"Oh my god we're back again."

Alright, it's high time that I start writing about the other side of the music coin. Let's take a trip to the Backstreets, shall we?

Before the huge breakout of macho backlash to all of the boy bands became a movement in of itself, before I hated every band Kid Rock and Eminem told me to hate, the Backstreet Boys were...just a group. They were just more of the same junk that a van full of kids would listen to on the way to their after school program. Pretty much everybody recognized them for what they truly were: harmless, run-of-the-mill pop. A bunch of 4th graders didn't hate it, but we'd probably be happier if that Eagle Eye Cherry song was playing.
Before The Backstreet Boys were my favorite bands' sworn enemies, I saw this video. At that age, there was no way that I'd ever admit to watching and enjoying it. I was no fan, but I deemed the video watchable. As long as nobody else was watching with me.

Trends Spotted: Huge Choreographed Dance, Back-Up Dancers, Bleached Hair
I landed on the on The Disney Channel while flipping through the stations and this was playing. What can I say? A dancing mummy is a pretty effective attention-grabbing concept for a kid. Then I heard that mummy sing "am I sexual?" and I wondered why this was on The Disney Channel.
As much as I love keeping this blog as devoted as possible to old memories, I simply don't have as many memories about the Boy Band videos compared to the other stuff I've been writing about. So, in absence of a funnier anecdote, I'd like to take this time to do what I did while watching Boy Band videos ten years ago: Unfairly deconstuct them piece by piece.
I'm this close to filing this video under "doesn't make any goddamn sense." Ideally, the video would just have the guys singing and dancing while dressed as monsters. But no! We need a story to go along! It's ironic that the little bits before and after the actual song that try to give the video some context raise more unanswered questions than if they just weren't there. Or maybe the extra 45 seconds only cause me to ponder with such detail because I'm writing a blog about bad music videos from my childhood. I better cover all of my bases just in case and get this out there.
We're introduced to our heroes. They're all distressed because their bus has broken down (What concert-holding stadium is located on top of a stormy mountain? You're pretty much asking for spooky times at this point.), and the only advice they get from their driver (known to hardcore Backstreet fans as the 6th Boy) is to chill out in this fucking mansion that doesn't belong to them while the bus gets fixed. Now, it's one thing to just stroll on in and hang out, but Brian, the adventurous one, takes it one huge, stupid step further and decides to head up to a bedroom to lay down to get some sleep. He finds a dead animal under the sheets, and that's when things get crazy.
Each one of the five dudes morphs into a hip, dancy version of the classic Universal monsters! Except AJ, who is dressed as the Phantom of the Opera. And Kevin is some kind of amphibious Dr. Jekyll/ Mr. Hyde who spends all of his time in a laboratory turning back and forth so you can never see both halves of his face at the same time. Brian is the Wolfman, and for some reason that gives him these crazy gymnastic abilities. He kind of upstages everybody else by jumping through the different setpieces behind everybody else near the end. He also has gigantic fake teeth that make his lipsyncing look equally difficult and hilarious. Howie is Dracula. As Dracula, he carries a cane and can turn invisible. He also has a thing for girls who blankly stare into cameras. Nick is the aforementioned sexual mummy. I've been thinking about this for way too long, and in my mind, if Nick gets the one line in the song about being sexual, shouldn't he have dibs on getting to dressed as Howie's monster? Name one mummy that is more sexual than the least sexual vampire. That sarcophagus clearly has no room for a dancing mummy and a female mummy back-up dancer. Meanwhile, it's common knowledge that vampires spend all of their time at night. There's got to be nights when vampires stock up on neck blood and just have terrifying orgies in their manors. And furthermore, there's just a certain aura of weird kinky shit that comes naturally with vampire territory. Final verdict: "Am I sexual?" Outlook not so good. It's obvious that mummies can't say shit about being sexual if there's a vampire in the room.

"Hi, Kids!"

Eminem: My Name is. This was another video I first saw at Nathaniel's house on TRL. Carson took forever to introduce the video. He started talking about this white guy from Detroit almost winning the freestyle olympics, getting discovered by Dr. Dre and so on. Then, he introduces Eminem by saying "His name is like the candy, but it's spelled all screwed up." The guy had a knack for completely ruining the viewer's interest (or, at the very least my, personal interest) with some weak off-the-cuff ramble in which he'll try to be funny. Maybe it was intentional. With his lengthy intro and completely boring jokes, he set the bar of expectations very low. And thanks to Carson's monotone rambling, Nathaniel and I plus several million other white kids were underprepared and then totally blindsighted by what we saw next.

