BURKE, Va. – Local tiny baby Liam Darton was sued by Warner Records on behalf of the Red Hot Chili Peppers after a Tik-Tok video of the child babbling incoherently was found to bear a strong resemblance to several of the band’s songs, confirmed lawyers for the family.
“I could tell from the day we brought him home that little Liam was musically talented and I get that his style is at times similar to Keidis,” said the boy’s father Jon Darton. “But this whole case is just asinine. I’d never allow the Chili Peppers to be played in my house. Liam may have heard like 20 seconds of ‘Black Summer’ on the radio a few times, but only because you couldn’t escape that goddamn song. Beyond that, he has no reference to their music, everything he does is completely original and this is clearly some sort of cash grab.”
Anthony Kiedis, lead singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers initially smiled upon finding the video, but suddenly was taken aback at the lyrical content.
“People kept sending me a video of this kid with over 1.5 million views just sort of vibing in the cling clong shamma lamma ding dong,” said Kiedis while receiving another tattoo of California on his torso. “When he launched into the ‘chikka chikka dee, do me like a banshee, low brow is how, swimmin’ in a sound of bow wow wow,’ and I just felt it in my soul. He completely lifted that from a very personal poem about my own grief at the loss of a close friend. Which I later used as the basis for the lyrics to ‘Suck My Kiss.’ It doesn’t matter how talented this baby is, he’s still a thief.”
Warner Records Lawyer Mindy Sawyer stated that the case is nothing more than a simple copyright infringement.
“My clients have no desire to see young Liam with the piggies in the hoosegow, or end up lickety split go snap, snap,” said Sawyer. “We only want what we feel is owed to the Chili Peppers. We are citing 17 USC, Sub-Section 102, 401, and 405 which applies a fine of $150,000 per work that is plagiarized. After analyzing the 45-second video, we have now identified 37 Red Hot Chili Peppers songs that seem to be directly lifted from my client’s catalog. This figure doesn’t even include the toll this has taken on Kiedis’ a-di ba-da ba-zumba crunga cong gone bad.”
At press time, David Lee Roth was said to be seeking council after Darton posted a video of young Liam screaming during a temper tantrum.
Originating as a project to cheer up Mike Watt, we guess you could call this their, thankfully brief, concept album phase. It’s essentially a one hour long tribute to Madonna where even the self-deprecating moments feel congratulatory and the cringe is seemingly endless. Listen to this one and you’ll see why they didn’t release it under their own name.
Can you still be punk while creating deep, melodic tracks? No, of course not. Don’t be stupid. So, with “Bad Moon Rising,” Sonic Youth began to cast off the shackles of genreism (is that a word? If not, can we get credit for creating it?) and began defining a unique sound that would inspire post-grunge about 10 years later. Okay, maybe that’s not such a good thing.
A certain clout-chasing writer for a website we won’t name here tried to boost his profile by giving this album a zero. While by no means in the upper echelon of Sonic Youth’s body of work, the review was an obvious publicity stunt that conveniently overlooked the fact that SY had to start from scratch after all their customized gear was stolen. And we all know when your gear is stolen so is all your creative energy. It’s kind of like when a witch curses you.
Look, not every debut album can be [Don’t forget to add iconic debut album of highly influential band.] This one is their most rooted in the No Wave scene that they emerged from and, thankfully, left behind. There’s an almost sinister sound to this one. Maybe too sinister. Like, hey, my life might be in danger, kind of sinister. But of course this was back when you had a not insignificant chance of getting stabbed in the Lower East Side of New York.
This one feels like Sonic Youth’s most introspective work and I guess that’s kind of fitting for their penultimate album. While they wouldn’t break up for another five years, this one has an “Abbey Road” type feel to it in the sense that you get the sense that they’re all kind of sick of each other. Had we listened to the lyrics a bit more closely, perhaps we’d have caught on that Thurston and Kim’s marriage was in trouble.
Fun fact: “Kim Gordon and the Arthur Doyle Hand Cream” was originally named for Mariah Carey, but they had to change it for legal reasons. We’d like to think Mariah would’ve been cool with this given her appreciation for alt-rock that Ed Templeton liked to use in skate videos, but this was coming not long after “Glitter” so you can forgive her for not being in the best headspace for playful ball-breaking.
