Is Black the New White?

It's been an exciting week here in Boston, but also a mighty thought provoking one.

First off, I got in to see a pre-screening of a very important political documentary. This was of course, everyone's favorite Kazakhstani TV personality, "Borat".

Actually, to be precise, the movie's full title is "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan." This movie is a journey across our great nation in search of anything to enlighten the rest of the world about our cultural oddities. And to that end, great success! High Five!

Anything I could say about this movie would be redundant. It's hilarious. His handling of fascinating, slice-of-life American ignorance is spot on. See it!



















Sunday night, I did some "Cultural Learnings for Make Benefit" of my own. I went with Karen and Nick to a concert in Allston to investigate the new and improved guidelines for musical genres. Back in my middle school days, the way you looked, walked and talked, dictated the type of music you were allowed to like.

But today, everything has changed. The show had 4 acts. Let's examine. The first group was a post-punk-rock-swing-rave-nu soul-afro-beat fusion quartet called Patent Pending.















They sounded just like Sum41.

The next act was a jazzy-screamo-electronica duo of hardcore rappers called Hanger 18. They were also pretty lame.



















On to the main event. Finally. First up was the reason I was there: Cobra Starship. You might know Cobra Starship from the Snakes on a Plane soundtrack, which has propelled them into blog immortality. But to the rest of us, they are the twisted offspring of another band's leadsinger, Gabe Saporta of Midtown:















Simply put, they put on a great show. It was fun, not too serious (Snakes on a Plane!! HELLO!!), and a nice mix of 80s-synth-rock with hip-hop. Gabe is a great frontman, very smart, very funny. Choice quote:

"We have any Red Sox fans in the house? (Crowd roars) Well I don't know shit about sports, but I bought this hat with a "B" on it because I love Blowjobs."















After the show, the 3 of us got to meet Gabe, and we talked about our common place of birth: New Jersey.















Finally, the headliners took the stage: Gym Class Heroes. And those white-boy rappers made their own genre, and called it "uncomparable awesomeness".

So is black the new white? Or is white the new black? Or does nobody care anymore? Pretty soon, all the genres will mix and blend into one big melting pot called...get this..."music". Then we're all fucked. But that's many many years away. Until then, just like what you like, and try not to be labeled as a genre-ist.

Personally, I don't think it matters who you are or what you look like. I think we're all just snakes.

Snakes on the plane of life.















COBRAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Later,

-evan

(PS- I fixed the comment thingy so you don't have to be registered)