Rich Kids Of Instagram

You may - or may not - have heard of the website Rich Kids Of Instagram; it is exactly what you have in mind: a blog-type site compiling the ''best'' (i.e. the worst, if you're in your right mind) Instagram pictures of trust-fund young adults spending way too much money on futile things and living the life of luxury you wouldn't even think a rock star would have, 'cause, you know, rock stars are busy touring making that moolah.

Among which:

But my favourite of all, because all the questions you might have regarding it can be answered by ''because I can'':

''That's right, bro: put the lion on the 'rari.'' We're assuming he's already had the car and cat race, that the feline's name is 'Rocky' or 'Rocco', and that a pound of cocaine will go through this asshole's nose by the end of the month.

Every single one of those pictures (and the hundreds more on the site) will lead you to wonder in amazement: if the money spent on what is in this very picture - not on that day, just right there - would have gone to a good cause, how little would it have hurt them financially, and how much of a difference could it have made in countless needy people's lives?

And then... reality kicks in.

Reality TV, that is.

Because the site's been so successful, E! is producing Rich Kids of Beverly Hills, a show that will feature many of the site's over-indulgers, though the site itself will not be a part of it nor compensated for inspiring it.

I'm kind of appalled that those fuckers be glorified exactly in the manner they'd wish to be (on TV, doing what they do, as if their behaviour was to be condoned and encouraged), yet as we have seen with TV's highest-rated show, Honey Boo-Boo, it could serve as a warning on how not to raise your kids.

Who am I kidding? No one over the age of 5 learns anything from TV, except that if you behave badly enough, you'll get on there. If you're poor, Cops and Judge Judy will be there if you act in a criminal manner and Maury will be there if you've merely displayed illogical behaviour; and if you're rich, you can start flashing all your money on programs like this one and Meet The Kardashians, and move on to Celebrity Rehab when you start your descent into the inevitable.

Anna Kendrick's Pearls Of Wisdom

I will admit I am not well versed in matters pertaining to Anna Kendrick, though I have seen 50/50 and Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World and plan on seeing Drinking Buddies and Up In The Air.

I hope to never see any of the Twilight movies, and despise musicals so much I ditched an opportunity to watch Pitch Perfect for free...

I guess I may have mistaken her for Isla Fisher's younger sister... maybe I should get to writing a script providing me with just that!

In the meantime, though, The Celebrity Cafe has compiled a list of her top-10 tweets, and I have to admit there's some pretty witty stuff in there!

This Week's Top 10

Top 10 Songs:

10. SUBWAY, Yeah Yeah Yeahs (2013)
9. LEAVE BEHIND, Martha Wainwright (2012)
8. CLOSER, Tegan And Sara (2013)
7. ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER (Bob Dylan cover), Eddie Vedder & Million Dollar Bashers (2007)
6. CHARLOTTE SOMETIMES, The Cure (1981)
5. YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH, Metric (2012)
4. BORN ON THE FM WAVES OF THE HEART, Against Me! featuring Tegan Quinn (2007)
3. WHITE PEOPLE FOR PEACE, Against Me! (2007)
2. DESPAIR, Yeah Yeah Yeahs (2013)
1. FOUR BLACK SHEEP, Martha Wainwright (2012)


Top 10 Nirvana Songs:

10. THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD (David Bowie cover), MTV Unplugged In NY (1994)
9. PENNYROYAL TEA, In Utero (1993)
8. WHERE DID YOU SLEEP LAST NIGHT? (Lead Belly cover), MTV Unplugged In NY (1994)
7. SAPPY/VERSE CHORUS VERSE, No Alternative compilation (1993)
6. SCENTLESS APPRENTICE, In Utero (1993)
5. PLATEAU (Meat Puppets cover), MTV Unplugged In New York (1994)
4. HEART-SHAPED BOX, In Utero (1993)
3. LAKE OF FIRE (Meat Puppets cover), MTV Unplugged In New York (1994)
2. LOUNGE ACT, Nevermind (1991)
1. LOVE BUZZ (Shocking Blue cover), Bleach (1989)

Five covers? Absolutely, that represents how I feel about this band in general. Three from the same record? That's how highly I think of In Utero, despite my feelings about Nirvana. Apprentice could have ranked anywhere from 6 to 10, but the drum beat alone is worth the highest of those positions to me. One B-Side was almost two or four (also considered were Marigold, Moist Vagina and I Hate Myself And Want To Die), but I figured the Bowie cover and Pennyroyal Tea, ultimately, deserved to be on here. Something In The Way crossed my mind, then I listened to it again (after more than a decade), and opted not to.

