Nerd news in brief

I work for the state, so the whole “Week of the 4th” thing is kind of a wash. Needless to say, I haven’t done a goddamn thing since last Friday. Okay, so maybe I actually managed to post that killer Baddd Spellah interview Saturday AM, but that was a fluke.

Unfortunately, the world refused to stop spinning to accommodate my meager schedule. Some shit happened. Some important shit. The kind of shit that can only be rightly communicated via the eldritch powers known as nerd news in brief:

• Nintendo easily secured another decade of my personal brand loyalty by sending ol’ Gee-Dub a birthday prize pack complete with new Nintendo DS Lite and a copy of their mega-selling cerebral workout Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day. Someone in Redmond certainly has a healthy sense of humor. Of course, there’s really only one way this can end: With Reggie Fils-Aime on the national “no-fly” list.
• Doctor Popular will be appearing on tonight’s episode of ABC’s Master of Champions. This cat can do more tricks with a yo-yo than a Parisian hooker can with a scarf and a bowl of sorbet, so it’s in your best interest to watch.
• Game rock legends the Minibosses have several shows lined up for next week in both California and their native Arizona. What happens when 8-bit gets turned up to 11? Show up and see for yourself.
• If you prefer your geek music a little more on the hip-hop tip, may I humbly suggest checking out Beefy’s most recent track “Ego Monster” over at the big guy’s MySpace. It sports appearances from both Jones and Paige (of Just Another Lazy Podcast fame), an infectious beat by DJ Snyder, and *gasp* name-drops ­Hipster, please! All jokes aside, Beefy is a really big supporter of this little blog, and it was pretty fucking cool of him to reference it in song. The track is fierce, and it’s really got me excited for his next release.
• In related news, Beefy, Shael Riley, and the MC Router of 1GB have joined forces to create nerdcore supergroup Tri-Forc3. You can peep their first track “Mint Potion” over at their very own MySpace. They’re like a nerdcore equivalent of the Wonder Twins, though forgive me if I leave the all-important decision of which of the fellows gets to be Space Monkey Gleek to your own discretion.
• Lastly, in the spirit of giving the fans more for less – or, in this case, much more for free – the fifth volume of the four-part Rhyme Torrents nerdcore hip-hop compilation project has been officially announced. Take that Douglas Adams!

Like a turtleneck sweater

Some people love feet. Some folks collect thimbles or tiny spoons from around the world. Others live to roast, grind, and brew their own coffee; fresh and strong. Everyone has their weird little eccentricities, their secret perversions, their relentless fascinations. Mine is Canada. I am obsessed with Canada.

Our kindly neighbor to the north asks so little, but gives so much. The electric light bulb, the snowmobile, the Jolly Jumper, Rush, Neil Young, SCTV, The Kids in the Hall, Bill Shatner, Dan Aykroyd, Wayne fucking Gretzky: all Canadian in origin, and those shining examples are far from all that this great nation has to offer. (As an added bonus, Canada, through absolutely no explicit effort, really pisses off Ann Coulter. For me that only adds to its inscrutable mystique.)

Moreover, Canada has a storied history of nerd music. From the geeked-out rhymes of Jesse Dangerously on the east coast to the Lovecraftian horror of The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets on the west, Canada is well represented in all things tuneful, catchy, and bookish.

Like The Thickets, Baddd Spellah, certainly nerdcore’s most prolific producer, reps British Columbia. Through his sparkling production, his chic beats, and his reserved demeanor, Spellah exemplifies his province’s motto: Splendour without diminishment.

Spellah was nice enough to answer a few questions for Hipster, please!, affording his legion of fans a rare glimpse at the man behind nerdcore’s most infectious tracks. Behold as we discuss the current state of pop music, Anglophonic nomenclature, and nerd life… and poo. We also discuss poo.

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The biggest question on everyone’s mind is obvious: Exactly how bad is your spelling?

The name, Baddd Spellah, was actually intended for an unrealized boy band spoof concept I had in college. I repurposed it when I started developing my musical persona. I'm bemused by its tautological humour and amused when people spell it wrong.

My spelling is actually pretty darn good; I pride myself on it. Being Canadian, I find honour in colouring my words with certain ye olde Commonwealth spellings that my neighbours to the south don't employ. I am an avid dictionary/thesaurus user.

Not to pry too much into your private life, but what is your day job?

I work in the video games industry. It keeps me well-steeped in nerdiness on a daily basis. The current hot-topic is how lame the source of Superman's powers are if you really think about it: gravity and sun colour? Come on!

True. That is pretty lame. And what about that costume? A little modesty never hurt anyone… But I digress.

As an artist, Baddd Spellah wears many hats. Do you consider yourself primarily a producer, a DJ, a remix artist, or a beatsmith?

In a pinch I'd call myself a beatsmith because I like to make beats. Producer would come in a close second, especially of late as I have been cultivating recording projects with/for other artists and vocalists. Call me old-fashioned, but I think one should only dub themselves "DJ" (disc jockey) if they actually manipulate records.

How did you find yourself involved in nerdcore? Are there any non-nerdcore Baddd Spellah tracks floating around in the Internet ether?

I love rap music for the beats. I've been making beats since the mid-90s but I've never been "down" enough to be acquainted with talented local rappers so all my beat productions were strictly for my own edification. Around 1999 a friend of mine turned me onto MC Frontalot's songs and I was tickled pink. I emailed him asking if he'd allow me to produce a remix of his seminal "Nerdcore Hip Hop" track because I had the notion of sampling the rap song from "Revenge of the Nerds". From there Front and I corresponded across the continent, via the internet, firing off a number of collaborations over the years that were well-received; I've long said that it’s due to his sizable coattails that have allowed me to be as recognized as I am.

I think by definition any songs I make and release on my own accord would have to be considered "non-Nerdcore". For me Nerdcore-ness comes from lyrical content, I don't believe you can justifiably call instrumental songs "Nerdcore"; at that rate its plain-old "beats" or "electronic music". I used to post music on the net before I was drawn into Nerdcore's nerd core so I believe there are such tracks floating around out there. They are not plentiful and they mostly suck so it’s probably best if they were left floating.

The mc chris/DJ John track “Bad(dd) Runner” was your prize for winning an mc chris remix contest. Do you ever receive actual monetary compensation for all your hard work?

I wish I could say that I was typing this on my diamond-encrusted Sidekick 3 aboard a 60 foot yacht in the middle of the Aegean Sea... I'm only just starting to take my musical projects seriously enough to contemplate making money with it. I don't have a record deal (yet) but I have had the honour of making some pocket money through my contributions on a handful of music projects.

Half of the tracks on Front’s Nerdcore Rising CD credit you in some capacity. With you living in BC and Frontalot in New York, am I to deduce that this mammoth collaboration was also predominantly executed online?

110% online. Front and I have arrived at a process that works well for us: I'd email him a roughly arranged rhythm bed and he'd record a demo with scratch vocals over it. I'd take that and flesh out the arrangement more, oftentimes incorporating musical elements recorded by his talented keyboardist, Gm7. I'd send him the latest version of the instrumental and he'd record his final vocals. We'd go back and forth until the track and the mix was tight, sometimes this would accelerate to the point of us chatting over IM while I tweak the mix and upload it for him to review and feedback all instantaneous-like.

Nursehella, on the other hand, lives in Vancouver. Does your work with Canada’s foremost nerdlinger take place face-to-face? Which method of collaboration do you prefer?

I send Nursehella a rough beat and she writes to it on her own accord. When she's good and ready, she comes to my secret laboratory and we record there. Then she goes away and I spent countless hours on my own editing, writing, arranging and mixing until the track is hot and tight... like a turtleneck sweater.

I dig both processes in different ways. Online with Frontalot, he has clear ideas as to how he wants his performance to sound and is a perfectionist as such so each delivery of audio from him is chock-a-block full of polished, useful material. Face-to-face in my secret laboratory, I get to be all producer-like and make suggestions on phrasing and cadence when it comes to the performance of the vocalist. At the end of the day, it all comes down to me spending late nights, basking in the glow of my monitor, sliding bits of audio and MIDI notes around.

