TONIGHT

Yo dawg, duck! The 6th Annual Source Awards take over South Beach this weekend, meaning that every rap star from Lil’ Jon to 50 Cent to Lil’ Wheezy is going to be pulling up their shorts, chasing hoochies and drinking Aliz

While watching Visual Niches 2, a compilation of music videos on DVD, I feel like I’m at some unknown house and can’t find the remote; this is terrible, it’s like waiting for MTV to drop a dope video.

Aside from not playing the same artists you see/hear every day, this thing has nothing going for it. I was only able to make it through two of the fifteen videos and this is the kind shit that makes it onto the walls at club Twist, or so I’ve heard. Basement Jaxx bite Meow Mix commercials and Babe on “Where’s Your head At? ,” somewhat creatively capitalizing on the current trend of animating mouths of animals; DJ Shadow pops up with “Walkie Talkie” (played out about a year ago); Roots Manuva stays on the side of rap that will never contribute anything to anything (for instances eating a banana in the kitchen and talking about understanding hunger on “Witness (One Hope).”

But hey, if you have a DVD player, and no antenna on your TV, leaving this on all day is a pretty good way to see how your power bill would swell if you did.

From afar, the plot of Casa de Los Babys sounds like a stodgy look at female independence and cultural differences. Six generally well-to-do American women check into a motel in South America, each awaiting their chance to take home an unwanted infant. This method of adoption is presented as a faster alternative to the lengthy process back in the states, but to these women, it still isn’t fast enough.

Such a storyline could have been easily mishandled and turned into one of those elitist ensemble socialite pieces where everyone wears fashionable clothes and bickers over Freud. Thankfully, the director behind Casa de Los Babys is John Sayles, a talented filmmaker who knows a great deal about independence; one who simply cares too much to let his characters lend empty jokes to a New York crowd of intelligentsia that “gets it.”

Sayles (Lone Star. Men with Guns) wrote, directed, and edited Casa, as he’s done with the majority of his work. Aside from the interwoven lives of the six women, Sayles devotes plot to the foreign community around them, treating local characters with fairness, not stereotypical condescension.

Known for filming on incredibly small budgets, Sayles also consistently recruits a solid cast, as is the case here. Actresses Daryl Hannah, Marcia Gay Harden, Mary Steenburgen, Lili Taylor, Susan Lynch, and Maggie Gyllenhaal all invest themselves in the six central roles. The beauty witnessed onscreen arrives from how it survives without utilizing a number of standard storytelling techniques. There’s scant evidence of any three act structure or typical climatic conflict. Instead, Sayles layers each character with enough depth to keep the audience enticed, and, with the help of some excellent performances and good writing, he succeeds.

By halfway in, the audience feels like they’ve known each character for years, including the supporting players in Spanish-speaking roles, like a hotel owner, a few local homeless children, and an employed man with looming aspirations for the future.

And fortunately, especially for viewers who dislike pretension and hidden intentions in independent film, the picture never conducts itself like a politically charged drama. On screen the drama is developed naturally – given, sometimes to the point of exhaustion – resulting in several touching and immaculate scenes scattered throughout.

Before meeting at the motel, known as the Casa de Los Babys, the hopeful mothers-to-be were total strangers. The owner of Casa (West Side Story’s Rita Moreno) has connections within the ravaged city’s government and hospitals, ones that are never fully explained, but, for a price, she’s able to match a woman with a baby.

A few of the women have been cooped up in the motel for months, and suspicions over financial exploitation begin to arise. They miss their families and husbands, but for most of them, this is a last resort – one well worth the sacrifice. But, as with the owner’s shadiness, why these women opt for such an unorthodox (and illegal) method instead of griming and bearing it back home, raises hundreds of questions, of which Sayles never acknowledges or thinks to answer. Viewers unfamiliar with Sayles will find such ambiguities incredibly frustrating, but he’s purposely chosen to veer away from micro-politics in favor of fleshing out numerous character studies.

Casa de Los Babys is often sad and melancholy, but nevers holds back on a funny moment either. Without a doubt these people are living in the world presented, and the atmosphere is so realistic that it’s almost impossible to imagine a film crew standing on the other side of the camera. Credit Sayles with gutting it out yet again on his own, but even more, he deserves acclaim for casting the right actors and actresses to turn such hard material into an engrossing art film.

