more on the kleptones

And then I'll stop pretending to be 14 years old, I promise . . .

Just to give an example of one of better pieces on the album, a song from the hiphop concept album Prince Paul's Prince Among Thieves (which I hadn't heard of until I googled some of the lyrics), with some pretty amazing lyrics on cocaine addiction, is superimposed on top of Queen & Bowie's song Under Pressure. Layered on top of the opening of Under Pressure is the chorus of Belinda Carlisle's Heaven Is A Place On Earth. As the song progresses we hear Bowie's voice fading in from the background, rising to the dramatic climax where he sings "and love dares you to change our way of / caring about ourselves / this is our last dance / this is our last dance / this is ourselves". Rather than the familiar "under pressure" lyric, however, we hear Prince Paul's chorus of "do you want me baby? / I want some more". The whole thing is pulled off so seamlessly that it sounds for all the world like a true collaboration, a completely coherent statement. And if you recall the gigantic zit on the face of popular music that was Vanilla Ice, you'll of course recall that said Vanilla Ice shamelessly "borrowed" the same Queen/Bowie song for Ice Ice Baby. Whereas Vanilla's "borrowing" always struck me as a real theft (it was a snappy riff from a powerful song, used perversely to inflate Vanilla's ego), the Kleptone's appropriation strikes me as pretty reverent homage to both Under Pressure and the Prince Paul song.

Anyway, now back to regularly scheduled programming . . .