Baddd Spellah tracks have a very layered, breezy feel that differentiates them from those of other artists. To what do you attribute the Baddd Spellah sound?

I think the layered nature of my "sound" is probably due to my limited understanding of sophisticated music theory. I played trumpet in high school so I'm aware of — and attempt to use — techniques like chord changes and modulation and whatnot but I pretty much just muscle through those aspects of composition; I'm a strictly "play by ear" kind of song writer. With my limited musical toolkit, I end up layering to maintain listener interest throughout a song!

I think the breeziness comes from my appreciation for pop music from Burt Bacharach to Beyonce. I'm all for indie cred but I love trying to crack the code that makes a song so virulently catchy that even my mom could dig it.

I’m glad you mentioned your appreciation of pop music. I hesitated to use the phrase “pop sensibility” in the previous question because, much like the word “nerd,” some folks see it as a badge of shame. What is your take on pop backlash in the indie music scene? The Beatles were a pop band. The Kinks, The Police, Blur: All pop band and all well-respected. Has pop music changed, or is it just our perception of what “pop” is that has undergone a metamorphosis?

I tend to make a hazy distinction between Capital 'P' Pop Music and Top-40 pop music. At its best the former epitomizes an emotional milieu while the latter is more often just music as commodity. I'd have to cynically say that the distinction is that Capital 'P' Pop Music regularly get's licensed for Gap and Nike and BMW commercials while Top-40 pop is the domain of teenage girls and fitness club sound systems. But its not necessarily nostalgia or how well-heeled a song is either, Top-40 can be Capital 'P' Pop and vice versa; Missy Elliot has released some classics in my opinion while The Archies grate on my ears. But I love the whole continuum of pop music for different reasons: Capital 'P' Pop inspires me musically (i.e. "What are the ingredients for an infectious hook?") while Top-40 fascinates me for its sociological components (i.e. "If rap is about authenticity and a rapper's life is all about bling does that not justify his lyrical content?", "Do 12-year-old girls bear their mid-riffs because of Britney Spears? Does she have a responsibility to her audience as a role model?"). By that token, I see no shame in an open appreciation of pop. For me, pop as music is just the tip of the iceberg, I want to know why it exists and what it says about the world around me.

I think the indie backlash towards pop is the result of our culture's paradoxical cult of individuality; the aligning of yourself with other "individuals" as mavericks separate from the thronging masses, defining yourself by what you are not, what you don't like; "You hate that too!? I like you for hating that!"

Your tracks also feature very polished production. What is your recording setup?

My recording booth (read: livingroom with the curtains closed) is fitted with my AKG C1000 condenser mic. That's lined into an Aardvark DirectPro audio interface that's installed in my reliable but aging PC in my studio (read: the adjacent room where I pay my bills and put my filing cabinets). I pretty much only use a set of comfy Sennheiser headphones for all my monitoring so I blame any deficiencies in my mixing on that busted-ass habit; then again I pretty much only listen to music on headphones so I think I understand how to mix adequately on headphones, I think. For tracking audio I use Abletone Live and split the composition chores between that and Propellerhead Reason. I am proud to say I am a registered owner of both programs; I am too legit to quit. The company that made my soundcard, Aardvark, went tits up sometime not too long ago so I don't know how much longer my set up will remain as such but its served me well so far.

Your remixes tend to careen wildly from the aural texture of the original tracks. From what/where do you draw inspiration?

Someone wise once told me that an artist should immediately discard their initial idea for any work of art they set out to make, the theory being that most people will likely have arrived at that same idea. This rings true for me, I'm not enough of an iconoclast to reflexively think "outside the box" so I try to stick to that ethic as much as possible. If I remix a song the one that I ultimately release is oftentimes the 3rd or 4th version because by then it’s (hopefully) not as obviously derivative of my immediate influences.

The driving force behind my remix decisions is the attempt to evoke another facet of the song that may not be readily apparent in its original form but that once revealed seems imminent. Like the connection between Boba Fett (as bounty hunter) and country/western/cowboy music in the "Fett's Vette" remix or the "aural homonyms" in the "Nerdcore Hip Hop 2006" remix; swapping the whistling from the original with flutes, "blown jug" sounds and slide whistles. That sounds like a lot of pretentious hooey and I'm not as successful as often as I'd like to be but it is what I think do about when I'm making remixes; I need there to be a firm conceptual grounding.

As I’m not above asking a man to pick a favorite of his children: Is there a specific song or project that you are most proud of or that stands out in your mind as a particularly significant achievement?

All things considered, I think my remix of mc chris' "Fett's Vette" is tied with working on Frontalot's "Nerdcore Rising" as my most significant achievements.

Fett's Vette Remix: Its such an iconic song in the first place and so well-loved by fans of all things rappy and nerdy I'd like to think I gazed into its soul and saw its potential as a country-rap song and teased it out for the world to hear. Of course it was very divisive too, folks loved it or hated it but on the site where I hosted it, it received 12,049 listens before the site was re-structured and re-launched!

Nerdcore Rising: Prior to this album, I've never been involved with a "serious" recording project. It was through collaborating with Front for it that we really honed our process and I learned a lot about what does and doesn't work for me as a beatsmith. It was working on this project that something clicked in my brain that said "yes, you've got what it takes". Previously, I was just making music for laughs, something to pass the time, now I like to imagine actually getting paid to do this on a regular basis! Who knows...

You definitely have what it takes! Hell, I’d love to pay you for this interview, but as you can see (clearly illustrated by the fact that this is a thinly-veiled free Blogger account), I’m not exactly making mad cash off nerd culture blogging, myself!

Next question: What is the present condition of your Gawd Particlez? Are they properly aligned?

Sadly no. My Gawd Particlez are in total disarray. My poo particles are in better order.

Well, at least you’re regular.

There seems to be a dearth of information about Baddd Spellah on the WWW (your entry in the Rhyme Torrents wiki, for example, simply reads “Beat maker for MC Frontalot. I think he is of the Asian persuasion.”). In a genre that is primarily perpetuated via self-promotion this seems odd. Is there a specific effort on your part to remain out of the limelight so as to be identified more by your music, or is this merely an unfortunate oversight?

The lack of info about me had its origins with the whole "electronic musician as anonymous artist" mystique that I bought into at first and it morphed into "I'm just not big on hyping myself up". Polishing my rather prosaic life into a scintillating diamond via third-person narrative seems disingenuous. I guess it’s my nature to be a private person but I'm learning how to better deal with the whole public vs. private persona thing; answering these questions is part of that process I guess.

And I appreciate you taking the time to answer them.

What kind of nerd is Baddd Spellah?

I'm definitely not as much of a hardcore modern nerd as some of the other kids doing this music; I don't code, my knowledge of anime ends with Hayao Miyazaki and I don't have a Gamertag. Technically, I think I am a lapsed old school nerd generalist who uses computers lots: I'm old enough to have had an Atari 2600 and later a Commodore 64, I saw Star Wars: A New Hope in the theatres, I collected Teenage Mutant Ninja comics when they were still printed in black and white and 100% indie and I played AD&D with 1st edition rules well into my early 20s. These days I think my nerd card is renewed solely on the fact that I spend at least 80% of my waking life in front of a computer and still visit the comic store on a semi-regular basis.

Old school nerd cred is a highly-valued commodity around these parts. Which brings me to the obligatory closing question: What, in your opinion, is the nature of nerd?

I think the nature of nerd is obsession with things that most people don't care enough about to explore beyond the surface, be it baseball stats, collecting glass unicorns or cultivating rare orchids. I think its finding that one right "angle" in the myriad possibilities of human existence and throwing yourself headlong into it and not caring what anybody else thinks.

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If we lived in a just world, Baddd Spellah would be making Timbaland bank. He would, in fact, be replying to his email via blinged-out Sidekick from his luxury cruiser (which I, for the purpose of this fantasy, have dubbed The Pacific Princess). Even as I type this, Sony Music would be plying him with high-grade coke and high-class hookers, clinging to the desperate hope that he would finally concede to join them in their tireless quest to make Jessica Simpson sound both talented and refined.

