First off, this experiment is alive and kicking.  Sometimes, though, you have to take a hiatus.  To reflect.  To reload.  This shit doesn't pay the bills, after all.  As the LC transitions from a LOS ANGELES column to a SAN DIEGO column (yeah, that’s right), we’re leaning on our friends to help out a little bit. 

Enter the noble art of Lo-Fu, and its founder by way of Las Vegas, His Majesty Grand Master Sensei of the Samurai Order Stephen Ceerun Lo.  Lo’s insights know no bounds and have been well-documented throughout the course of his illustrious career.  Further introductions really aren’t necessary, except maybe to mention that one of the tenets of Lo-Fu is that Shawn Mullins is to be regarded as a poet, evidently.

More Lightweight Contender to follow shortly - don't abandon this as part of your read.  We're in it to win it.  In the meantime, enjoy a glimpse into the mind of one of today's foremost thinkers.  As far as Lo-Fu is concerned, anyway...

The Art of Lo-Fu

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I was originally contracted to do a special interest piece for LC about the hip-hopera, "Trapped in the Closet" by R. Kelly.  But the magnitude of the task was too great... a hip-hopera is meant to be heard, seen, and felt, but not necessarily read about.  It just didn't fit the demographics.

So I gave up.  I just lacked the...soul...that LC uses on a bi-monthly / monthly / every six-weeks basis to convey the true dimensions of the music he comments on beyond just words on a screen.  Phrases like "woozy pop shimmer chugged along" and "Retrospect can be a filthy bitch" may as well be Chinese to me, but I can feel the meaning through the context.  LC is also very knowledgable about music or else he wouldn't have been commissioned with the task of categorizing all musical acts into one mutually exclusive division.  You want to talk to LC about music genres?  Well be prepared to discuss "alt-metal space rock hybrid". 

But me?  I'm a passive music fan these days, favoring sports radio over tunes on the daily commute, with just enough memorized facts to hold a conversation about how sweet Timbaland's new beats are or how bad Chris Brown beat on Rhianna.  I guess somewhere along the way, I forgot what a bitch retrospect could be and became kind of shallow in the sense that I stopped caring about the deeper levels of art that can only be conveyed through a select few media, one of which is music.

So, here is the shallow man's version of a music column and now I can consider my contract to LC fulfilled...he is in tight with some lawyers after all.

One of the reasons that I read LC is that I enjoy being able to reminisce of the good old days, and I've created some of my own categories that allow me to look into the past without competing with LC's divisions system currently in place.  One final note...all reviews were based on memory from the times I've listened to these songs in the past...however many years ago (although some additional research was conducted on one of the most trusted and verified sources on the internet).  We'll start out with the least controversial category...

Category: The Song You Love to Hate.

This was easy, because no one likes this song; so you can safely say you hate this song without people ferociously coming out of the woodwork in its defense, creating an hour long debate, which you end up resigning from in defeat because the argument just won't end. 

I don't even know if you can call it a song, but it's called, "Rock-a-Bye" by Shawn Mullins.  Many of you are nodding and already thinking, "Yeah, I remember that song 'Rock-a-Bye', it WAS absolutely terrible."  Actually, the song is called "Lullaby", but you wouldn't think it from the lyrics because all Mullins does is talk in a droning voice for a while, breaking the monotony by belting out "rock-a-bye" sporadically. 

Lastly, the whole premise of the song seemed flawed because I think it was supposed to be about how depressed this girl was with her life.  However, she was pretty hot, had pool parties at her house with "Sonny and Cher" (the only other recognizable lyrics in the song/poem), and had her music video shown every 15 minutes on MTV in 1998.  That's how good we had it during the Clinton years...songwriters/poets had nothing more depressing as subject matter than hot teenage girls living in Malibu.

mp3: Lullaby
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