Damn You, Stephen Colbert!

Before Stephen Colbert announed that he'd annointed Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines as the Song Of The Summer, I'd only heard it once.

Granted, I avoid the radio, and music TV stations no longer play any music, but it was a minor hit to me.

But I saw it on his show, TVoed it for The Lady Of The House, watched it again, then deleted it.

But I couldn't sleep last night, and as I was turning left and right in bed, it played in my head all fucking night. No joke.

Now, I've heard it as much as anyone else on earth, without the ''benefit'' of having actually heard it.

My brain wants to die.

R.I.P. T-Model Ford

Had I not worked at used record-and-book shop L'Échange (I'll tell the whole tale eventually) in the late 1990s, I would never have found out about all the great blues artists on the Fat Possum label roster, among which Junior Kimbraugh and the late, great R.L. Burnside, who I opened for in 1998 or 1999.

Also on that dream team of disregarded and discarded Mississippi old-timers was T-Model Ford, often an afterthought because his simplistic guitar-playing style didn't have Burnside's feel, or Kimbraugh's raw chops, or even Cedell Davis' weirdness (he plays off-key and de-tuned, whether you want to go with it or not, using a butter knife as a slide that he'll just change the angle to to get the tone he wants to hear).

But Ford was much more than a storyteller who accompanied himself, much more than ''shredding other people's songs and refashioning them as minimalist chants, underpinned by open-chord guitar and (drummer Tommy Lee Miles, a.k.a. Spam's) joyous drumming.'' He melted the songs down to their essence, then went inside himself to extract the honesty needed for the delivery, and gave you the concentrated soul of each song.

With 1997's Pee-Wee Get My Gun and 1999's You Better Keep Still, he made a name for himself and a reputation that was only accentuated with his next 6 releases. His reputation wasn't always stellar, though, as he didn't lean to play in a school or anything - he didn't even go to elementary school - so ''properly-trained'' musicians often found him difficult to work with:

Frank Frost, who played on a couple of tracks, had declared, "I want everyone to know that I'm playing against my will."

Well, in any event, the man died in mid-July. He may have been between the ages of 89 and 93, as his record label put it:

T-Model thinks he's seventy-five but isn't sure.

That was in 1998.

And this is how one of his nights went, in his hometown:

T-Model and Spam are the only men still playing on Greenville's Nelson Street. Most of the audience has scattered due to violence from the crack trade, and with the exception of T-Model, the street that once boasted Booba Barnes and others is dead. On a typical night Spam and T-Model will arrive at the club and unpack T-Model's guitar and amp, and the bass drum and snare he allows Spam to use. When T-Model feels there are enough people, they start banging away in their own post-war Peavey-powered hill stomp. It's nothing unusual for T-Model to play eight hours a night. They keep going until no one's left standing. After his equipment's packed up T-Model will coat himself with Outdoorsman Off and climb into his van to crash.

 I miss him already.

Video Of The Week: MGMT

They were media darlings some 5-7 years ago, playing in all the cool festivals, being one of the few acts still getting air time on music video channels, gathering accolades from Spin, NME and Rolling Stone and Grammy nominations.

Then interest died. Mine did, anyway. Too electro, too trendy, too cliché, too 80s, too pop. Too overwhelmingly everywhere despite not being the best act around. Too annoying.

MGMT are exactly what you imagine a Connecticut non-hardcore punk band would be: cute, clever, likely well-educated, and incredibly beige.

And yet here they play the OK Go card (the Beastie Boys card for the older generation), with an amazing video for a so-so, moderately listenable tune, and suddenly I'm happy.

Too good to pass up. And who know, maybe too true and close to home as well.