SY’s second album for Geffen and first post-“Nevermind” isn’t bad per se, but feels more as if Sonic Youth is trying to replicate the bands that they inspired rather than the other way around which is why it’s not ranked higher. Check out the Spike Jonez-directed video for “100%” to catch a pre-movie star Jason Lee skateboarding.
When released, we weren’t aware this was going to be Sonic Youth’s final album as of the time of this publication and it received average to good reviews. Much like David Bowie’s “Black Star,” this one is worth reevaluating and is much better than the tepid reviews of the time will have you believe since most critics, not us though,, suck at life. This was also the only album featuring Mark Ibold as an official member of the group.
Sadly my editor wouldn’t let me put every album in a six-way tie for first, so here’s the band’s final album in last place. While it features all of the trademarks of a late-period Dillinger album – a mix of mathcore hissy fits, soaring rock choruses, and virtuosic instrumentation – it never truly shocks you with something you’ve never heard before from the band. Granted, with it being their final release, looking back into their two-decade history and mining it for inspiration makes it an apt swansong. There are some quirky left turns like Mahavishnu-esque strings and a trippy IDM detour that sounds like a rejected Aphex Twin B-side. There’s also that scream in “Honeysuckle.” You know the one.
Replacing a beloved frontman isn’t easy. However, when Dimitri Minikakis left the group after only one album, Dillinger knocked it out of the park with the addition of human bicep Greg Puciato. Not only could he deliver a deranged scream like his predecessor, the Italian stallion can croon like a lounge singer with a martini in his hand. His clean vocal chops are showcased most notably on “Setting Fire to Sleeping Giants” and “Unretrofied,” two tunes that have more in common with Faith No More and Nine Inch Nails than anything else in their catalog at that point. This pissed off a bunch of cranky metalcore dudes and set the precedent for future Dillinger material that would resemble actual music.
“One of Us is The Killer” answers the question “What if the Dillinger Escape Plan made another record that’s just really fucking good like their previous ones?” “Prancer” and “When I Lost My Bet” might be the best opening duo of the band’s career and the whole record masterfully blends their more melodic tendencies with the chaotic hardcore of their early days. Killer also features one of their better token instrumental songs in the wonderfully janky “CH 375 268 277 ARS” (rumor is that if you can guess what the title means, they must reunite). My money’s on Billy being the killer, by the way. It’s always the unassuming ones.
There are several dudes out there who smell like garbage and have Man Is the Bastard neck tattoos who will tell you that this is the only good Dillinger Escape Plan album because it’s the gnarliest. There’s no clean singing, no quasi-radio-rock bangers, and the instrumental interludes feature looped samples, squelching noise, and grinding machinery. Is it Dillinger’s best album? No, but is it their most important album? Absolutely. It kicked off a legendary career with one of the most deranged and unique debuts in the history of punk and metal. “43% Burnt” is also a great song to put on at a party when it’s 3:00 a.m. and the only people still there are three weird guys doing key bumps in the kitchen and you want them to leave.
While every Dillinger Escape Plan album is varying degrees of weird, this is the weirdest one by a significant margin. While Miss Machine introduced some new flavors to the Dillinger recipe, “Ire Works” swung the fridge open and started throwing everything into the pot (I shouldn’t write these when I’m hungry). There are straight-up pop-rock songs, Warp Records-style electronics, Indonesian gamelan bells, Latin percussion, and all sorts of other silliness. “Ire Works” can be a bit of a jumbled mess at times, but that’s what makes it so compelling considering it’s from a band known for its robotic precision. The promo cycle for this album also yielded Greg singing on Conan O’Brien’s desk which gives it substantial bonus cred.
Very fitting that this record is called “Option Paralysis” as that’s what I experienced when deciding what to put at number one. In revisiting the discography, it was this record that made me go “Wow, that was fucking cool” more than any other. While albums like “Ire Works” and “Miss Machine” tracks can be organized by the heavy songs, the pretty songs, and the weird songs, the bulk of “Option Paralysis” blends all three vibes seamlessly within the same compositions. It stuck a middle finger to the rearview and firmly told anyone hoping for a “Calculating Infinity” Pt. 2 that they would never get what they wanted. It’s the heaviest, catchiest, and most adventurous album by a band that does all three things better than anyone else.
