Still Rock and Roll To Me" -- the song quoted above:

Here's a link you can use to buy the song from iTunes:

Here's a link to use if you prefer to use Amazon:

Todd Rundgren -- "Heavy Metal Kids" (1974)

Go on and poison all the water, use up all the air

Blow your stupid heads off, see if I could care

Put me down but don't blame me for what you did

'Cause inside everyone is a heavy metal kid

It's time for the second installment in our series of posts about records that were favorites of mine when I when in law school.

This song appeared on Todd Rundgren's 1974 double album, Todd.  I was still in college when the album was released, but didn't buy it until I was in law school.

Back in those days, I bought a lot of cut-out albums.  As some of you will remember, record stores used to have bargain bins with records that had a small hole punched in their covers -- or their upper-right-hand corners were cut off.   

Why were cut-outs physically disfigured in this way?  In those days, record stores  were able to return albums that didn't sell to the record companies for credit.  The record companies sold these returned records (or unsold records that had never left their warehouses and had been deleted from their catalogs due to poor sales) in bulk at a large discount.  Retailers who handled cut-outs would offer them to consumers at half the regular price or less.  The manufacturers would punch a hole or snip off one corner of the album's cover to prevent the retailer from selling the album at the regular price.

Click here to learn more about cut-out and promotional LPs and CDs.

When I was buying records in the 1960s and 1970s, albums usually retailed for $3.99, $4.99 or $5.99.  First-generation cut-outs would go for $1.99 -- a bargain for an album that you knew had a number of good songs.  I remember buying cut-out LPs for as little as 33 cents.  At that price, you could buy an album that had only one good song -- if you discovered that it had anything else worthwhile on it, that was like free music.

I probably got this album for $1.99 somewhere in Harvard Square.  Given that it was a double album, that was a great price.  Like most double albums, Todd has a few weak tracks, but it has a number of good ones -- so I did OK. 

On the surface, "Heavy Metal Kids" scores high for attitude.  Like other classic rock songs (e.g., "My Generation" and "Get Off Of My Cloud" and "(You Gotta) Fight For your Right (To Party!)" and pretty much anything by Iggy Pop -- but especially "Search and Destroy"), it is sung by an angry young man who is pissed off at just about anyone who is older than he is -- but especially his father. 

I'm not sure Todd Rundgren really meant it, however.  The second verse doesn't sound all that serious:

I must have woke up this morning

With a bug up my ass

I think I'll just haul off 

And belt the next jerk that I pass

My old man says 

I'm just a stoned little punk

But he keeps himself a pistol 

And he's always drunk

Note the lines above about the singer's hypocritical father, which are a precursor to similar lines in the Beastie Boys' "Fight for Your Right":

Your pops caught you smokin' 

And he said "No way!"

That hypocrite smokes 

Two packs a day

But the tongue-in-cheekiness level climbs even higher in the final verse.  It's an understatement to describe this verse as hyperbolic -- so I have concluded that Todd is having a bit of fun with his audience:

I was a sweet little kid once

Now I'm a full grown crank

And when I die I'll probably

Come back as a Sherman tank

I know that I could make this world 

So peaceful and calm

If I could only get my hands 

On a hydrogen bomb

Al Kooper

Todd Rundgren is one of the few rock musicians that I believe fully deserves to be called a genius.  (The album that immediately preceded Todd was titled A Wizard, A True Star.  Exactly.)  Another example of such a genius is Al Kooper -- both are true renaissance men.  

Rundgren is a very good singer and musician, and he's a great songwriter -- he wrote pop classics like "Hello, It's Me" and "I Saw the Light."  (Rundgren's early songwriting was heavily influenced by Laura Nyro, so he knew what he was up to from the very beginning.) 



But what really sets Rundgren apart is his record as a producer and recording engineer. 

Meat Loaf

He is the brains behind albums as disparate as Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell (one of the ten best-selling albums of all time) and XTC's Skylarking, which was subtle and unique and ahead of its time and an almost perfect concept album.



He also produced albums by the New York Dolls, Badfinger, Grand Funk Railroad, Hall & Oates (no one's perfect!), Patti Smith, the Tubes (Al Kooper also produced a Tubes album), Cheap Trick, and the Psychedelic Furs.  (If you plugged those names into Pandora, I wonder what you would get?  It boggles the mind.)  

