Welcome back to Five Spot. Every week, we'll examine a recent bit of music news and list five reasons why it's either brilliant or dumb-assed. Send tips to [email protected].
Back in March, Dr Pepper (easily one of our favorite doctors, right behind J., Scholls and Dre) set forth a proposition to aged rockers Guns 'N' Roses: release Chinese Democracy this year and everyone in America would get a free soda. Seemed a clear enough challenge, if not a blatant publicity stunt.
But despite Dr Pepper's recent assurances to make good on its claims, things have stalled. Following the release of the aforementioned CD, Dr Pepper's web site crashed due to a response "greater than anticipated." (In the hundreds, no doubt.) This angered the jungle's hospitality committee (catch that?), and they've since filed a grievance claiming a ruination of the greatest day the world was to ever see.
And what type of compensation are Axl et. al seeking? Why, a public apology via ads in totally relevant newspapers, of course. We vote this dumb-assed, if for no other reason than because Rose's hair creeps the shit out of us. We do like the idea of suing for apologies, though, so we'll be filing our own suits against the following...
1. Five Spot vs. Randy Newman; re "Short People": What the crap is he even talking about here? Short people have no reason to live because they have little hands? And they tell great big lies because they have little eyes? Maybe this is one of the forest-for-the-trees types of songs, and we're just not smart enough to figure out what it's is really about, but on the surface this seems an awful lot like barefaced bigot propaganda. "Brown People" must've been a bit too obvious.
2. Five Spot vs. Paul Wall; re his contribution to Brooke Hogan's "About Us": It's cool to check-chase and all - hell, Jamie Foxx did Stealth - but, Brooke friggin' Hogan? What? Was Lita busy? For the rest of our lives, whenever we try to champion Houston rap to the rest of the world, all they've gotta do is drop a Brooke Hogan reference and it's a wrap. This is worse than the cover of Lil Flip's Leprechaun.
3. Five Spot vs. Sum 41; re every song they ever made: We had never actively rooted for an entire band to perish in a fiery plane crash. Then we heard "Fat Lip."
4. Five Spot vs. Chingy; re "Balla Baby": [bwah!] <-- That's the sound of us throwing up. We are so glad that this gummy-bear-rap nonsense didn't really catch on. We'd rather go back to when freestyle music was really popular than hear from Chingy again. We literally did not even listen to this song when we YouTubed it. We searched it, clicked the link, copied it, and then clicked "back" before the quarter even went into the machine.
5. Five Spot vs. Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder; re "Ebony and Ivory": This song has always bothered us. We think we just might actually prefer racism to this forced, saccharine nonsense. Also, this song makes the list because for serving as a breeding ground for innumerable brainless interracial jokes: "Oh, look, I'm black and you're white, we're ebony and ivory! Hahahahaha!" Ugh. We hate our lives. Have a nice weekend. - Shea Serrano
