The Hawtline

HELLO, INTERNET. After a long hiatus due to technical probz in addition to IRL obligations (shocking, I know!), TWIGBy and I are BACK with a brand new (sorta) episode: EPISODE 9!!!

Truth be told, we recorded this episode nearly a month ago and I was only able to edit it just yesterday. I was planning to scrap it but TWIGz insisted we keep it, cos it came out kinda great, surprisingly.

In any case, thanks for sticking with us, guys! We’ve got lots more ridiculousness coming soon.

Once again, I’m gonna take this space to AGAIN invite the intimidatingly amazing Ben Brown onto the show for the next episode: EPISODE NUMBER FREAKIN’ 10. CAN YOU BELIEVE?! I know we asked him and he accepted last time, but that was months ago, so.. yeah. MR. BROWN. PLEASE WILL YOU BE ON OUR SHOW? I certainly hope so since we kinda announced it 23 times during this episode. There’ll be a whole world wide web with blue balls if this doesn’t pan out, you know.

Thanks to everyone who submitted their questions and calls for this episode! They were all pretty hilarious, ngl. Don’t forget, you can submit questions to TWIGBy and myself anytime by heading over to http://thehawtline.tumblr.com/submit, or by calling our voicemail at 305.982.7476!

Music featured in this episode:

• Christina Aguilera — Genie in a Bottle
• Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros — Home
• Raekwon ft. Inspectah Deck, Method Man, Ghostface Killah — House of Flying Daggers

OH, ALMOST FORGOT. Don’t forget to subscribe to us on iTunes, right here:

AWESOME!

TWIGBy was all peeved that I posted the ultimate summer jam “too soon” even though he stepped up the game HARDCORE by posting “Hot in Herre”, so WHATEVER. But now he’s all about the blahblah end of august chill out songs, so this is one of my favorites.

I’m totally gonna get laughed off of Tumblr for this but I don’t even care.

Zwan — El Sol.

Likes a 12 year old boy watching his first porno Celisse has blown the Summer Jam load way too fucking fast. I was hoping we’d eventually escalate the UPBEAT summer jams to Sexy Back, but she decided to fire the guns RIGHT AWAY.

So let’s get into the August summer wind down with the CHILL songs, and to me nothing says just chilling out on a deck with a cold drink in the late afternoon better than Os Mutantes. The laid back Brazillian psychedelic rock is the perfect end of August music and IMO they don’t have a better song than A Minha Menina, so enjoy everyone!

Oh really, TWIGBy? You wanna talk summer jams?

TOP DAT, BITCH.

Oh, right, I kinda forgot about the BATTLE OF THE SUMMER JAMS. Whoops!

Anyway, after giving it a good long think, I decided that for today’s submission, I’ll go with a 2001 throwback. Everyone in the English-speaking world knows this song. I’d call it a classic but it’s still too new. In 10 years, it’ll be a classic. Not gonna lie, I consider this song the “Boys of Summer” of the 2000’s.

This is one of those songs that people can name from just the first bar. Wherever you are, you can remember that first late summer when this song was really popular.

The first few lines are so easily relatable, but maybe that’s just cos I’ve spent many, many, many a day on the beach feeling the same way:

I dig my toes into the sand.
The ocean looks like a thousand diamonds
strewn across a blue blanket.

I lean against the wind.
Pretend that I am weightless.
And in this moment, I am happy.

This song is a great representation of everything amazing about the summer. New opportunities usually arise during Autumn, and Summer is just the time when you’re on the edge of something great, and you relax and take it all in and you always have those curious butterflies that appear whenever something big is about to happen, and you just want to share that feeling with someone.

So my submission today, clearly, is “Wish You Were Here,” by Incubus.

We continue with this season’s Summer Jam’s session with Whoo! Alright! Yeah… uh huh! by The Rapture. OMG TWIGBY YOU’RE SUCH A WANNABE HIPSTER well SHUT UP! Maybe I am but come on, you can’t deny the infectious groove in this tune. That groovin bass line, COWBELL and amazing chantable “PEOPLE DON’T DANCE NO MORE” section, it’s the sort of song that just GETS THE PARTY GOING!

So in response to the TRAVESTY that was TWIGBy’s last submission in the SUMMER JAM COMPETITION, I’ve had to step up to the plate and bring out my best summer jam hits.

So today we have a song that REEEEEEAAAAAAALLLLLYYYY FRIGGEN EVOKES the spirit of Summer. Yeah. YEAH. SHUT UP. So today I bring you Spoon with The Way We Get By.

OH YEAH. I WENT THERE.

Ok, today is Canada Day if you weren’t aware and I need to counter Canadians Len with my own collective of Canadians for the SUMMER JAM contest. And what better song than The Laws Have Changed by The New Pornographers. Seriously, this song has summer written all over it, it reminds me of all those old Beach Blanket Bingo movies with Neko Case chanelling her inner Annete Funicello. The Pornos make some great sunny summer time music but I think this one evokes the season the best.

So yesterday in the SUMMER JAM COMPETITION, TWIGBy totally stepped up his game by posting Junior Senior, which I was totally saving for a rogue attack at a later date. WAY TO BEAT ME TO THE PUNCH, TWIGZ.

So I had no choice but to retaliate with a summer jam equally as catchy, slightly annoying, and classic (you know, if you consider 1999 to be classic).