Here's "Heavy Metal Kids."  (Don't be put off by the first few seconds of the song -- that unpleasant noise is part of the transition between this track and the previous one.)

Here's a link you can use to buy the song from iTunes:

Here's a link you can use if you prefer Amazon:

Rage Against the Machine -- "Renegades of Funk" (2000)

We're the renegades, we're the people

With our own philosophies

We change the course of history

Everyday people like you and me

C'mon!

We're the renegades of funk

Rage Against the Machine (or "RATM") was a big deal in the 1990's.  The group put out four rap/metal albums that were described by critic Jason Ankeny as containing "fiercely polemical music, which brewed sloganeering leftist rants against corporate America, cultural imperialism, social inequality, and government oppression into a Molotov cocktail of punk, hip-hop and thrash."

Tom Morello

Understatement was not RATM's forte.  The band's music and its lyrics were about as subtle as a sawed-off shotgun.  Not surprisingly, the founder of the band -- guitarist Tom Morello -- was a Harvard graduate.

Morello's life has some very close parallels to the life of President Barack Obama.  Morello's mother was a white Midwesterner and his father was a Kenyan politician.  (In fact, Morello's father -- who denied his paternity -- was the Kenyan ambassador to the United Nations and the brother of Kenya's first elected president, Jomo Kenyatta.)  Like Obama, Morella ended up at Harvard -- although Morello's Harvard degree was from the college, while Obama's is from the law school.

Unlike our President, however, Morello once worked as a male exotic dancer to put food on the table.  He did a lot of bachelorette parties.  His go-to song to strip to was the classic by the Commodores, "Brick House."  (I bet a few of you have heard "Brick House" at a strip joint or bachelor/bachelorette party, haven't you?)

Also unlike the President, Morello decided early he had no interest in politics.  Here's what he had to say about working for U.S. Senator Alan Cranston (Dem-Calif.) in the late 1980's:

"I never had any real desire to work in politics but if there was any ember burning in me, it was extinguished working in that job because of two things: one of them was the fact that 80 per cent of the time I spent with the Senator, he was on the phone asking rich people for money. It just made me understand that the whole business was dirty. . . . The other was the time a woman phoned up to the office and wanted to complain that there were Mexicans moving into her neighborhood. I said to her, 'Ma'am, you're a damn racist,' and she was indignant. I thought I was representing our cause well, but I got yelled at for a week by everyone for saying that! I thought to myself that if I'm in a job where I can't call a damn racist a damn racist, then it's not for me."

Morello very quickly saw through to the reality of American politicians -- good for him.  Did I mention that he and I share the same birthday?  (Also, we were born 12 years apart, so we share the same sign of the Chinese zodiac -- we were born in the year of the DRAGON, baby!)

RATM's cover of "Renegades of Funk" is on their last album, which was titled Renegades.  It consisted entirely of covers -- about half of the tracks were hip-hop covers, while the rest included covers of songs by Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Devo, MC5, the Rolling Stones, and the Stooges.

Here's the Renegades album cover.

It's a parody of the famous Robert Indiana pop art painting, "LOVE."

RATM singer Zack de la Rocha took exception to the band's decision to release a collection of covers as an album.  He quit the band, stating that "our decision-making process has completely failed."  De la Rocha sounds like a real pain in the ass, and his political beliefs are about twice as half-baked as Morello's.  (Does that make them "quarter-baked"?)  But he can sing, and RATM's music is often very, very compelling stuff.

RATM generally chose good songs to cover on Renegades, but their versions of those songs are a mixed bag.  I think this cut is one of the best.

The music video for this song is brilliant.  It has shots of all the early-day rappers we've been talking about plus a lot of others that we'll cover in the near future, not to mention archival video of all kinds of political renegades.

Here's a link you can use to buy "RATM's "Renegades of Funk" from iTunes:

Here's a link you can use if you prefer Amazon:

Afrika Bambaataa and Soul Sonic Force -- "Renegades of Funk" (1983)

From a different solar system

Many, many galaxies away

We are the force of another creation

A new musical revelation

And we're on this musical mission

To help the others listen . . .

We're the renegades of funk

[NOTE:  Heads are going to roll when I get back to the 2 or 3 lines headquarters tomorrow.  If you keep reading, you'll see that this post should have gone up over a month ago -- before the Run-DMC "Kings of Rock" post.  2 or 3 lines is embarrassed and chagrined, and someone is going to pay for this.]