Eminem |MTV Music

Trends Spotted: Lewinsky Joke, Spice Girls Joke, Marilyn Manson Joke

This was a pivotal moment. This was a moment that I knew was pivotal as it was happening. As soon as he hit the screen, I had to know more. I remember Nathaniel and I being immediately sucked in. It was confusing. He's a white rapper, but he's good! But he's making jokes and wearing funny costumes! Is he for real?
Daniel was in the bathroom and missed the whole video. When he returned to the living room, the two of us literally jumped to our feet and ran to him to rave about what he missed.
"He was this white guy but he was really good at rapping!"
"And he was like...he was all, 'I can't figure out which Spice Girl to impregnate!'"
There were plenty of rockers from the early and mid nineties who were upset over the gigantic success of all of the teen pop artists out there. But Eminem made it cool to joke about beating them up and fucking them.
And that's how he got 'em. He made little guys like me laugh with the radio edit of his single. I knew he rapped about drinking and tits or whatever, but listening to the actual album for the first time was a completely different monster. In short, the Slim Shady LP taught me all I needed to know to take profanity to a level previously unimaginable to a fifth grader. The Slim Shady LP is responsible for the thankless legacy of introducing many, many of the world's children to the word cunt.
And can we talk about the actual song and video some more? It doesn't make any goddamn sense. He's Bill Clinton! He's Marilyn Manson! He's a teacher. No wait, now he's trying to beat up a teacher! He's rapping in front of a bunch of blue circles wearing a jumpsuit! Can anybody tell me what the fuck is going on in the scene where he's laying on a bus stop bench, and people walking around him are edited into the scene? Is this a reference to something, or just something they decided to throw in? This has been bothering me for ten years now.
This video was the first in his first-single-from-a-new-album pattern. It's a strategy that he has stuck to very faithfully. Every time he needs a single for his new album, he gets this weird high-pitch voice, sticks it to fellow mainstream artists by making a good number of threats of violence, and in the video, he dresses up in about 40 different funny costumes that have nothing to do with anything he's rapping about. None of the videos make any goddamn sense.

"Chalk White and Oh-So Frail."

I really lucked out in elementary school. I was a super scrawny, goofy redhead with a temper and a bad mouth. In theory I should have gotten way more kicks to the ass than I recieved. Marin Elementary was pretty friendly though. I was a class clown and only the real assholes hated me for being the absolute worst kickball player they ever played with. At school I spent a good long time getting to know everyone, so I wasn't judged solely on my pale, brittle exterior.
When I started going to the Berkeley JCC after school in the 3rd grade, things changed drastically. I was the shy new kid. No getting-to-know-me period, that's just what I was. I'd be walking down the hall and the bullies would spot me. Boom, headlock. I remember once getting locked in a full nelson right in front of my dad when he came to pick me up. My dad asked me about it on the way home, and I told him not to do anything about it because I felt like it would just make the situation worse. Classic bullying.
They picked on me for weeks. I was pretty much exiled from the outdoor area after a game of soccer where I proved to be a devastatingly ineffective goalie. I hated the way they pushed me around and I wasn't going to take it anymore! So did I wise up and tell an adult? Better! I ran and hid.
One of my favorite ways to avoid bullies at the JCC was to chill with the lazy counselors who kicked it in the little indoor lounge area while the big guys played sports. Inside was where the snack was kept, and there was a radio that I was free to tune to any station I wanted. So I would eat chips and salsa (sometimes for snack they just set out a huge pot of cold white rice. What?) and do arts and crafts while rocking out to The Z: Z-95.7.

Eve 6 |MTV Music

Trends Spotted: Crazy bright colored set pieces.

I remember this song well for several reasons: First of all, it's catchy as hell. The chorus just stuck with me. Also, they played the crap out of this one. One time a counselor asked me if I just brought in a tape with this song every day and put it in the radio. Nope, the DJ at the Z loved him some Eve 6.
Also, they played the video a bunch on MTV's Say What? The show where they had a side-scrolling bar of the lyrics at the bottom of the screen. This show was doubly awesome because you could learn the lyrics AND have a little 30 minute karaoke session in your room once you knew the song well enough.
The final reason this song and video sticks out in my mind so well is at the time, my brother and the lead singer looked fairly similar. The faces weren't an uncanny match but my brother used to have short red hair like the guy in the video. I remember telling him this as our mom drove us home one day, and he just kind of shrugged it off like he didn't want to hear me say that. I meant it as a compliment because I thought the song was cool. Later in life, I would come to realize that he reacted the way he did because it's simply never fun for a guy with red hair to be given the news that he looks like someone else with red hair. This is because there are no handsome red heads. It very well may come from a sincere, well meaning place in your heart as a compliment. But the truth is we already know we're all just goofy looking. So save it and just tell your ginger pal that he's got cool sneakers on or something equally harmless.