Of course, if we lived in a just world, our governments wouldn’t be overrun by opportunistic power mongers, and automobiles would run purely off that feeling of satisfaction you get when you successfully merge onto a busy freeway.

And, upon further reflection, a just world would most likely be incapable of producing a Jessica Simpson, but you get my drift.

Idealized worldviews aside, one thing you can be sure of is that Baddd Spellah is the real McCoy. He is an artist of genuine talent and integrity who wholly embraces his inner nerd. Spellah’s efforts have propelled nerdcore as a whole forward, and his tracks standout as highpoints in the catalogues of all the performers with which he’s worked. Music geeks (and geek musicians) owe a true debt to the man who took Fett to the country and Nerdcore Hip Hop to school.

Keep your good eye ceaselessly to the north, my geekish companions, as Baddd Spellah is most certainly cooking up another delicious track for your auditory amusement. After all, that’s what Baddd Spellah is all aboot.

More nerd news in brief

There are some pretty interesting developments in the works right now, so let me touch on ‘em rapid-fire style:

• Doctor Popular has confirmed that his Master of Champions appearance will be broadcast next Thursday, not tonight. Set your Tivos, kids.
• Syn and Gabriel have a ton of nerdcore news to impart to the masses. Unfortunately, their computer’s fucked, so they’ve been relegated to elaborating on that particular issue in this week’s edition of Seattle Nerdcore News.
• Circuit City and Game Rush both have some unbelievable deals on the video games you didn’t know you wanted. Big love to the CAG community for helping me while away the summer gaming doldrums.
• But most importatnly, Cee-Lo Green is Darth Vader.
  

Q: Slow news week? A: Not quite.

I’ve been uncharacteristically quiet this week. (Lucky you!) This isn’t due to any dearth of nerdly goings-on or any lull in the action-packed life of a geek blogger. Much to the contrary, in fact: I am currently hard at work on not one, not three, but TWO high-profile interviews for good ol’ Hipster, please!

The first is in what I refer to as the “make sure we don’t sound like a couple of dicks” phase – a newly employed machination of my design that assures, in theory, that neither I nor the other party involved come off sounding like, well, dicks. It should be in a post-able state in the immediate future, and my sources (chiefly me and the subject of said dialogue) tell me that the piece should be available for your perusal this weekend or early next week.

The second is only just beginning to sprout, to germinate as it were. The opportunity for this one simply fell into my lap through the facilitation of a certain dashing gentleman known sometimes by the arcane moniker of Mythril Nazgul and other times as simply myf. Myf, in a fierce display of nerd love, hooked a brother up, and thus you too were hooked up by proxy.

While I won’t make with the juicy details just yet, suffice it to say that these are two big-name artists who are apparently under the impression that this blog has a significantly higher readership that it, in actuality, does. I take no responsibility for their collective misconception as I always strive to remain realistic when discussing the site’s smalltimedness.

See? That wasn’t even a real word. It’s so small-time that I don’t even have an editor.

The crazy things I do for (nerd) love

For a man who’s spent the better part of his life in literature classes, my reading comprehension skills have gone straight down the shitter of late.

Perfect example: Within the last few days I have noted (from two different sources) that nerdcore’s favorite yo-yo enthusiast, Doctor Popular, will be appearing on the June 29th episode of ABC’s Master of Champions. Then why, pray tell, did I just waste an entire evening breathlessly awaiting his appearance on NBC’s America’s Got Talent? Obviously I’ve suffered from some manner of CVA. (This would also account for my recent hypersexual gestures.)

Well, at least I got to see Rappin’ Granny.

Now that I’ve had time to make a sign on an oversized piece of cardboard that reads DOC POP NEXT THURS ABC, YOU IGNORANT FUCK!, I reckon I should be able to avoid any future slip-ups. Of course, since I’m obviously suffering from some sort of mental incapacitation, I half expect myself to be watching TV Land in hopes of catching sight of the good Doctor on a rerun of Full House.

The moral of this story: Doctor Popular will display his otherworldly yo-yo skillz (note the “z”) on next week’s episode of the ABC game show competition Master of Champions (Thursday, June 29 8:00-9:00 p.m., ET, though YMMV). Watch it and show your support for the San Franciscan sometimes known to the nerdcore faithful as beatsmith extraordinaire Drown Radio.

It's a nerd's world

I compare crafting a cohesive nerdcore scene to washing my toddler’s hair: No matter how delicate and determined you are there’s always going to be some tears and you’re apt to end up with a bit of a mess. Still, the Rhyme Torrents project set out to do just that (to bring together the nerdcore scene, not wash my kid’s hair), and, in spite of some negative attention, hurt feelings, and verbose grandstanding, it actually came together really well. It garnered some genuine recognition, got the artists and fans talking, and fostered some real give-and-take among a group of individuals who were previously, for the most part, anonymous words and voices across the WWW.

Now I could exhaustively detail each track’s strengths and weaknesses, breaking them down all scientific-like – holding them under my mental microscope in hopes of getting a glimpse of their sub-atomic geek components – and thereby corrupting any actual artistic merit and inherent emotional context, or I could simply point out some interesting shit that I discovered by sole virtue of my close proximity to this creative escapade. Doesn’t that sound way more fun than an eight thousand word liked-this-one-but-this-one-needs-work dissertation? I sure as hell think so.

• Nerdcore gets a hype man: Morris Day has Jerome, Chuck D has Flava Flav, and Beefy has Jones. Up until recently Jonesy was just that dude from Beefy’s podcast who (along with girlfriend Paige) serves as both friend and foil to the host. In the track “Tub of Tabasco,” however, Jones shines as Beef’s in-song partner in crime. Art imitating life? You’re damn right!
• The ladies, the ladies!: Whether it’s MC Router representing gamer girls, Nursehella raining lyrical fire from the Great White North, or Li’l Nix holding shit down on the CS tip, the ladies of nerdcore roared on all fronts. And these ladies are in no way the exception to the rule; the entire project was peppered with geek-girls unafraid to fly the flag. (Queue Aretha singing “Sisters Are Doin' it for Themselves.”)
• How the hell didn’t I know about…: Even for someone like me, who devotes entirely too much time and energy to seeking out nerdy music, the Rhyme Torrents track list was an eye-opening experience. For me, this was especially true on the DJ and producer side of things. Sure, I was familiar enough with Baddd Spellah, Sheal Riley, and Doctor Popular, but some established cats who’s style I’d never had the pleasure of hearing really stepped up the game: deejay manticore’s “St. Roman’s Passion” is a late-night driving jam to rival all others, DJ Snyder’s “Anime Convention” builds up strong and hits you with some special musical guests, Oddioblender’s "Eli The Indie Rockette" summarily lifts your spirit and shakes your ass, and myf’s “Top Secret!” easily contains twice your recommended daily allowance of aggressive scratching and funky horn hits.
• Bring a friend: An interesting aspect concerning the project (which seems to be overlooked thus far) is how, in many cases, an artist who was approached with an invitation to participate responded “Sure, that sounds great! And you should also talk to this person.” A perfect example is J-Nerdcore (Is that even a genre?) artist Rai, who was introduced via her connection to otaku rapper extraordinaire Ultraklystron. Her tracks "Big Lie" and "Sunny Sunny Sunday" appear in the original Japanese. How nerdcore is that?
• Nerdcore summed up through its differences: One thing that can’t fully be expressed to someone who hasn’t heard the collection in its entirety is how varied nerdcore truly is. Surely this could be remedied by establishing some hackneyed canon of what is and is not geek, but this is no solution. The fact that these similar musicians are, in fact, so very dissimilar is both the strength of the community and, to some extent, the purpose of the project itself. Some saturate their music and lyrics with as much nerd energy as possible while others adapt existing style, flow, or instrumentation to fit their geeky needs. Within the confines of each disk you’ll find humor, politics, pop, metal, alienation, sexuality, and the list goes on and on. In the end, nerd is as nerd does.

