MY FELLOW AMERICANS...

So there's this online meme going around where you're supposed to shuffle your iPod and see how long it takes for a song to come up that would disqualify you from successfully campaigning for President. I figured this could go one of two ways:

A) Near-immediate disqualification, because my iPod contains 38 albums by Los Tigres Del Norte, who are dirty Mexicans always singing about drug smuggling and illegal immigration (in Spanish, no less), and the entire discography of Cannibal Corpse, who write songs like "Fucked With A Knife" and "Stripped, Raped And Strangled," or

B) A long stretch of seeming innocence, since my iPod also contains hundreds of jazz CDs, almost all of which are entirely instrumental - it's much more likely that it's gonna spit out something real pretty by Miles Davis or John Coltrane than, say, Archie Shepp shouting about Malcolm X.

So I gave it a shot just now, and I made it to six songs. Here we go:

1. Tigger, "Boombastic" (King Jammy's Selectors Choice). Dancehall, but the lyrics are free of "slackness" (sex talk), so it's OK.
2. The Ramones, "I Want You Around" (Rocket To Russia reissue). The Ramones, yes, but it's a love song.
3. Bad Brains, "I Luv I Jah" (Bad Brains, aka The Yellow Tape). Risky, this one. On the one hand, it's a reggae song about loving Jah. On the other hand, the cover art is a giant lightning bolt striking the Capitol dome. Call it a toss-up and leave it to the judges. I'm gonna move on, though.
4. ZZ Top, "Blue Jean Blues" (Fandango!). This one could actually win me votes in Texas and other states. ZZ Top are national heroes. Moving on...
5. Motörhead, "Capricorn" (No Sleep 'Til Hammersmith). One of the very few Motörhead songs not about war, the lies of politicians, or sex. Whew!
Finally, we get to the deal-breaker:
6. Black Flag, "Forever Time" (My War). Again, scary/objectionable cover art, and then there's the lyric - "It's time to look into my eyes one last time." Can't have presidential candidates with songs about killing one's girlfriend/lover on the ol' iPod.

(Note: Song #7 was "Controlling," by Shitstorm, from the new This Comp Kills Fascists, and #8 was "Mouthful Of Grass," by Free, from a best-of. Oh, well.)

THIS WEEK IN THE SCENE

A record company unearths African music's forgotten past

In the early 1970s, Nigeria was ready for its close-up. The African nation had just prevented its eastern province from seceding and was experiencing a boom in its oil industry. Life was good, the people were ready to party, and across the country, bands sprang up to provide locals with a soundtrack.

Thirty years later, the U.K.-based Soundway label has unearthed a bunch of these recordings on a trio of new compilations: the two-CD Nigeria Special, and two single discs, Nigeria Disco Funk Special and Nigeria Rock Special. [Read the rest here, with the caveat that the sentence about Vampire fucking Weekend was not in the article as submitted.]

MAKING PEOPLE LAUGH IS THE LOWEST FORM OF COMEDY

That's a quote from Michael O'Donoghue, but all of a sudden it seems to apply quite well to Cracked.com, a frequently brilliant web version of an old, substandard MAD ripoff. They run lots of listicles, some of which are quite funny. But a while back, they ran What Is The Monkeysphere?, one of the most mind-wrenchingly awesome satires of human existence ever published online. Now the same writer, David Wong, has headed back into essay-land again, with a look at The Next 25 Years Of Video Games. This guy's some kind of genius, and frankly, he scares me a little.

THIS IS THE SOUND OF ME TALKING

I've got a big (4500 words or so) feature on Bill Dixon in the July 08 issue of The Wire (it's got Mark Stewart on the cover). As an online-only bonus bonanza, you can visit their website to stream MP3s of my entire 75-minute phone interview with Dixon. Each question and its answer is a separate MP3, so you can listen to as much or as little as you like. Snazzy! The link is here.

HALL OF KINGS

All the Kings on my iPod (not including Elvis):

King Ayisoba Feat. Kontihene, Kwabena Kwabena & Kwaku-T
King Crimson
King Culture
King Curtis
King Everald
King Jammy
King Kong
King Nando
King Stitt & The Dynamites
King Sunny Ade
King Tee
King Tubby