Shawn Wines can be reached at shawnwines@aol.com.

and Kevin Dean, Surfrider Prez

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NEED NEW BODY
UFO
***
Need New Body sounds like a down-home jug band collaborating with that weird science teacher you had in middle school. You know – the one who listened to Dr. Demento and kept all types of insects in goldfish bowls around his classroom?

To call them eccentric would be understatement. To call them anachronistic would be only half right. Yes, they often come off as vaudevillian with their heavy use of the banjo and bicycle wheel, but as the first track on UFO showcases, they also bring a large amount of experimental electronics into the works.

Unfortunately, more than half the magic that is Need New Body is captured in the live show. The singer flops around, orange hair barely covering his haggard tattoos. Clapping and crashing and cracking sounds pour out from the swirling mass of bodies, engulfing the crowd in a wash of sound. This is all lost on disc, leaving NNB sounding like Primus with yet another layer of sanity peeled away in a modestly unsuccessful (and needless) attempt to stay musically viable.

As disparaging as this all may sound, UFO abducts particularly bright and entrancing minutes. Explosions of sound syncopated by staccato vocal bursts, strings of lyrics that (hopefully) mean nothing, are as elating to listen to as they must have been to steal from the ETs that designed it.

A couple of the ballads amount to solid efforts as well, really only faulted by the lack of coherence they abstractly thrust upon the album. This isn’t a bad second outing, NNB’s follow up to 2001’s superb s/t release, but it is disappointing to see the same mistakes from the first album repeated two years later.

There are certain bands that are simply too brilliant to have their essence captured on media, and Need New Body have entrenched themselves firmly at the top of that list.

– James Hush

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The Dismemberment Plan
A People’s History of the Dismemberment Plan
* 1/2

The Dismemberment Plan announced their inevitable breakup months ago, and nobody really cared except for the few fans who followed the band’s every move during its 11-year, 4-album meander.

So, when lead singer Travis Morrison wanted to put out one last album before splitting, he decided to let his fans do all of the actual work – which is either creatively socialist or creatively lazy. Morrison posted a selection of the DC-based band’s songs online and announced that it would begin selecting remixes for next and last album, aptly titled A People’s History of The Dismemberment Plan.

Sound interesting? Actually, it’s about as off the mark and way into left field as the idiot who gave this band the genre “aggressive punk funk.”

The album starts off with a bizarre, stoned-out mangling of “The Face of the Earth,” a track off 2001’s Change. A fellow named Parae, who was quoted as saying he hadn’t even heard of TDP until his remix was accepted, is behind this headache of a flop.

Three tracks later, you’ll start nodding your head to Change’s “Following Through,” until you realize that the remix is nothing more than a bad beat tucked underneath a sped up chorus and a bass line that belongs on a Dave Mathews cd.

Not all of the creations sound like the workings of novices. “The City” lends a smooth trumpet section that floats effortlessly over Morrison’s voice, while “The Jitters” catapults into frenzied hyperactivity and electronic delight.

While it’s admirable that TDP left their fans with a finale more original than most disbanding outfits, one less experimental and well rounded might’ve left them with more fans.

– Kevin Dean

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Al Haca Soundsystem
Inevitable
1/2 star

Is there a Stefan Betke museum somewhere in Germany? Maybe there is a certain age at which every young German lad hears “1” by Pole and decides that it is his constitutional right to make electronic dub? Maybe they even teach a class in high school on how to set your reverb just right in order to bring out an authentic Jamaican style sound…

Well if that is true, the members of Al Haca Soundsystem probably failed that class. The electronic “dub” on this disc is often little more than boring house beats with a weak delay reverb on the snare. Most of the tracks don’t even bother to have a catchy bassline. On the rare occasion that the production isn’t terrible, it is buried under what can only be described as the weakest MCing since the freestyle battle at the Rat (courtesy of guests like Sizzla, He-Man, Ras MC-Tweed and more).

Half the MCs on this disc sound like they are reading a part for a Charles Dickens audio book through a thick reverb.

