I want to suck (your blood).

Welcome to the desert of the vampire.

Oh, you thought Twilight had driven a stake through vampire mythos – that with its sparkly, daywalking Christian Rock Emo vibe, it had finally cast asunder the resonance and insight of the vampire myths and left them in shards on the dry, dusty ground of a vast cultural wasteland.

Well, you haven’t seen Vampirum Ad Absurdam – the true return to dust of Romania-via-Ireland’s tortured legacy – until you’ve seen the video to the late-2009 Timbaland single, “Morning After Dark,” featuring French recording artist ShoShy and sometimes, depending on the version, that sultry creature of the night: Nellie Furtado. Observe:

Count Dracula
Lestat Di Lioncourt
Blade
Angelus
Ultraviolet
Edward Cullen
Timbo “Crazy Eyes” McGee

Witness the final descent of vamp. And yet…

As any archaeologist can tell you, there is a lot of wisdom to be found in a ruin. Why has vampsloitation sunk so low? Why does it just not make any goddamned sense anymore? What are the key contradictions that have spoiled the saga of the bloodsucker?

What confusions and conflicts in our own society are reflected in this garbled attempt to serve so many masters at once?

All this, and a vampire who thinks “You’re dope enough yep,” and says “I’m like wow,” after the jump –

Matthew Wrather hosts with Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and John Perich to overthink the MTV VMAs (with live coverage from our correspondent at the show), the avant garde performance art of Lady GaGa, and whether Rock Band is real music.

Tell us what you think! Leave a comment, use the contact form, email us or call 20-EAT-LOG-01—that’s (203) 285-6401.

Download Episode 63 (MP3)

You never get away from the dust.

I feel it crunch beneath the palm of my hand as I lower myself to the ground next to the rusting Corvega, resting the .30-06 along its bumper. I brush my hand absently on the padded leather pants I stole off my last victim, not noticing if the dust goes anywhere. Taking a deep breath, trying not to choke on the dry grit in the air, I lower my head to the scope.

“I am in a conventional dither / with a conventional star in my eye …”

The Musical Talmud is our ongoing series that finds the true meaning behind pop music lyrics.  There have been a whole bunch of entries already.  The current post attempts to decode the noise-pop band Deerhoof’s 2007 single, “The Perfect Me.”

Ok, I actually have kind of an issue with the whole premise of the Musical Talmud series, because it encourages the idea that pop music is basically a form of poetry, and that the best way to understand a song is by understanding the lyrics.  This is the point of view implicitly endorsed by about %60 of professional rock critics, but it’s also patent nonsense.  Pop lyrics are important, but at best they’re only half of the equation:  if an album were equivalent to its lyric sheet, we’d just buy the lyric sheet.  And in some pop, the lyrics hardly play any role at all.

Take a listen to this song, for instance…

Great song.  Enigmatic song, clearly worth decoding.  But do the lyrics really tell us anything about it?

In the Thriller music video, Michael and his date have the misfortune of passing by a graveyard right as the dead start to rise. To make matters worse for MJ’s girlfriend, he becomes zombified as well. In most zombie movies, this is the part where she gets her brains eaten. But this is not a standard Zombie Apocalypse. This is a Thrillerocalypse.

Sadly, YouTube isn’t letting me embed the actual dance. But here’s some Filipino prisoners giving it their best shot.

My question is: why do the Thriller zombies dance? The obvious answer is: it’s a music video, and people dance in music videos. However, I think there might be a plot-driven reason too.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears.

-A.E. Housman, “To An Athlete Dying Young”

I used to hustle, now all I do is relax and strive
When I was young, I was a fan of the Jackson 5
I drop jewels, wear jewels, hope to never run it,
With more kicks than a baby in a mother’s stomach
Nasty Nas has to rise cause I’m wise
This is exercise ’til the microphone dies
Back in ‘83 I was an MC sparking
But I was too scared to grab the mikes in the park and
Kick my little raps cause I thought niggaz wouldn’t understand
And now in every jam I’m the fuckin man
I rap in front of more niggaz than in the slave ships
I used to watch C.H.I.P.S., now I load Glock clips

- Nas, “Halftime”

In 1994, hip hop artist Nas released the greatest hip hop album of all time. A genre which has since grown to encompass Ready to Die, All Eyez on Me, Enter the Thirty-Six Chambers, The Blueprint and Tha Carter has yet to produce anything which surpasses Illmatic. And it’s not just your correspondent who thinks so. The Source gave Illmatic five mics out of five the month it came out – one of only nine albums to receive such a score on first blush. Rolling Stone and Time also recognized it as a strong contribution, and passing years have only added to its acclaim.

Illmatic was Nas’s debut album.

It has been a rough week for Kanye West.  First, South Park eviscerated him by skewering his egocentrism (and excessive use of autotune), then he went and proved them right by emptying his soul on his blog about his hurt feelings and sincere desire to be a better person.   Although I don’t usually like to kick a guy while he is down, the whole series of events reminded me of a lingering complaint that I have had ever since Kanye’s most recent album, 808s and Heartbreaks, dropped back in November:  I am fairly certain that Kanye West has never ever seen any of the three RoboCop movies, even though one of the songs on the album is named after the film franchise’s titular character.

As a follow up to the wildly popular “Hubbert Peak Theory of Rock” article on the decline of rock music (and U.S. oil production), I decided to take the logical next step in pop culture quantitative analysis: Greatest Movies Lists. Only this time, no spurious correlations–just straight up number crunching based on these lists.

UPDATE: I can haz arithmetix? There were some errors in the math in the original draft of this post. Details below.

Did movie quality peak in the ‘60s and ‘70s? Has it all been downhill since The Godfather in 1972? Some statistics you can’t refuse, after the jump.

[Second in a series.  See also part 1, "Don't Stop Believing."]

Oh, the Ramones, those sages of rock.  No subject is too lofty nor banal for their insightful commentary, be it existential angst (“Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue”) or preemptive warfare (“Blitzkrieg Bop”).  The Ramones’ catalog alone occupies multiple volumes of the Musical Talmud, but I’m going to choose one exceptional example for discussion here on this blog: “The KKK Took My Baby Away.”

Many speculate that this song was written by lead singer Joey Ramone after guitarist Johnny Ramone started dating Joey’s ex-girlfriend.  Johnny is referred to in the song as the KKK due to his conservative political views. Others, however, claim that the song was written before the founding of the band (thank you, Wikipedia).  All we know for certain is that Joey Ramone has the sole songwriting credit. Given the uncertain nature of its meaning, I think it’s time to set the record straight here in the Musical Talmud.

Many rock purists and music snobs (myself included) often lament the quality of most modern pop/rock music.  “Music these days is so trite and derivative,” they say.  “It’s just been downhill since the 60’s and 70’s.  Those were the days.”

A few years ago, Rolling Stone magazine added fuel to the music snobbery fire with its “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” list.  Anyone casually paging through the list would notice that the bulk of the list was comprised of songs from the 60’s and 70’s, just like the music snobs always say.

I, however, wasn’t content with the casual analysis.  So I punched the list into Excel, crunched some numbers, and found an interesting parallel between the decline of rock music quality and, of all things, the decline in US oil discovery and production:

(Sources: Rolling Stone Magazine, US Department of Energy)

Analysis after the jump.  Drill Baby Drill!