I could go on and on but, as I don’t fancy this becoming a David Letterman affair, I’m going to truncate this communiqué.

To reiterate, forging a nerdcore scene is like washing my kid’s hair: It’s hard work, and messy, but in the end, if you try your damnedest, you can finally get all the spaghetti sauce out.

Okay, so maybe that parallel doesn’t quite hold up all the time.

What I’m trying to say is that I wasn’t surprised by the fact that I enjoyed the compilation. I am, to say the least, an easy sell on all things nerdcore. I was, however, surprised, impressed, and pleased with the way nerdcore was represented. The four disks (five, if you count the extra tracks High-C is currently compiling) provide a genuine sense of what the genre’s about. They present a myriad of artists -- some deadly serious about the music, others just in it for a good time -- performing in a multitude of styles bound together solely by a mutual acceptance of their own geek tendencies. You’d think I, of all people, would refuse to be shocked by such a development, but it’s one thing to preach nerd love and celebrate geek diversity, it’s quite another to actually see these principles in action.

Suffice it to say that the less-than stellar reception the compilation has received on some fronts is far from surprising. Nerd is a term originally intended to marginalize, and when such a robust group turns it into a badge of honor there will most certainly be backlash. When it’s all said and done, if Rhyme Torrents does more to strengthen the resolve of the existing community than to bring in a throng of new fans then it has certainly achieved a major objective. Nerds will continue to discover and support the endeavors of others of their tribe, for that is what they do. That is what we do.

As I sit in front of the preternatural glow a LCD monitor quick-saving the rough draft of this post to a miniscule USB drive (so tiny that I often lose it in the clutter of my desk) so that soon I might post it on a weblog for other geeks to read and comment on if they feel led, I know that this is a nerd’s world whether our music hits Top 40 or not. We might not run it. We might not get the glory. We might not make all the bank and get all the chicks, but you can be damn sure that the modern world, this electronic age, is ours alone. If there’s a device that's made your life better, a revolution that's made a hard task easier, or a contemporary convenience that you’ve enjoyed, we were at the heart of its creation. Because that’s what nerds do. We create. And if we can just keep creating together, supporting one another, sharing ideas and ideals and outlooks, then there’s no limit to where we’ll take it.

“See this era, embrace it. We are the future and we gotta make it.” –YTCracker

Happy Father's Day

Contrary to popular belief, nerds are not always wholly solitary creatures. It is quite customary, in fact, for our kind to marry and breed. With that in mind, today I’d like to recognize all the nerd dads out there.

For any pop who ever helped out with essays and science projects not out of obligation, but for the fun of it, for any dad who ever set in as Dungeon Master when Charlie had the chicken pox and couldn’t make it to the D&D session, for any father who, not only deeply, genuinely cared whether or not you found Metroplex under the tree on Christmas morning but also spent all day helping you bang that fucker together, this one is for you.

If you’re a geek dad, then Hipster, please! salutes you: May your Father’s Day be filled with Battlestar Galactica reruns and may your iPod runneth over. And if you’re one of the lucky few of my generation to have a nerdy dad of your own, why not call the old man up and see if he fancies a game of Risk?

Here’s a little vid (in cased you missed it) from Penny Arcade’s Gabe. It seems as though, while teaching little Gabe his first round of animal noises, he added in some less than pedestrian selections.



Now that’s nerd love.

Nerdcore News

Damned if I ain’t blogging like a fiend today! What can I say? The hits just keep on coming.

For those of you not in the know (a group of individuals which up until about fifteen minutes ago included yours truly) a gentleman by the name of Gabriel has recently began posting YouTube mini-newscasts concerning the nerdcore scene, while he focuses heavily on the Seattle area (at least in this particle installment) it should be of interest to anyone with a love for the scene at large.



This was brought to my attention when Gabriel posted a comment to an earlier entry here at Hipster, please! I’m not sure who this cat is, but I, for one, plan to support him. I enjoy what he’s doing and I dig the way he does it.

If you’re reading this one, Gabriel, holler at me!

How we got here.

I don’t generally link to 1Up, not because I specifically dislike the site, but because I know they don’t need any help getting hit. However, considering I just pimped a shirt for Penny Arcade, I figured I could include this as well.

1Up is currently running a feature on play mechanics that changed gaming. It’s a fascinating read for anyone who was there, and I would imagine even more so for younger gamers who’ve never known a world without life bars. It also draws some nice parallels between early games that featured ground-breaking play mechanics and modern counterparts that still rely on them.

The best thing about it? Grappling hooks. Bionic Commando, baby!

The more you know

That impeccable triad of good taste (Gabe, Tycho, and Kiko) have recently offered up a new t-shirt design that I believe sums up the teachings of your favorite profit succinctly. Behold!

Internet Celebrity

You know Keith Moore: He is, after all, the Washington based nerdcore rapper known as Beefy. But more importantly, whether you’ve downloaded his previous independent EPs or not, you know Beefy. He’s that big guy, friendly, good-natured. He used to work with you at the local supermarket. Or maybe he used to sit behind you in Bio. Remember when you stood in line for the Star Wars premiere? You had to run across the street to that deli to take a leak -- Beefy saved your place in line.

If mc chris is nerdcore’s most recognizable name, if MC Frontalot’s its driving force, if Futuristic Sex Robotz are the genre’s foul-mouthed geekstas, then Beefy is certainly nerdcore’s everyman. His songs are humorous, good-natured, slice of life affairs that make him stand out from his peers by simply trying not to. Comparisons to other artists are sure to follow, but, in both verse and personality, Beefy is simply Beefy.

He was nice enough to take some time away from working on his new full-length CD, doing his part to promote the Rhyme Torrents Nerdcore Compilation CD project, appearing in the Project: Nerdcore documentary, and the myriad of other ventures in which he is currently participating to answer a few questions for Hipster, please! What follows is an assemblage of our email missives that explores the motivations and personal philosophies of nerdcore’s most prominent Whitesican.

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How long have you been crafting nerdcore rhymes, and what originally got you into nerdcore?

I consider my beginning as a nerdcore rapper being when I recorded Whitesican. It's not the nerdiest song, I grant you, but it was in no way typical hip-hop or R&B. I'm not so hot with dates, but I wrote it as a freshman in 2000 and either recorded it that year or in 2001. Then I made “David's Sister” and that was all for a while. In 2004 I saw the episode of Sealab 2021 that played mc chris' "Fett's Vette" during the end credits and I found it to be very catchy. I was singing the chorus in my SQL class when a friend of mine came up and said, "Oh! You're an mc chris fan?" And I was like, "A who what now?" He told me about mc chris. After hearing his music I discovered that there were people like me that wanted to make rap songs but didn't wanna talk about cars or guns or hoes.

How is David's sister, by the way? Did she have anything to say about the song and video?

David's Sister loved the song. I wrote and recorded it in Vancouver, WA thinking I was far away now and that I'd never have to deal with seeing her again. Then I ended up moving back home a week later and had to deal with it. But it turns out that she loved it and she played it for her entire family. I asked David if he liked it, and he told me dryly, "Oh yeah Beefy, I just loved the song you made about wanting to bone my sister." I don't know, however, if she saw or enjoyed the animation because David and I had a bit of a falling out and Kathryn was none too pleased with me after that.

I couldn't help but notice the misspelling of the word "mijo" by the reporter who conducted your KomoTV interview. Truthfully now, does the Beefy clan account for the entire Latino population of the Pacific Northwest?

I took some heat for that from my family. I had to keep reminding them that I didn't type it, so it wasn't my fault. Those guys at Komo were great to interview me, but they're up in Seattle whereas I'm in the Southeast corner of the state where there is a huge Mexican population. And a huge chunk of my family comes from central Washington which has an even higher concentration of Mexican people.

What is the recording set-up for a typical Beefy session?