In today's "Hip Hop 101" lecture, we're going to learn about another first-generation New York City hip hop DJ.  By the way, this is the last lecture in the first unit of Hip Hop 101, which I call "The Godfathers of Hip-Hop: New York, 1979-1983."  Our next unit -- which is titled "The Next Generation of New York City Rappers, 1983-1988" on the course syllabus -- will cover Run-DMC, the Beastie Boys, Eric. B & Rakim, Boogie Down Productions, and others. 

Keith Donovan, who was born in the South Bronx in 1957, was one of the warlords of the "Black Spades" street gang.  But a trip to Africa inspired him to disavow violence and to found the Universal Zulu Nation, a group of socially and politically aware rappers, artists, dancers, and other members of the hip hop community.  He changed his name to Afrika Bambaataa after a Zulu chief who had led an armed rebellion in early 2oth-century South Africa.  

Afrika Bambaataa

Bambaataa defined hip hop culture as having four elements: DJ'ing, rapping by MCs, breakdancing (whose practitioners were called "b-boys," or "break-boys"), and graffiti art.  His philosophy can be summed up by the first line of a 1984 record he did with James Brown: "Peace, unity, love, and having fun!" 

Bambaataa was a very popular DJ who organized hip hop block parties all over the South Bronx.  He then started to perform at Manhattan "new wave" venues like the Mudd Club (where bands like the Talking Heads and the B-52s played) and the Roxy.  

DJ Kool Herc

Like Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa learned a lot from Clive Campbell, a young immigrant from Kingston, Jamaica, which DJ'ed under the name DJ Kool Herc.  DJ Kool Herc is credited with inventing the DJ'ing technique of using two turntables to alternate between two copies of the same record, which allowed him to extend the instrumental "breaks."  But unlike Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa, DJ Kool Herc never made records.

Bambaataa's first hit record, "Planet Rock," was released in 1982, the same year that Bambaataa took a number of Zulu Nation performers on a European tour.  "Planet Rock" borrowed elements from Kraftwerk's music, and is considered the first electro-funk song.

Here's a video of "Planet Rock" with a lot of old video footage that captures what Bambaataa's Universal Zulu Nation was all about:




"Renegades of Funk" was released as a single the next year, but didn't appear on an album until 1986.  It places current-day rappers in the context of renegades from previous generations, including Tom Paine, Sitting Bull, and Malcolm X.

Here's "Renegades of Funk":

Here's a link you can use to buy Afrika Bambaataa's "Renegades of Funk" from iTunes:

Here's a link to use if you prefer Amazon:

Scala & Kolacny Brothers -- "Raintears" (2008)

And in another place

Your kiss would dry my face . . .
And in another place
I'd heal in your embrace

Today is an important date for 2 or 3 lines – and to paraphrase the famous line often attributed (and likely misattributed) to King Louis XIV of France, "Le 2 or 3 lines, c'est moi."  

I had originally planned to observe the date by writing about a French chanson, "Avec le temps," and one of the many singers who recorded it – Dalida.  My regular readers will be able to guess who introduced me to this song.

(I originally took a little detour here and inserted an extended paraphrase of the opening paragraph of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities – "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," etc.  But I wisely decided to use my "delete" key instead.  I just noticed that my "delete" key still looks brand new.  Most of the other keys on my computer keyboard are pretty worn, but the "delete" key has hardly been touched.)

"Avec le temps" is not a happy song.  The French do melancholy better than anyone,  and this song is as melancholic as it gets.  Not only that, but Dalida's life – and the lives of several of the men she loved – ended very badly.

Dalida's grave (Montmartre Cemetery, Paris)

Writing about "Avec le temps" would have been an irresistible temptation to wallow in self-pity and depression.  I don't need any encouragement to dive into the Slough of Despond, so I've put a quote from "Avec le temps" on 2 or 3 lines a day today and left it at that for the time being.

*     *     *     *     *

Not that the song I am writing about today is exactly cheery.  But although "Raintears" is a sad song, but there was no risk that I would internalize its sadness and make it my own.  Listening to it – and watching the video it accompanies – makes me sad for the young woman who sings the song, it doesn't make me sad for myself.  You may not realize it, but you just dodged a bullet!