Perhaps it should be explained to these guys that having a Jamaican accent doesn’t make you exciting. German electronic musicians, pay attention: if you are making dub, your production should be good enough to stand without vocals, and if it is that good, you should tell your vocalists to go work on a ragga jungle track.

By the way, if you can’t hack it (e.g. Al Haca), stick to the krautrock. When was the last time you heard a bad krautrock band that was actually German?

– James Hush

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Although Miami doesn’t constitute the epitome of a metropolis (high rises, different building structures, slabs and slabs of concrete devoid of greenery), Artopia Galleries and Studios erected their Urban Architexture exhibit last Friday night in what has been dubbed the “Avenue of Arts” – huh…you know, that short strip of galleries in the ever-nascent Design District – to show people what this city is made of as local painters and photographers examined, then represented the specific metropolitan architecture of their surrounding.

The mob of people was hectic. $40,000 cars lined along the road as Miami’s older, hip crowd entered through Thriftophia (yes, a thrift store) and into the art exhibit. DJ Le Spam tantalized ears, the bartenders and the buffet kept taste buds entertained, and that hippie smell of incense cut trough nostrils, as the art tried to capture eyes – an all-around sensory experience. David Baca, Robin Hill, Steve Milanowski, Laura Paresky Gould, Rollin Stirman and John Westmark headed their own separate approach to the texture and aesthetic of Miami’s edifices.

However, a common trend found in each piece was the overtone of vibrant, bold colors and accentuations on the city’s shimmering atmosphere.

Notably, Robin Hill’s photos of motels execute this trend remarkably. These shots are exposed long enough to capture the neon gleam of the establishment’s signs. While the angles taken by the artist here aren’t revolutionary, a reoccurring pattern in these buildings is a signature portion jutting out in a fantasia-like welcome post with the logo. Most of the motels are idiosyncratic structures that look warm, edgy and cheap, but they always radiate the tropical hedonism of South Florida. “South Pacific Motel,” with its diagonal bricks and flashy sign phosphorescing as the center of visual impact, is the highlight of the show.

Also, John Westmark’s huge oil painting “City IX” has a bright red background that entices the viewer and an abstract table with a skewed perspective as its front legs curve out at you. At the top is an entire cityscape and imperious lines make this piece stand out with sturdy vertical composition. Here, you’re almost entrapped in the work and beguiled to observe what you can see the city.

Another noteworthy painting is Rollin Stirman’s “Blue Bridge” – a captivating and evocative portrayal of a bridge darting out over the water from city to city. The blue, pink and mauve color motifs are wistful and dreamy as the bridge, cities and sky are all reflected in the water. Two clouds delineate an abstract female and male human being – the former appropriately in pink and the latter in blue. Visualize how it feels when you’re speeding down I-95, going past the skyscrapers and Technicolor lining on the Metrorail overpass as the sunset drips down, and you’ll get an idea of what this painting successfully encapsulates.

Moreover, Laura Paresky Gould’s 16 individual frames dabbles with one’s perception of lines and colors, intermingling disparate patterns – each of which is undoubtedly related and thus produces a cohesive feeling. Ultimately, although all the frames are abstract and sometimes incongruent, when put together, they could become a whole made up of distinctive, though complementary parts, like any good, original piece of architecture.

Urban Artchitexture is on view at Artopia, 2200 NW 2nd Avenue, Miami, through the end of the month. Call 786-554-8516 for more info.

Kira Wisniewski can be reached at kiraw@comcast.net

Followers of They Might Be Giants come in a variety of mentally unstable flavors. From 20-something ladies crying hysterically at record signings to the obsessed TV execs behind “Malcolm in the Middle” and “The Daily Show,” the wacky duo has built a loyal, eccentric fan base after two decades of tireless performances.

At some point, all semi-interesting stories will be made into documentaries, and TMBG gets their shot with Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns). That isn’t to say the band’s history – and more importantly, their music – isn’t quirky and insightful enough to warrant a feature film. In fact, they deserve better than this new tribute.

Gigantic is devoted to two Johns, Flansburgh and Linnell, who met in grade school, became chummy and started the band. Both look like they should be working at Office Depot, not front men for a successful quasi-rock band, but noone’s seem to noticed and if they have they hope noone else will. They have a three-man backup band (they’re all named Dan, completing a solid full house of first names), but fans adore Flansburgh for his dorky glasses and plaid shirts, and, sure, his gifted guitar playing. Linnell, the quieter of the two, plays an accordion in most songs, and the two share the vocals and the writing responsibilities.

