The BEAST: Buffalo's Best Fiend

Reviews: Tom Waits, De La Soul

Tom Waits

Real Gone

260 cans and bottles purchased Real Gone, the 16th studio album from Tom Waits. Pete and I sat on the porch smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee and looking over lyrics. With turntables, banjos and bells; chaos, insanity and the apocalypse seem to be common threads of Real Gone. It is an unsettling, warped, beautiful creation.

Singing in the voice of various characters, Tom's personalities seem to be suffering from exhaustion and nervous breakdowns brought about by a world closing in on them. While Hoist That Rag breaks ground with the most pointed and relevant choruses in pop music memory, Don't Go into that Barn unfolds amid the ugly landscape of slave trade, bringing out the horrific history of an old barn.

Through 16 tracks Real Gone is absorbing, reflective and in moments darkly hilarious. A demented beatbox and wheezing punctuate Metropolitan Glide, an old man's attempt at starting an urban dance craze. The circus is the topic of a bitter rant and a man who kills his family drags their 'sins' down to the pond, in a ten-minute banjo picking account. Some of the songs do not correspond to their jacket numbers and two tracks are unlisted, making an already schizophrenic album even more enigmatic.

Les Claypool is on bass, Casey Waits scratches and Brain adds percussion to an album which displays various elements from Waits' Bone Machine through Blood Money, while adding further experimental sound and texture. Real Gone can both stun and mesmerize.

-Ken Barnes

De La Soul
The Grind Date

Ok people. This is why I love hip hop and diss that other shit we hear on the radio or see on the boob tube. The much anticipated new album from De La Soul is a breath of fresh air. It makes me feel good when I can write a review for albums hip hop heads should have. The Grind Date by De La Soul is one of those albums. The production is beautiful, and of course there's no need to question De La Soul's lyrics. Picture an album that has classic De La lyrics with 9th Wonder-sounding beats. Beautiful. In case you're wondering, 9th Wonder did not do any production on this album, but MF Doom sure as hell did. DJ Premier, Spike Lee, and even Ghostface Killah make appearances. The lead single and video, "Shopping Bags," in no way gives a preview of this album. Tracks like "The Future," "Verbal Clap," "Come On Down," and "Much More" are sure to have you pumping your fist like Reginoff does after sucker-punching coke-whores on Elmwood. My favorite tracks on this album are "He Comes," which features Ghostface Killah, and one of the best tracks I've heard in a long time, "Rock Co.Kane Flow," featuring MF Doom. Believe me when I tell you, it's such a dope track that it's the last song on the album and you'll find yourself hitting repeat for quite a while.

Thank you, De La. At first, I was a little worried that your album wouldn't live up to it's billing, but then I remembered that we're talking about De La Soul, not a Buffalo Bills game. And on a side note, props to the BPD officer who let me go for rolling through a stop sign because he likes my Beast reviews. Either that or he's really a mustard ninja setting me up for a battle. It matters not, for the Ketchup Samurai will always win (just kidding). 4 out of 5 tomatoes.

-Ketchup Samurai

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Truth is Overrated Al Uthman

It's been almost a week since the second Presidential debate, and I'm still baffled at the post-debate coverage.

Well, no, that's not really true. I remember turning to a fellow viewer as we watched Bush go to pieces and saying, "watch; they're gonna come on and call it for Bush."

Political Snicker-ing Matt Taibbi

The good folks at M&M/Mars and BBDO New York have combined recently to give the world one of the more uplifting cinema experiences of the year: a series of commercials in which hapless, ambitionless zeroes with terrible haircuts make improbable journeys from their couches to the throne of mankind after eating Snickers bars.

Big Brother Knows Best Paco Alameda

True story: After eagerly awaiting the DVD release of Fahrenheit 9/11, I take a bus to The Hamburg, NY Blockbuster and ask the first friendly clerk I see to point me toward the new releases. He walks me over to the Fahrenheit 9/11 display and being a very helpful chap, takes a DVD, hands it to me and says "Is this what you were looking for?"

Scary Little Man William Rivers Pitt

George W. Bush, still smarting from his embarrassing performance in the Florida debate, decided on Friday night in St. Louis that volume was a good substitute for strength, that yelling would be mistaken for gravitas. The result was an ugly, disturbing, genuinely frightening show.

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Tom Waits

Real Gone

De La Soul The Grind Date

De La Soul
The Grind Date