I make sure no one's home. I open up Audition 1.5 while I prepare my CD bindle "mic stand." I plug in my headphones, load the track, take a swig from my liter Coke bottle, and begin the process. I'm not rich man and I'm not a guy who knows what he's doing as far as audio production goes. I have a $60 mic behind a pop filter and that's as good as it's going to get for a little while. The only downside is that I usually record the same line over and over again to get it just right, and by the end of the session my voice is gone.

Fans of Beefy know that you're a Renaissance man of sorts: rapper, animator, comic artist. You've stated on your site that you refuse to focus your energy on any particular area. With that in mind: do you consider yourself more a musician or visual artist?

I guess it depends on what I'm really into at the time. With this compilation about to launch and making a new album, I'm really focusing on the music. And in a dream world this is what I would do forever because I think I'm pretty good at it. I've always wanted to be an artist though and it's been a lot of hard work getting to the point where I can draw my characters somewhat consistently. I'll probably never consider myself an artist since there are so many people I look up to who are amazing and so much better than me. I don't take the art to seriously; I just really like to doodle.

You've produced Flash-based videos for both "Whitesican" and "David's Sister" as well as countless web-comics. Which of these are you the most proud of?

I think they're all pretty cool even with their many flaws, but I guess I'm most proud of Whitesican. I've been playing with Flash since middle school and after I made the song it was only a matter of time before it got animated. I like it because it was the first time I ever tried doing anything that hard. For someone who isn't a natural artist, animation is death, even with as little actual movement my stuff has. I was just proud that I decided to start the thing and I actually finished it.

Your site runs banner ads for Suicide Girls. Do you, like your contemporary MC Frontalot, find yourself "at the mercy of any sister with wrist scars and black eye goo?"

The SG girls are almost too hot for words. Their beauty doesn't make sense. When I had first heard about the site I was turned off by it because I thought it would be a bunch of girls crying and cutting themselves for attention. But to my delight SG is all about girls getting attention the old fashion way: Taking their clothes off. And there's something new or taboo about seeing someone that good looking covered with tattoos and piercings. At this point naked girls on the Internet are old and boring. But SG makes you look at it like it's sexy art until you're like, "Woo! Naked girls on the internet are awesome again!"

How did you become involved in the Nerdcore CD compilation project?

I got an e-mail from High-C telling me about it and asked if I wanted to contribute a new song, so I told him I would thinking it would be a cool little thing with like three other small name artists. I had no idea that it was going to turn into such a big deal. And this is all because High-C has willed it so. High-C is shameless when it comes to pimping this collection and because of that there's going to be an article about us in Wired magazine and we're suppose to get reviewed by Slashdot. It's very awesome. And it's also brought the nerd community together more than ever before.

Hey, brining the nerd community together is what we’re about here! And what about the Project: Nerdcore documentary? How did you get involved with that?

Dan, the director behind the project, contacted me and asked if I wanted to be in a movie. Do you really need to ask somebody a question like that? I should have gotten an e-mail from him saying, "Hey Beefy, I'm going to give you free publicity and a new source of legitimacy. I'll be filming you soon. Love Dan." But he was very informative and he's got a whole gameplan prepared for this thing. It's a very ambitious indi project that isn't being helped by the fact that not long after it was announced, Frontalot's doc was also announced. But when this thing is made I will pimp it harder than I've ever pimped anything before.

But in the long run, I think, both documentaries will serve to strengthen the scene. The same can be said for the compilation project. Of course, all this attention could pose some unique problems. Right now it seems the nerdcore scene is expanding at an alarming rate. Where there was once only a handful of artists, there now seems to be dozens. Do you harbor any fears of commercialization or exploitation of the genre?

Only in so much as that I fear a handful of people will get a record deal of some kind and I'll be left out of the mix. I won't lie, when the new artists started popping out I was a bit of an elitist. I was also scrutinizing lyrics I thought were too mainstream and didn't have enough nerd content. But the new people are nice and while there are obviously a ton of people just jumping onto the bandwagon a lot of these kids are sincere about wanting to put out quality geek music.

There appear to be a disproportionate amount of nerdcore hip-hop artists from the Washington area. How do you account for this phenomenon? Is there something in the water?

I've joked that Washington water is jam packed with lithium! From what I understand it's just easier to be a nerd here. Bill Gates watches over us from his secret underground lair in Redmond.

Your track "Applesauce Baptism" makes some rather disparaging comments about anime. Ever worry about otaku retribution?

The only downside is that I probably can't do a show with Karl Olsen aka Ultraklystron. Even though I said he was a cool dude, I didn't say many nice things about his fans. I just think it was a point of view I hadn't heard expressed by someone my age in this genre. The hippest thing in America right now is anime and the whole "I wish I was Japanese" thing. I thought there was enough support for it and that it deserved a counter-point argument in the form of a rap song. In my defense though, Ultraklystron talks more shit about anime in his songs than I do. He even knows the producers behind the anime he hates.

Speaking of playing shows, how often do you gig out? Any tour plans?

This is lame, but I've actually never performed on stage. I know, I know. My fear is that Eastern Washington doesn't exactly have the biggest nerd population that say Seattle does. My music is too hip-hop for rock shows and too nerdy for rap shows. I do think it would be cool, but I don't know the first thing about performing on stage.

Fear not, Beefy: There’s always PAX. You've already got two EPs, several Song Fight! submissions, and bunch of other assorted tracks under your belt; Now you're working on your first full-length album. How's that going?

It's pretty tough. Mostly because I don't want to just steal random beats from the Internet. I still can't sell the record because the beats I'm getting from awesome people like Shael Riley and Drown Radio have samples in it, but at least when someone hears it they'll know that it's a beat from a Beefy song. And having a relationship with the beatsmiths allows them to tailor beats to my style which is a dream come true. If only I could make beats I'd rule the world! The album is coming together really well though and I hope to have some verses from Shael, Doctor Popular, MC Router, and a couple more if I'm lucky.

You've covered songs by some big-name nerdcore artists (specifically MC Frontalot and mc chris). How do other nerdcore hip-hoppers generally react to having their material covered?

Frontalot liked it well enough to link me on his front page a while back, so I can only assume he loves that kind of stuff. And how can you not? Someone liked one of your songs so much that they felt the need to record it in an effort to further the spread of your name. I've not heard from mc chris, but I don't think anyone has since he became this big celebrity guy. He has a MySpace though so I guess he keeps up with his Internet roots...

The fact that you’re unafraid to throw a cover song in now and again isn’t the only thing that differentiates you from your nerdcore peers: Unlike some other nerdcore acts, you tend to shy away from explicit lyrical content. Is this a conscious effort?

It is and not many people pick up on it which I think is really cool. I hate a ton of cursing in music. To me it just shows that the writer was lazy and couldn't think of enough words or syllables to make his line flow, so he just threw in some f-bombs. I cuss very regularly in my day to day conversations with friends, but I don't need it in my music. That way when I do curse in a song, it's so much more powerful than if I did it every other verse. That's how mainstream hip-hop got lazy in the first place. First they were too lazy to write real words, then they became too lazy to write actual songs. That's how we ended up with songs about "dropping it like it's hot."

And also ditties about how it’s so damn hot up in herre! *groans* Uh, anyway, on to the next question: MCs like Frontalot and Lars integrate their own political beliefs into their songs. Do you have any political or social issues that you'd like to address in your rhymes?

I do. I very much do. But to be honest my music is pretty much care free and it's just me goofing around. But while thinking up tracks for the album, I did make room for a song I'm going to call “Doomed” which will have a political theme. My only fear, though, is that people already tell me that my music reminds them somewhat of Frontalot (crazy people I don't believe) and I don't want to be seen as just copying the Front. However, "Special Delivery" is an amazing song and I think all rappers should do something like that if they can. "My Sister" is another political Front song I can really get behind.

There are many kinds of geeks: gamers, comic geeks, table-top RPGers, sci-fi fanboys, etc. What kind of geek is Beefy?

Beefy is an Internet/Comic Book/RPG geek. I wrote a love song to the Internet for a reason. I really can't get enough of it. I'm a huge comic nerd and that's all my buddies and I will talk about sometimes. When I was a junior in high school my friends introduced me to table top gaming and my social life with women was done for. GURPS has become my poison of choice, and even though my friends are scattered all over the US now, we're still starting up a GURPS game over the net.