According to the Wikipedia, “in 2007, Stylus Magazine ranked the song thirteenth on its list of the top fifty one-hit wonders, stating that it ‘perfectly captured that warm, lazy feeling you get when late summer still seems like it could last forever.’” (via.) Which is why Len’s Steal My Sunshine is totally my pick for today’s Summer Jam.

HAH.

Ok so I’ve been slacking off myself, Celisse told me to post a summer jam on Friday and I was all like “yeah yeah I’LL DO IT” and here we are now on Monday evening and I APOLOGIZE FOR HAVING A LIFE ON THE WEEKENDS CELISSE WILL YOU FORGIVE ME? Y/N?

Anyways today I’m posting that infectious dance song Move Your Feet by Junior Senior. There really isn’t much to say here, it’s just a song that gets the PARTY STARTING. It’s so sunny and happy and up beat and when I think of it I think of the happy animated hot dogs dipping themselves in mustard. Ok enough CREEPINESS JUST LISTEN TO THIS DAMN SONG.

It might seem a little “cheap” to post a Nas song instead of an actual Michael Jackson song for a post giving tribute to the music legend, as if to try and mask some legitimacy over someone deemed the “King of Pop” but I think far too many people dismiss Michael Jackson’s effect on our society and our culture. It may have seemed like the man was on a 20 year crusade to destroy his own name as a mismanaged life of excess and fame along with his poor upbringing caught up with him. Far too often we poke fun at the falling nose, baby dangling, masked kids Michael Jackson. We seem to forget the man who literally changed the way we think about music and the concept of what a celebrity is.

The Michael Jackson story can be considered one of lightning in a bottle, the right culmination of events and musical minds converging creating a pop culture phenomenon that would become the worlds best selling artist. It almost seems laughable to think that after the Jackson 5 Michael’s solo career, seemed to be a sure thing as the young charismatic brother of the troop, floundered when it got out the gates. From there chance encounters continued, and meeting Quincy Jones on the set of “The Wiz”, an afro centric take on the Wizard of Oz which ended up being a box office flop, would lead to the collaborations that would create “Off the Wall” and the iconic “Thriller.”

“Thriller” to me has always been the album that “changed things.” Prior to “Thriller” music was splintered, shattered into specific genres and the concept of the “crossover hit” was foreign to everyone. Start with track one, and “Gotta Be Starting Something’s” disco bass married with lyrics talking about urban strife eventually climaxing into African world music drums and chanting married the Dance Clubs and the Boom Box almost perfectly. When it comes to Thriller I always give Quincy a little more credit then MJ admittedly but note this: for all the mish mashing and genre mixing Quincy WANTED to do there was no better vessel to carry these ideas than Michael Jackson. Forget the ghoulish pasty white plastic being he had becomes in his later days and remember the album covers for both “Thriller” and the poster sized full body shot on “Off The Wall.” There, MJ, with his curls, his look that was non threatening enough for white America but as a coloured person broke down the notion that black artist can only be stars or back up players for specific genres of music. Michael had IT, the charisma and the look to build on at the time was very daring music. While “Beat It” maybe a no brainer now in 1982 it must’ve been like a nuclear bomb hitting the musical landscape; here you have a former black young soul singer belting out the high notes over an Eddie Van Halen guitar shredding? Even Eddie at the time thought it was a joke. But the stories tale of urban gang life coupled with that chunky riff culminating into that absolutely sick guitar solo allowed Michael to be accepted by rock fans at the time.

But aside from eschewing music’s boundaries Jackson the entertainer is probably the biggest contribution to our current music landscape. His music videos practically birthed the notion of the music video and the onslaught of MTV as a means of delivering new music in the 80’s and 90’s. To this day few images are as burned vividly in my brain as the light tiles in “Billie Jean,” his red jacket in “Beat It” and “Thriller” or the white suit and fedora in “Smooth Criminal.” His choreography would elevate the live performance to a spectacle that would copied by modern day would bes trying to steal his crown like Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake. His shameless self promotion and swagger would influence the likes of many hip hop artist who would don the same personas to show the confidence people craved in their music artist.

Really, I don’t care WHAT kind of music you enjoy, saying you don’t like Michael Jackson or even worse, dismissing his important is asinine. When you have Moby ripping off the beat to “Billie Jean” for his songs “We Are All Made of Stars,” when you have Kanye West sampling “PYT” for “The Good Life,” when rock artist like Alien Ant Farm and Chris Cornell decide to do terrible covers of your pop songs, when you have Jarvis Cocker trying to assault you at the Brit awards, when you have Justin Timberlake trying to be “the white Michael Jackson,” when you have all artist trying to build good relationships with their producers like MJ and Quincy had, when Andre 3000 pretty much took the cross genre concept and ran away with it in “Hey Ya”, when you have every pop star in the world being forced to ATTEMPT choreography…. fuck do I even have to go on?

[The Walkmen — Summer Stage]

Okay so TWIGBy yelled at me cos I’ve been slacking off in the SUMMER JAM COMPETITION. To that I say: Eff you I was editing a show for two days, you butt.

Anyway, today’s submission is Summer Stage, by The Walkmen. No, not just cos it has the word Summer in the title, either. This is a song that makes you feel like you are actually on a boat in the middle of the ocean, with not a care in the world. A lot of The Walkmen’s songs are like that, but this one is especially good in that way.

When I used to drive the MUSTANG FROM HELL, I’d often spend hot summer afternoons pulled up at the beach between classes, napping while listening to this song on repeat. It puts you in the best mood to just forget about your daily worries and think of blissful vacations and fun times.