Oh, Crumbling City (Part 26)

When it isn't an alert to boil water because of a human error, it's Nature giving us the worst storm we've ever faced. When that's not it, it's politicians killing the city's soul by forcing it its centuries-old commerces and/or ''freak places'' to shut down.

But mostly, it's crumbling infrastructures. Tunnels. Or the fucking subway's roof. Or slabs of concrete falling on a woman quietly eating her lunch at a restaurant.

And lots of sinkholes, many of them smack-dab in the middle of downtown: Sherbrooke street (near McGill); at the corner of Ste-Catherine and McGill; St-Mathieu and Ste-Catherine; And today's newest one, at Guy and Ste-Catherine (one block East of St-Mathieu):

Yes, it swallowed a backhoe. It was hungry, give it a break.

Now that we've established that the ground cannot hold any weight, let's move on to another topic which is a whole lot sadder: three blocks East and one block South of there, at nearly the same time, a man was crushed to death by a three-tonne metal plate that fell on him. It was from a crane that hadn't been secured properly on the construction site of yet another condo tower, this one adjacent to the Bell Centre, where they plan on building over 100 storeys of condos (therefore roughly 300-400 dwellings) worth from half a million to $2.5M each, dispersed in two or three towers, I forget).

The thing is... there are two subway lines underneath that floor, and aqueducts. And they'll need to increase the water flow potential to supply these new dwellings, as they are pretty much just parking lots or pedestrian walkways for the moment. On ground that can barely handle regular vehicles right now.

And though theoretically, the sound of complete families of bourgeois millionaires crumbling to their deaths doesn't seem like the worst thing that can happen, any death is still tragic, and hundreds of them at a time, all of which could easily be pinned on a city's over-eagerness to make easy money and weed out the poor from its downtown core, would make us the laughingstock of the civilized world. Plus Dubai.

At times like these, I understand those who deny the existence of climate change: who cares about what'll kill us in 50 years since we'll do ourselves in with greed, corruption, seedy construction, poisonous foods, and wars in less than that anyway?

Video Of The Week: SuperHeavy

Supergroup? Check.
Summer vibes? Check (through reggae).
Unbelievable voice? Check (via Joss Stone).
Big-name presence? Check on all counts.
Worthwhile lyrics? Check, though perhaps less on this party vibe than the rest of the album.

In any event, SuperHeavy is a hell of a musical endeavour, a mix of British and Jamaican star power comprised of the afore-mentioned Stone coupled with Mick Jagger, Damian Marley, Eurythmic's Dave Stewart and Indian composer A.R. Rahman.

Mostly reggae-tinged thanks to Marley (and the backing band including his usual bass player and drummer) as well as Stewart who now resides in Jamaica, there's a lot of Indian references which blend in so well they might as well be in every reggae song ever recorded, and a pretty potent latent rock feel above the whole thing.

Of course, this being a video - and Jagger being Jagger - the chief Rolling Stone manages to convince everyone it's an awesome idea to have him dress in bright pink and do the sideways-hyperactive dance in a doorway for half of it, then proceed to walk down the street meeting all of his bandmates, à la Waiting On A Friend...

Still, strong summer vibes on this song, and a nicely put political messages throughout the album in general. With an output this strong couples with the (Stones') recent Doom And Gloom, one might be tempted to forgive Jagger's entire 1980s releases (music and film) and put the definitive stamp of 'Best Lead Singer Ever' on his face, to go with the 'Best Rock Band Ever' one on Keith Richards' ass.

The Decline Of k-os

k-os' debut record, Exit (2002) was full of promise. I even went around praising his all-around talent for the music's production as rivaling Beck, and his lyrics and flow as ''eventually in the same league as Outkast''.

His second output, Joyful Rebellion (2004) still showcased his talents, but had a decidedly more old school vibe, relying less on k-os' knack for melody and creating music from various inspirational sources and leaned more towards classic hip hop.

But then it turned to insipid pop and un-researched music pretty fast, starting with 2006's Atlantis: Hymns For Disco and perpetuated with the sample-heavy Yes (2009) and this year's uneven BLack On BLonde.