There you have it: Beefy is a geek for all seasons. Lastly, what, in your opinion, is the nature of nerd?

To me a nerd is just someone so comfortable with who they are and what they like that they don't feel the need to impress anyone. Every other clique is so worried about making sure they fit in with what they wear and how they talk that they forget who the hell they are. Do you think a nerd worries if his friends will think his shoes are cool? Hell no! As a nerd I'm more worried about my "buddy" succeeding his stealth roll while trying to steal my ring that does +5 fire damage!

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The good thing about blogging on the subject of nerd music is that nerd musicians are, by and large, courteous and accommodating. Beefy displayed these two traits in spades. In the past few weeks, this guy has gotten a ton of press, and for that he seems genuinely grateful.

If all the recent exposure causes nerdcore hip-hop to explode into the mainstream, making superstars out of meager English majors and put-upon computer programmers, then Beefy will surely ride the crest of that wave to all the fame and/or fortune that this ironic, postmodern world can afford. And if it doesn’t? Well, then I can say, with some sense of surety, that Mr. Moore will be content to simply remain Beefy: Internet celebrity.

I urge everyone – you know, all half-dozen of my loyal readers – to check out the contributions of Beefy (and all the other talented musicians who participated) on the newly available Rhyme Torrents Nerdcore Compilation CDs. I’m willing to bet that the stuff you dig will vastly outweigh the stuff you don’t. It’s a great way to support the scene, and it’s free. You can’t ask for much more than that.

Opinions and Assholes

The last two volumes of the Rhyme Torrents Nerdcore Compilation project are available for download. I’ve only personally listened (and I mean really, really listened) to volumes one and two, but so far I’ve been overwhelmingly impressed. It’s not a project I’m involved in. (Although, in the interest of full disclosure, I should mentioned that I have volunteered to help High-C out with compiling the liner notes.) It is, however, a project I completely support.

I said from the very beginning that Hipster, please! was about nerd love, nerd pride, and, most importantly, the fostering of a nerd music community. I stand by that, and what kind of dick would I be if I didn’t give, as they say in the vernacular, mad props to those who busted ass to put these disks together? A pretty big one, I reckon.

Now that the proverbial rubber has hit the road, it seems as though some of the artists involved are voicing their disappointment about the project as a whole. After careful consideration, I’ve elected not to link to these missives as this could be construed as running counter to the “nerd love” portion of my mission statement. Suffice it to say that these folks are entitled to their own opinions, and have every right to express them to their fans. An artist’s work is a result of his experiences, and what he feels is what he produces.

More than anything, I suppose, I’m saddened by what I view as chinks in the armor, divisions within the community, bad blood between artists. I’m not going to bullshit anyone and say that I love all of the tracks presented through this project, but, as mentioned above, I’m genuinely impressed with the overall output. There have been some recurring complaints leveled mostly at the newcomers, particularly about the dubious quality of some of their tracks. While this is certainly true, I found that many of the tracks with substandard production quality made up for this lack of polish with lyrical content, flow, and good ol’ fashioned panache.

All in all I’d say that I was disappointed by just as many of the contributions from “established” nerdcore artists as I was from the n00bs. The problem inherent in this is that it’s a wholly subjective issue: It simply comes down to personal likes and dislikes. Are there things I would’ve changed about the project had I been at the helm? Shit yeah! Would I have pushed for less diss rhymes? Sure. Would I have been more selective, possibly more elitist, about track selection? Maybe so. Of course, had I been in charge, odds are the comp would’ve never been seen to fruition. This was High-C’s game, and he played it well. Played the fuck out of it, in fact. For me, the bottom line is that C stepped up and put this thing together when no one else would. The contributors stepped up too, and I give love to one and all, whether your track found its way into my heavy rotation or not.

Had it not been for Rhyme Torrents, many of the new acts whose works I find myself falling in love with would have probably never graced my hard drive. And truthfully, some of these cats may’ve never had the nerve to put their stuff out there in the public forum in the first place. This thing was opened up to everyone, and that goes a long way in community building. We can hem and haw about what is and what is not nerdcore. We can look down our collective nose at those we find beneath us. We can flay the flesh from this thing’s soft underbelly and stare at its naked innards. Hell, we can separate all the hackers and the code-monkeys into one little corner and the lit geeks into another, the tabletop RPGers into one and the otaku into yet another, but eventually, folks, we’re going to run out of corners. We can put the founding fathers on one side of the room and the Johnnies-come-lately on the other but, while we might have lots of space to dance in-between these two camps, this won’t craft a cohesive movement.

Of course, we can also embrace the scene warts-and-all, accept the fact that we’re all fuckin’ geeks and misfits and outcasts, pistol-whip our inner fanboys, and do what we can to elevate ourselves and the others whom we find sharing our little niche. We, both fans and musicians, can either turn this into something that divides us or we can go out of our way to make ventures like this a hallmark of nerd music. Nerdcore’s got soul and nerdcore’s got heart. New experiences feed that soul. And without new blood, what’s that heart going to pump?

Rather than asking whether this one or that one is good for the ubiquitous nerdcore scene, I’ve elected to turn the eye inward and see if I’m doing my part to elevate it. I’m just trying to build bridges, even though my constructs are prone to structural defect. In the end, the only thing this guy is against in the community is squabbles, because squabbling is fruitless and “squabble” is a goddamn silly word.

My pop was always quick to remind me that opinions are like assholes: Everyone’s got one and most of ‘em stink. So I guess you can just consider this one asshole’s opinion. No warranty implied and your miles may very. Take my words with a grain of salt, but take it still.

Nerd Up.

Round II

It’s a good day for nerdcore as the second disk of the Nerdcore Hip-Hop Compilation CD Project is now available for download. Get it while it’s hot.

Star Wars Gangsta Rap Special Edition

Okay, so I’m not the biggest Star Wars fan in the world, but even I was impressed with the revamped version of this geeksta classic. Experience it again for the first time.

(I do love a good oxymoron!)

The Nerdcore Hip-Hop Compilation CD Project Vol. 1

Volume 1 of the famed Nerdcore Hip-Hop Compilation CD Project is now available for download. The last three volumes should be up soon: High-C is only one man, and I’m sure he’s working as fast as he can. Why not go and pull the torrent for the first so as to whet your appetite? And be sure to read the liner notes too. That shit is fascinating!

Get thee quickly to Rhyme Torrents so as to enjoy the earthly delights afforded by such economical tunage. Nerd up!

The evilest geek of them all \m/\m/

If the media is to be believed (and fuck knows that’s a crapshoot), then today is the most malevolent day of the whole of this millennium. Of course I couldn’t let that slip by without at least some mention. While some will spend this day locked in their closets of prayer and others still wile away their hours in more diligent pursuits, I’ve decided to use this day to honor one among our number who is generally overlooked by the nerd community at large.

Since Black Sabbath first cranked out a song about a mutated time-traveler on a blood-thirsty rampage across the world he had originally set out to preserve, heavy metal has had an unseen, often unmentioned, nerd element. So today, on good ol’ 6~6~6, I would like to honor Anthrax's Scott Ian; metal’s premiere closet geek.

From the early days of Anthrax, where the band named-checked the likes of the then-independent (and quite entertaining) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and (pre-Stallone) Judge Dread comic books, Scotty and the boys seemed to have a fine eye for geekery. And anyone keeping score at home (read: anyone who’s watched any of the abundance of VH1 list shows aired in the past three years) knows that Ian never relinquished his nerdly ways. Whether he’s talking toys on television or geeking out about Battlestar Galactica on the Thraxcast, Scott Ian continues to let his geek flag fly.

For always sticking close to his roots and for letting the world know that there was nothing wrong with enjoying heavy metal, rap, and comic books, Hispter, please! bestows upon Scotty Ian Rosenfeld (He gets extra nerd points just for being a Jew!) the mantle of "Metal-Geek Defender of the Faith." May you always find succor and solace within the haven that is your local comic book retailer and may all your saving throws be successful.

