Saturday, November 26, 2011

Your Bay Area Dive Bar Jukebox Song of the Week:

the original album cover for the 2001 album, Party Music.
 The Oakland hip-hop group, The Coup, had the misfortune of being only days away from releasing an album with the cover depicting the bands members, Boots Riley and Pam The Funkstress, blowing up the World Trade Center buildings with a guitar tuner when September 11th, 2001 occurred.  Starting in 1993 the band's albums titles include Kill My Landlord, Genocide and Juice, and Steal This Album with lyrics that were sharply anti-capitalist, critical of police and political radical, but always funny, sardonic and deft.  The strange coincidence with the album cover incident drew the Sauron like eye of conservative pundits who obviously did not find the humor in The Coup's lyrics (these are people that actually consider Rush Limbaugh funny.  Think about it, the funniest conservative stand-up comedian is Dennis Miller.  You see my point).  However, the Fox News target audience is not the same as The Coup's and the attention probably only gave the band positive publicity.  Their next album, 2006's Pick A Bigger Weapon was their biggest seller to date, with songs in showing up in video games and movies, including Superbad.  The whole summer of 2006 I couldn't go anywhere without hearing "My Favorite Mutiny",which is an incredible song, but why I'm choosing a different track off that album, the adroit ode to the heroic shoplifters, "I Love Boosters":

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