And apparently, it's transpired to his live shows as well, as per The Gazette:

k-os, 1:30 p.m., Mountain Stage

And the award for Osheaga drama queen goes to… k-os.

The Toronto rapper is well past his prime. And his new album Black on Blonde – despite guest appearances by Emily Haines, Black Thought, Shad, Saukrates, and Sam Roberts – is a bit of a mess. So when he took the stage 20 minutes late, as the day’s first show on the mountain stage, there was reason to worry. He began to rhyme over an amped up Public Enemy sample, but stopped after a few minutes. “I can’t do this right now – I can’t hear myself,” he said. He threw his all access VIP bracelet into the crowd,and walked off the stage. Very rock ‘n’ roll, man, but it’s not going to win you any new fans. And next time, maybe skip the Blue Jays cap.

Jesus.

For a guy who performs in Montréal four times a year, perhaps he should have done his research a tad. When playing his own shows at Club Soda or Théâtre Corona, where his own fans - by definition a forgiving following - show up, sure, you can use your Canadianism as a factor for common ground, as much as ''supporting the local underground''.

But at a festival show, with a broad audience representing pretty much everything your usual crowd isn't - there's a difference between playing to a thousand folks who know your shit and 35,000 who've never heard it before - perhaps it'd be nice to take an hour out of your bubble and read about where you're playing.

Most of us will never cheer for the Blue Jays as ''Canada's Team'' for the simple fact that we had the Montréal Expos - Canada's first major league baseball team - and the way they were taken from us left such a sour taste in our mouths we were turned off by the sport altogether. So... Jays? No. NO. NO. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work in Vancouver so much either, with the Seattle Mariners basically playing in their back yard.

Also, though they don't go to your usual shows, 50% of the population wanted out of Canada altogether at any cost twice in the recent past - and would have won had it not been for shady politicking and backdoor money dealings the last time around, to say nothing of those who think it would be a good idea on paper but weren't convinced by the arguments brought forth as the focal points the last time. So even if the Jays had been Canada's team, it's like wanting Puerto Rico to cheer for the Washington Nationals.

And what's up with not trying to work out the issue with the sound guy? Any band who's played in a bar will tell you that 3 times out of 4 it can be worked out if you're clear on what you want. The other time you'll wish you had walked out - which he did - but he should have tried to fix things first. By showing little patience with the staff at the very first show of the very first day of Osheaga - kinks are bound to occur - he instead showed great disrespect to the thousands who had paid fifteen times the price of entry as the first edition 5 years ago so it could attract artists ''of his caliber''.

And that attitude of ''artist vs staff'' usually escalates throughout the day as one side becomes more defensive and the other reacts accordingly, which ultimately led to headliners The Cure having the plug pulled on them in the middle of their mega-hit Boys Don't Cry at 11:05 PM, instead of being given the chance to finish the song before it happened so that the crowd could at the very least go home with the illusion that it went down well.

Instead, here is the evening's score card:
k-os: 0
The Cure: 0
Osheaga: 0
the public: 0

And instead of it being a 4-way tie, it's a 4-way loss. With k-os proving to be the biggest loser.

Top 10s This Week

Top 10 Songs:

10. BORN TO BE WILD, Damian Marley (2001)
9. MAJOR DISTRIBUTION (feat. Snoop Dogg and Young Jeezy), 50 Cent (2013)
8. I BELIEVE IN MIRACLES, The Ramones (1989)
7. LOVE SICK, Bob Dylan (1997)
6. LEAVE BEHIND, Martha Wainwright (2012)
5. SUBWAY, Yeah Yeah Yeahs (2013)
4. LOVESONG, The Cure (1989)
3. DESPAIR, Yeah Yeah Yeahs (2013)
2. SUNSHINE OF YOUR LOVE, Cream (1967)
1. FOUR BLACK SHEEP, Martha Wainwright (2012)


Top 10 Acts Least Skipped On My Ipod These Last 5 Years:

10. Kanye West
9. System Of A Down
8. Fugazi
7. Melissa Auf Der Maur
6. Nine Inch Nails
5. Jay-Z
4. Bob Mould / Sugar
3. The Cure
2. Yeah Yeah Yeahs
1. Die Mannequin