-- nerdus antea, nerdus modo, nerdus eternus --

Nerd news in brief

With summer well underway I find myself bogged down with all of the idle fucking around that I’ve been putting off for months. Thankfully, our nerd news nuggets of the past few days are conveniently bite-sized!

• DS Lite leak – One of our old pals at CAG discovered yesterday that some local retailers had put DS Lites on the shelves well before the June 11th street date. Feel free to head out to your local (b&m) Wal-Mart or Target and try your luck.
• Win a Free DS Lite form Kotaku – Want a DS Lite but you’re too damn cheap to drop $130? Try decoding this week’s secret message at Kotaku and win one (and some other groovy shit). Here’s what you need to know for this week's drawing:
  "To enter the contest you must break this code: nrytt xrfwy ktwdt zuzsd ptyfp znyjx
  One hint: the Key to the code can be found in Eliza's first post on Kotaku. If you search for the story you'll come to the month that leads the first sentence. Perhaps the third month isn't the only one Caesar should beware.
  To enter, email the answer in the subject line to: kotakucontest@gmail.com by midnight Friday EST. One entry per a person please. If you enter more than once per a weekly contest Kotaku reserves the right to have fits and ban you from this and future contests."
  It's a damn clever set-up, and, while I won't give you the answer, I will wish you the best of luck.
• Penny Arcade and the ESRB – Gabe and Tycho are in cahoots with the ESRB! Yup, the Entertainment Software Rating Board has asked our heroes for help in spreading the good word of self-regulation. The Penny Arcade boys have created characters symbolic of the current ratings system in hopes of fostering understanding in the famously clueless modern parent.
  "That's not an easy task but we took the job for a couple reasons. Number one Tycho and I are both fathers now. The discussion about the ESRB and its place in the gaming industry is no longer just academic for us. Our kids will be playing games before we know it. Second, we much prefer the ESRB to government regulation and let's all be honest here, that's the alternative. "
  Way to take one for the team, guys!
• Nerdcore mix – I’ve been holding off mentioning this for weeks now, but, for those not already in the know, the cats at bedoper.com have crafted not one, not two, not three, but four delightful nerdcore compilation CDs for FREE MUTHA-GRABBIN’ DOWNLOAD! Links will go live on Rhyme Torrents in just a few days. The line-up includes damn-near every nerdcore artist available, some (read: many) going so far as to contribute new tracks. It’s a wonder to behold, and you can bet your greasy grandma that I’ll be milking the torrents for all they’re worth!

And, with that, you should be pretty well caught up. Long days and pleasant nights.

Geek movie news

Not content to have a mere 6 versions of his film-noir cyber-punk classic floating around, Ridley Scott has elected to grace us with yet another goddamn version of Blade Runner.

The DVD, featuring the 1992 "director's cut," will be deleted after four months, and replaced by a 25th anniversary "final cut," which Warner Home Video is billing as Scott's "definitive new version" of the film.

I’m guessing this is the version where we find out that Thelma and Louise are both Replicants.

RIP Desmond

I know this isn’t geek related in the slightest, but, considering of my rudeboy roots, I feel it has to be done.

Just a few hours ago, reggae pioneer Desmond Dekker died of a heart attack in his English home. Though not acknowledged as much around the states, Dekker will forever be remembered by those in the know as the man who birthed reggae’s first worldwide hit. You heard it here, kiddies: It was Dekker, not Marley, who put reggae on the map.

When asked to explain the lyrical complexity of this hit, Israelites, Dekker once replied, "I was really saying, don't give up, things will get better if you just hold out long enough."

Here’s hoping that, wherever he is, Des is enjoying whatever lies beyond. We miss you, brudda.

GoNintendo goes to the symphony

It appears as if RawMeatCowboy and his pals over at GoNintendo are heading out to the inaugural performance of Play!: A Video Game Symphony at Chicago’s Rosemont Theatre this weekend. The GoNintendo crew has even been invited to a special press conference, and, in the spirit of sharing some love with the Nintendo faithful, their own Nicky Hill is currently soliciting questions to propose to the composers/producers. Anyone who’d like to submit a question is encouraged to head on over to GoNintendo’s Forums and let his voice be heard.

Sister doing it for herself

In recent nerdgirl news, Kari Byron, of MythBusters fame, posed for the June 2006 issue of FHM magazine. I’m not generally a stickler for rules, but I don’t reckon she’s wearing proper lab attire.

Nerdcore Rising

This was my first interview. Well, that’s not exactly true: In 5th grade, I interviewed my gramps for a project about the Great Depression. I aced that fucker!

Seriously, I’m not exactly renowned for my interviewing acumen, and this meet-up rather rapidly devolved into a pair of old geeks casually gabbing about nerdly endeavors and participating in good-natured self-deprecation. I blame Frontalot. He wasn’t difficult or distracted or rushed – none of the things you mentally prepare yourself for before meeting an artist. He was relaxed. He was complimentary. And, for a professional nerd, he was actually pretty damn cool. Behold the fruits of my half-assed labor:

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I understand that this is your first national tour. Where did the idea for the corresponding documentary come from?

Well, my keyboardist Gminor7 knew Negin Farsad from New York and she heard about the band that he was in and thought it would be a good subject. And she’s a filmmaker so she really took it seriously and is actually doing it and I was surprised. When she first said it I thought oh nobody’s going to make a documentary about me, that’s crazy talk! But here it’s happening so that’s exciting.

Do you feel that having the cameras rolling has put even more pressure on you, this being your inaugural tour?

*laughs* Sort of. I mean, there’s definitely a bigger pressure to be amusing all the time than I usually experience. Usually I just save all that up for the stage. I think I might have been out of amusing this evening.

No, no. You were great! Definitely amusing. If this is your first tour, then that begs the question: what is your day job? I know you’ve mentioned previously that you primarily do freelance work. Is this still true?

Ummm… not currently, no. I actually just sort of wrapped things up with my last couple of clients so I can do this full-time.

Which then begs the question: do you find the “freelancer lifestyle” conducive to one who is pursuing his first ever nerdcore tour?

Yeah. Luckily I don’t have house payments. I didn’t have a job that it was really important to hold on to. I just had clients, and I can get more clients if I have to at some point, I guess.

So your education. You were an English major, is that right?

That is correct.

I’m just glad to see another English major who’s actually doing something somewhat related to language! Were you involved in any other types of bands or other performance projects before becoming MC Frontalot?

No, I was in some bands in college – nothing really serious, but we did perform and write songs and play and stuff. I’ve done a lot of Song Fight! stuff besides the MC Frontalot thing, and then Gabby my keyboardist, Gminor7, and I were both involved in a musical theatre company in San Francisco and Berkley called Emerald Rain Productions. Gabby was the music director of that troupe, and I was, like, a founding troupe member, and we did that for 10 or 12 years. And we did lots of original pop-rock musicals that we would write. So that was most of my stage experience.

Several of the people who are in the nerdcore/alternative rap scene (like MC Lars) started out in punk bands. There really seems to be an inherent punk/DYI ethic to nerdcore. Are you still recording everything yourself? Are you still laptop-ing it up?

So far, yeah, just home recording. I don’t know, I guess that is a big punk rock thing: doing it all in your basement. I love that it’s so much easier these days to make things that sound borderline professional just with a computer. It’s pretty great.

Here comes the shameless begging: Since you are self-producing, is there any hope that some MC Frontalot a capellas could escape onto the Internet so that aspiring djs and mash-up artists might be able to get their hands on them? (Hint-hint!)

*laughs* Actually I’ve got my crack team of high-powered developers working on my brand new Web site even as we speak, and it is going to be up, I hope, in about 7 weeks – 6 1/2, maybe. And it will have a whole section called the Open-Source Beats Program where I will post source kits for songs and let people post their remixes back to the site, and there will be, like, voting on which ones are the greatest and stuff like that.