The band started on the New York City club scene, and their unusual style garnered immediate interest from the desperate-for-creativity ’80s crowd. Part of their success is due to a brilliant marketing method that they birthed out of Flansburgh’s one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment long before they gained national exposure. Almost daily, the Johns would record a song onto an answering machine, along with a message about upcoming shows and record sales. They then posted mysterious ads about this invention, called Dial-A-Song, on bulletin boards all over the city, and calls poured in. The number supposedly still works, but it’s now nearly impossible to get through, since the $2 vintage answering machine can’t hold enough messages while the guys are on tour.

From a music history standpoint, Gigantic is competent, which isn’t difficult to muster when they get 100 minutes to do what normally is shown on VH1 in half an hour. But the documentary really falters when inexperienced director A.J. Schnack tries to get fancy. The most annoying example is when he inserts wasted cameos by the band’s celebrity fans. Ostensibly it would be funny and interesting to hear what comic notables Andy Richter, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, and Janeane Garofalo have to say about the band, but instead, Schnack has them stare at the camera and recite lyrics from random TMBG songs – huh?

Given the shoddy direction, the better parts of the film arrive from the Giants’ performances; so why not throw in a few more of those in place of the lyric mumbling, or better still, ask these funny people some questions? This odd distraction aside, one that comes off as a desperation attempt hoping to add commercial viability, the rest of Gigantic is just the camera following the band around and interviewing people influential in their success.

Irony isn’t hard to dig up in a movie that serves to finally document these brilliantly innovative and generally underexposed musicians, yet remains so plain and boring in its delivery. Again, it might as well have been an “E! True Hollywood Story” – actually their lack of attractiveness wouldn’t cut it – but a “VH1 Behind the Music” episode is a sure shot. The only saving grace past the first hour is the two Johns.

Neither of them is really charming or interesting on their own, but once they get on the stage, they are undeniably captivating. A lot of people won’t “get” their music, especially when they shift from fairly standard rock songs like “Don’t Let’s Go” to something like “Particle Man,” which is basically a kid’s song with deeper emotional implications. But that’s exactly why the people who do tend to be fanatical.

This is a story of showbiz, how two smart, intelligent guys without perfect cheek bones and abs have earned critical respect and appearances on “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” and “The Daily Show,” the latter of which they created the theme song for. They also won an Emmy for “Boss of Me,” the theme for “Malcolm in the Middle.”

In one scene TMBG sign their new album at a midnight appearance in a small record store. The camera turns from the guys and pans across the sizable crowd, which with any other band would likely result in passionate fans screaming and pushing. For TMBG there’s no response at all, not one person seems to care about being on film, they’re merely there for the band – which is how you’ll feel seeing this in the theatre.

You can call Dial-A-Song from your roommate’s cell phone at 718-387-6962. Good luck getting through.

Shawn Wines can be reached at shawnwines@aol.com.

If you don’t live across the street from Fat Beats in New York, in Iceland or aren’t my ex-roommate you probably have no idea who the hell J-Zone is. Whatever, I’ll just go ahead and say it like some post-op trans in ’86, “He’s like sooo talented, and, like, I think he doesn’t look ugly cause he’s got that non-black, black sheep charm about him.”

Wordicus, I’m about to drop some turdicus on your off-beat nodding heezay, thanks to a Hulk Hogan movie-styled interview (think Zeus, not Mr. Nanny). Damn, all that just to avoid typing No Holds Barred – y’all are sleeping.

J-Zone and his Gorilla Pimp$ are creeping like swim suits in your grandmom’s ass, so that’s enough of a reason to pretend like ya know what is up when you spend all day on the phone trying to get some girl or guy you don’t even like, like, “Come ova’ to the house.” $ick of Being Rich, Zone’s third LP, is out all over the planet like dat ol’ Terminator’s tan muscle head. Holla.

L&A: Sorry to be calling you a little late.
J-Z: Ain’t no thang but a chicken wang on a strang.

L&A: Glad to see that metaphor is still in use. The promo we got had you saying shit like “Don’t download my shit bitch or I’ll beat you with a switch.” That got pretty damn annoying…
J-Z: That’s the distributor, they make you talk shit over the thing like every minute or so, to keep the Internet from getting too happy. I’ve heard worse though, like every five seconds. I try to spread my shit out.

L&A: What’s the response been like?
J-Z: I got a good response in New York. I got a real good response overseas. A lot of people who like my earlier stuff don’t like this one but I don’t give a shit, I like this one the best.

L&A: You’re stingy huh?
J-Z: J-Zone is a character; J is the person. Some days J can become J-Zone. Some days J is just J. Just good ol’ J. Take care of his grandmother and all that good shit. Some days I’m just like, “Fuck it, this girl wanna get over on me, a’ight bet. I’ma buy her some shit, get what I want then take it back.” It’s all in good fun, but I can talk some shit.

L&A: Does it ever catch up to you?
J-Z: Arnold Schwarzenegger, he plays Rambo, but he doesn’t go around with an AK just blowin’ up shit; Stallone ain’t gonna walk the strip and just knock people out.

L&A: Are you black?
J-Z: I’ll say it this time.

L&A: Break it down for me, dude!
J-Z: I’ll break it down. I got asked when I first came out, I’m real light skinned, people were confused, they’d be like “Is he Spanish?”

L&A: I didn’t know what flavor was up in the mix.
J-Z: I black, my mother’s my complexion my father’s darker. People would e-mail me links like, “Check out this hip hop message board,” and there’d be like 150 posts about what color I was, rather than if the album wuz dope, that’s some ho shit. I used to talk shit on my songs like “Figure it out, take the dick out your mouth.”

L&A: Dude you totally called it, I have this huge wiener in my hand…this is a gay newspaper by the way.
J-Z: Doh god.

L&A: Gorilla Pimp$ is a very fine name for a clique.
J-Z: We are the new kings of R&B. I’m Captain Back$lap, aka the Tom Jone$ of rap, the 2003 Bobby Brown, we don’t have an “s” in our alphabet, only dollar $igns. My partner is Dick $tallions – he’$ actually the Black $inatra.

L&A: $o, i$ he rocking blue contact len$e$?
J-Z: We ain’t into that $halomar $hit, we come on $tage with a couple dead animal$ on. A$PCA people don’t come to our $hows.

L&A: Draped in a lion?
J-Z: I have a coat made of O$trich, Dodo and Emu.

L&A: Oh Dodo$, aren’t they extinct?
J-Z: They’re only extinct becau$e of my coat. Everything I wear is previou$ly living.

L&A: $ocks too, like $nakeskin $ocks?
J-Z: $trictly chinchilla. It’$ all about wearing animal$ all the time.

L&A: $o, who’$ your $pirit guide?
J-Z: A chinchilla.

L&A: You ever get $tiffed at $hows from promoter$?
J-Z: Oh yeah, all the time. I did a $how in France la$t year, this promoter tried to u$e the language barrier to $tiff us, he knew perfect Engli$h but he’d act like he ain’t know.. Al-$hid, my partner, he wound up beating the $hit out of the guy and throwing him down $ome $tairs.

L&A: And he’$ like, “What eeezzz dee moneeeee?”
J-Z: He was like, “The $how be very big, we have many moneee,” I’m like “$hut up!” Know what I’m $aying? It ju$t got out of control. Even if you got contract$, you can $till get $tiffed. At the end of the day, I gotta be a gorilla about that $hit.

Other than just talking shit, J-Zone keeps busy with a monthly column in HHC (a respected London magazine: Hip Hop Connection), and has a beat coming out on Biz Markie’s latest album. He wanna work with JT Money and Devin the Dude, and, and, and…I think it’ll be best to leave it at this: I’m not trying to save the art form, I’m just here to have fun ’cause you don’t know how long this shit’s gonna last. Make some money have some fun and when you’re done you ain’t got no regrets. Wordicus.

$ick of Being Rich is out now on Fat Beats, so cop dat and give J’s grandmom some paper.

$v…nah, ova dat…Sven Barth can be reached at big_sven@hotmail.com.