"Get the Fuck Up."

Well, here we are. I feel that it's better that I don't post videos and memories in this blog in chronological order. I need a big, explosive first entry. And there wasn't a big, dumb explosion quite like the one this video set off.

Limp Bizkit |MTV Music

Trends Spotted: Backwards baseball caps, sick goatee, random breakdancing.

It was 1999. Limp Bizkit's Faith set it off. It was Fred Durst's over-the-top dry heave howl that set loose an avalanche of shit and Yankees hats over MTV.
At the time I was in the 5th grade. My friend Nathaniel and I had been going to the Berkeley JCC after school program together for two years. Our parents thought up the plan to save some money and just hire a babysitter to watch the two of us after school and help us with homework. The kid they hired was Daniel. A 15 year old skater dude without a care in the world. I don't ever remember doing a page of homework with him beyond the first week of knowing him. Under Daniel's eye, I played more video games, watched more TRL, made more prank phone calls, and got into more pussy slapfights with Nathaniel than at any other point in my life. Daniel was one hell of an enabler when it came to acting like an all around shitty kid. I remember the three of us going to the park near Nathaniel's house to set paper towels on fire with Daniel's lighter. At that point he was probably the coolest kid we knew.
So anyway, it's 1999 at Nathaniel's house, and Carson introduces the Faith video. Did I pump my fist, happy to see a video on MTV that wasn't some boy band? Did I start singing along? Did I get up and start a mosh pit in Nathaniel's living room?
Nope. Early on, I decided that I wasn't going to like Limp Bizkit. It was like a superhero and his arch nemesis being best friends before growing up to destory each other, only in reverse.
Daniel liked Nu-Metal. He had all of Korn's albums before they hit it big on MTV.
"Well why don't you like it?" He asked.
Back then, I was kind of afraid of it. I categorized all loud, aggressive rock with a Marilyn Manson video I had seen and it made me nervous. I have never been seriously religious or spiritual, but I remember telling Daniel that my reasoning for not liking Limp Bizkit was something along the lines of "Well I just don't like all of the loud 'ruh ruh ruh I hate God' thing going on."
"Hate God?"
Daniel pointed at the TV. "He's wearing a CROSS!"
Quick reminder, I'm Jewish. Barely Jewish.
But something clicked. How foolish of me! Fred Durst didn't hate a god that I didn't even believe in, and that made it okay to like his music.
A week later Nathaniel and I would be practicing that weird jump Fred Durst does 45 seconds into the video in my driveway, waiting for Daniel to skate to my house.
Thanks, Daniel.

It started in 1997 and went on until about 2001.

It's 2009. This decade has been a rough start to what has been promised to be a fun and prosperous willenium for all. I'm sitting in my kitchen with my roomates and my neighbor Eric. We're talking about the music we loved when growing up.
"I started paying attention to music at around third grade, listening to Z 95.7 on the van rides to the JCC after school program. Goo Goo Dolls, Eagle Eye Cherry, Natalie Imbruglia, stuff like that. A year later me and this kid Nathaniel would go over to each other's houses every day after school and watch TRL religiously. Limp Bizkit, KoRn, Eminem, Kid Rock. Oh, god! All the worst stuff, that's what I got into."
Eric's jaw dropped. "Dude, I'm so sorry."
He didn't know how easy he had it. By the time 1997 rolled around, Eric was smart enough to avoid the music that made me drag my mom to Tower Records.
In the late 90's, I was forming strong opinions about the day's current pop music for the first time. The Nu-Metal meathead noisemakers were cool, the Boy Bands were Gay. Backstreet Boys were Gay. Britney was Gay. Smash Mouth was alright.
I thought that watching these videos and listening to these bands was going to give me substance. Even the videos I hated, I watched because I had to stay informed. I set out to be an interesting person with a unique taste in music. My only problem was that the one source of music I turned to was MTV in its Rap Rock vs. Teen Pop era. There was no less interesting, less unique outlet for music available.
Terrible, terrible music and the repressed memories I recall when I hear this music. That's what this blog is about. I'll be talking about obnoxious, stupid, and completely worthless music. But it was my music. And sometimes, for reasons I can't explain, I still love it.