The number of nerdcore acts really seems to have ballooned. (I’ve got here: mc chris, MC Lars, MC Hawking, and yourself of course, Ytcracker, MC Plus+, Monzy, Paulb, Jesse Dangerously, Optimus Rhyme, and the list goes on and on.) Do you feel that this constitutes a movement? Is that what Nerdcore Rising is about? Is there a scene developing, and, if so, what do you feel your place is within that scene?

It’s kind of funny to think of something that’s just a bunch of people looking at Web sites and sending email to each other as a scene. Like, traditionally scenes (especially music scenes) have been around a place. But it has some stuff in common, I guess, with a scene like a music scene. There are certainly a lot of people who have latched onto the idea that you don’t have to be cool to write down raps and even share them with people. So I’m glad that that’s happening. I see myself as uniquely positioned to, um, exploit the current ballooning popularity because people generally mention me when they talk about nerdcore because I stuck the phrase together a few years ago, I guess.

Of those acts, you’ve worked with both the Hawkman and Jesse Dangerously. Is there anyone else from the nerdcore movement whom you’ve worked with or would like to work with in the future?

Bedsides Hawking and Dangerously? Well, you know, I’d love to do something with mc chris. We talked about it once a long time ago, but he’s very busy being famous. *laughs*

Do you hope to find yourself in the same position where you start a tour and it just never ends? Because mc went out how long ago and he is still on the road? That’s crazy!

It’s true. Well, that is certainly what inspired me to get off my ass and actually go do this: his, you know, seemingly effortless success. I’m sure it was a real pain in the butt, but he did really well with it last year and I said well alright, there really is an audience for the stuff that we’re doing. He has a bigger audience a) because he’s better at rapping and b) he’s got national exposure from doing the Adult Swim stuff. So it’s probably not going to be anywhere near as easy for me to, um, draw that audience on this tour. But if it draws well enough then I can keep going. That’s sort of how I’m looking at it.

Tracks like "I Heart Fags" and "Special Delivery" have a definite political slant. How important is this political element to nerd music and nerd culture? Don’t folks generally think of nerds as being fairly apathetic?

I don’t know if I can speak for nerdcore music in general and its relation to politics. I know that when I was trying to make those songs I was really almost trying not to. It’s like, I knew that the kids who were already drawn to the music were probably interested in it being funny and not having; well, having complex and funny jokes to unravel out of the lyrics, but not necessarily having to think about the world and what a mess it is. It’s like, a lot of people turn to music, especially funny music, in order to escape from all that kind of stuff, but I’m from Berkeley, California and I just couldn’t help myself! That’s how the lyric to the "Special Delivery" song starts “I tried to go clean from protesting,” but I there’s just no… I couldn’t – I couldn’t not do that. Um, and same with the "I Heart Fags" song. I think I must’ve, like, probably lost at least a couple of fans off of that, but, you know, hopefully my fans have an open enough mind that, at least, if they don’t dig a song they don’t have to listen to it and they don’t have to reject everything about it. So, I don’t know, uh, if nerds in general tend to be political. Most of the intellectuals I know from home and from college, they’re all very political and they’re usually geeks too. But the sort of wider, gaming culture nerds, like, math nerds tend to be Libertarians. Definitely not a left-wing crowd naturally. But, I mean, that’s me. I gotta, like, actually express myself.

I guess that’s sort of an important thing about the archetypal nerd: you can be liberal, you can be conservative, there’s not really, you know, you don’t really have to wear a certain shirt to be a nerd. It’s just something that naturally occurs.

Very true, yeah.

What are the signs and symptoms of a swollen hip-hop gland?

*laughs* Well, it sort of engorges, and then you kind of squeeze it and it’s painful, and some rapping comes out. And you find that you have to express your hip-hop gland, through squeezing, repeatedly. Or you can just go to the vet – they’ll do it.

So the expression: that would be the proper course of treatment?

Yes. It’s like when a dog drags his ass on the carpet. He’s just trying to express the anal gland.

Aside from dropping geek rhymes, what’s your nerdiest hobby/obsession? Are you a comic geek? A gamer? An anime guy? What’s your thing?

Not deep into anime, although I love watching it. I do still, even at my advanced age, spend an inordinate amount of time on certain video games. Um, I mean I just lose a month to Civ IV, you know, and it’ll give me worse carpal tunnel than when I’m working. It’s awful. So, I definitely am deep into video games. Much less, like, the RPGs and tabletop stuff since maybe junior high/early high school; I haven’t done a lot of that. But, deep into video games. I still love comic books very dearly. Ever since college I’ve been much more interested in, um, like the Fantagraphics stuff, the Dark Horse stuff. Dan Clowes and Chris Weir are my favorites. Julie Doucet and Jim Woodring. Um, I love a lot of different comics, but I don’t meet a lot of people who love the same comics as I do. Mostly the comic nerds I know are into, like, Justice League and Marvel and whatnot.

Penny Arcade Expo: is it as amazing and geek-awe inspiriting as it seems? I know you’ve said before that that’s what you look forward to. Is it geek Mecca when you get to PAX and there’s the table-top gaming and the comic guys and the people with their noses in their DSes? Is it what it appears to be? Is it all that and more?

Um, it’s pretty wild. It’s definitely everything you would imagine it to be, and it’s very impressive. I wish I could enjoy it more when I go. The year before last I was able to go just for the night and then I had to disappear. And last year I also had to disappear right after. And then, even the whole time I was there, I had to staff my booth. So I didn’t get to play any videogames last years. This year I’ll bring a PSP so that I can.

That’s another question: PSP or DS? Where are you stationed in the handheld war? Am I to take it you’re firmly entrenched in the Sony camp?

It’s funny; I’ve only ever owned two dedicated gaming consoles in my whole life. I was always on computers. Like TRS-80, the Commodore 64, then PCs. The first time I ever bought a consoles I bought on Craigslist a used PS2 so that I could play San Andreas ‘cause I’m so obsessed with those Grand Theft Auto games. And, um, so I have a PS2 and then I bought a PSP so I could play this fucking Liberty Cities. It’s like the amount of money I’ve spent to play Grand Theft Auto games is totally outrageous!

Lastly, what would you say -- since we’ve sort of discussed the types and levels of nerd-dom -- is the essence of nerd? Can you pin it down, or is it just too nebulous?

Well, it’s easy to sort of define what it’s not, right? The nerds are the kids who aren’t cool. Um, but what a nerd is? I always thought, growing up and constantly being hollered at being told that I was a nerd and getting put down, I always thought that maybe those other kids have their shit together in a way that I don’t socially. But I have, you know, a rich inner life. I have an imagination. I’m smart enough to enjoy Dr. Who and Monty Python. I have a sense of humor. I have all of my pretty little comic books. And what do they have? They get to smoke pot with the other popular kids. How long is that gonna last? And, hey, I was right. That, like, lasted through junior college, and now where the hell are they?

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And that was it. Front and I rapped for a few more minutes about nerdly self-indulgence, and then I bid him adieu.

When it was all said and done, he had taken a half-hour to sit down and answer a bunch of goofy-assed questions from some guy with a blog that all of a half-dozen people actually read. He had even closed down his merch table early, probably missing a load of t-shirt and CD sales that could’ve otherwise bought food, beer, gas, and comics on his first ever tour, to do so. What’s more, he had done so gladly and for no other reason than to talk with a fan. It didn’t really behoove him to do it. I mean, shit, there’s no amount of free publicity to be found here. I’m actually guessing most of you reading this linked in from his site. The truth is, I suppose, it was just a friendly gesture. It was nerd love. It was geek solidarity. And when Front comes to your town, you go out and show him some love too. He’s working hard to bring the nerdcore to the masses. Shouldn’t you be doing the same?

Nerd Up!

**The accompanying Frontalot-as-zombie images scanned from my personal collection and used without permission. Interested fans can easily catch these illustrations (and a damn fine story) in Image Comics’ The Walking Dead Volume 1: Days Gone Bye by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore available at finer comic shops and online retailers everywhere. Please don’t sue me.**