(The 2 or 3 lines marketing department is no doubt tearing its collective hair out at this point.  "This post is so depressing!" I can hear them moaning.  "Does he really think this is the way to get people to click on our ads?  Anyone who does read all the way to the end isn't going to feel like clicking on our ads – they'll be too busy slitting their wrists.")

I heard "Raintears" for the first time last week when I saw Scala & Kolacny Brothers perform live at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC.

The 9:30 Club – originally located at 930 F Street, N.W. – is a storied Washington institution.  It was the place to go in the DMV for punk, new wave, and alternative music.  Over the years, everyone from the Police to X to the Go-Go's to the Psychedelic Furs to the Ramones to the Smashing Pumpkins performed there.  I took my 15-year-old son to see Sonic Youth there in 1998 – that may have been my last visit until last week.  (Mea culpa.  Mea maxima culpa.)

The Bad Brains at the 9:30 Club circa 1983

 I think the golden age of the 9:30 Club was the 1980's, when "harDCore" bands like Fugazi, Government Issue, and Minor Threat played there, along with other local favorites like the Urban Verbs, Insect Surfers, and Tru Fax & the Insaniacs.

Here's a link to a CD featuring live 9:30 Club performances by a number of different bands.

*     *     *     *     *

The 9:30 Club isn't quite as crazy a place as it was in the 1980s, but it is sort of an odd venue for an act like Scala & Kolacny Brothers.

The Scala girls visit Washington, DC

I've written about Scala & Kolacny Brothers before.  Scala is a Belgian girls' choir that originally performed classical choral music, but switched over to singing choral arrangements of pop/rock/alternative music – Radiohead, U2, Metallica, Nirvana, Alanis Morissette, Kings of Leon, etc.  (I suppose "young women's choir" would be more accurate, but I say "girls" because the group's members are between the ages of 16 and 26, which roughly covers the age range of my children.) 

The Kolacny Brothers are Stijn (who conducts the choir) and Steven (who accompanies them on the piano and does their arrangements).  Steven also has written a number of original songs for Scala, including "Raintears."  (The lyrics for "Raintears" were written by Jo Dawson, but I haven't been successful in uncovering much about her.) 

Scala in performance

Scala performed this song about halfway through the concert.  The animated video that accompanies the song was projected on a big screen over the choir's heads, and I found the video very interesting and the song very interesting right off the bat.  When I located it online and listened to it a couple of more times, I was hooked. 

The whole of "Raintears" – the combination of video, music, and lyrics – is greater than the sum of the parts.  It's a remarkable but quiet tour de force.  The volume ranges from soft to quite loud, but the emotional volume is always relatively low.  It's intense and exhilarating, but calming you at the same time.

Before you watch the video, click here and read the printed lyrics.  I think most people who just had the printed lyrics to go by would say that "Raintears" is a fairly straightforward girl-meets-boy, girl-loses-boy love song.

But the video depicts a very different story.  The narrator is a young nun, riding a train with a group of other nuns and looking at a photo album consisting of pictures of her and her parents.  It's a stormy day, and the rain falling on the train windows looks somewhat like tears – hence the song's title.  

It soon becomes clear that the young nun's parent swere killed in an automobile accident when she was a child.  The nuns took her in, educated her, and she joined the order herself.

From the "Raintears" video

I'll let you tell me what the ending of the video means.  It puzzles me, but I am very literal-minded at times – you might find the ending very transparent.

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Until I heard this song, my favorite Scala & Kolacny Brothers recordings were songs like Alanis Morissette's "You Oughta Know" and Radiohead's "Creep" (which is by far their best-known performance thanks to its being used as the soundtrack for the trailer for The Social Network).  The contrast between the ethereal sound of this girls' choir and the angry, bitter, profane lyrics of songs like those is quite startling.

Click here to view the last 30 seconds or so of Scala's 9:30 Club performance of "You Oughta Know."

And click here for a brief taste of their performance of "Creep."  (The choir usually sings English without much of an accent, but listen to the way they pronounce "weirdo."  It's weird.)

Scala's version of "I Touch Myself" – click here if you missed what 2 or 3 lines had to say about it – is also a real attention-getter.

The group's recordings of songs like Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" and "California Dreamin'" are very nice, but there's no frisson of impropriety to spice them up a little.

But "Raintears" has shown me that Scala is more than what I thought they were – and that Steven Kolacny knows how to write music that is perfectly suited to the choir's talents.

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Click here to view the "Raintears" video.

Here's a link you can use to order the song from Amazon: