MC Pee Pants

​Adult Swim is integrating all sorts of hip music folks into its late-night shows: Odd Future shot a pilot for the cable channel, and word is that Major Lazer has something in the works.

But the cutting-edge programmers have long been musically inclined. MC Chris came to prominence as MC Pee Pants on Aqua Teen Hunger Force, and The Venture Bros. brought in industrial music legend J.G. Thirlwell (Foetus) for scoring duties. In 2005 MF Doom and Danger Mouse released The Mouse and the Mask, featuring cameos from several Adult Swim characters. The network even has its own label, William Street Records, which has worked with Definitive Jux, Ghostly and Stones Throw, and has a much-anticipated Killer Mike and El-P collab in the works. Some artists with Adult Swim connections have slipped below the radar, however. Below are a few.

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Screen shot from The Beat Is Law

Jarvis Cocker on stage at Glastonbury

​On August 10, L.A. Pulp fans gathered at Cinefamily for a sold-out screening of The Beat Is Law: Fanfare for the Common People, part of this year's Don't Knock the Rock film festival. The movie is Eve Wood's follow-up to the stellar documentary Made in Sheffield, a must-see if you're a fan of bands like the Human League and Cabaret Voltaire. The Beat Is Law isn't essential viewing like its predecessor does; in fact, what it lacks raises some interesting questions.

The Beat Is Law is really three interconnected mini-documentaries. First is the story of mid-'80s Sheffield and Chakk, a next-big-thing sort of band who, though they didn't make it, founded the influential recording studio FON. Following that is the rise of Sheffield's house music scene. Connecting those two stories is Pulp, whose strange propulsion to fame after more than a decade of obscurity deserves feature-length documentary itself. The film's climax is Pulp's headlining engagement at the 1995 Glastonbury Festival, but because The Beat Is Law glosses over the early 1990s, there's a gaping hole in the story. Yet despite The Beat Is Law's missing pieces, the documentary is significant for another reason.

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​It's one thing for a rock musician to get sober (you can't fling a cigarette butt outside a coffee shop without hitting one in Los Angeles), but it's another to devote your life to helping others wrestle those demons. Bob Forrest was once one of the most promising front men in the L.A. music scene, and his band Thelonious Monster were on track for mainstream success, alongside peers like Red Hot Chili Peppers and Jane's Addiction. Ultimately, rock stardom was not meant to be for him, although notoriety on TV and film eventually was; Forrest found his calling helping fellow musicians through the Musicians Assistance Program (MAP) Fund and later on the TV show Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew.

Bob and The Monster, a film documenting his journey from on-stage savage to off-stage savior premieres tonight as part of Allison Anders' "Don't Knock The Rock" film festival at the Silent Movie Theatre. Forrest will be there for a discussion and live music performance afterward. Here, then, is a little pre-screening Q&A to get you warmed up for the event.

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​Hustler's latest celebrity-impersonating porn parody, This Ain't Lady Gaga, ranks up there with Edward Penishands, Who's Nailin' Palin? and Untrue Hollywood Stories: Miley Cyrus' 18th Birthday.

Er, it probably does, anyway. We haven't seen them. In fact, who watches these things? Someone must, because they have big budgets. This Ain't Lady Gaga in particular -- which we did watch -- has high production values, for porn anyway. But it seems to function as much for comedic purposes as beat sesh purposes; those interested in the latter can get their online fix without plunking down $30 for the actual DVD, which showed up recently in the LA Weekly offices. (Hey, I'm just the intern. I don't decide what gets assigned to me.)

The comedy comes, at least theoretically, from the bad acting, ill-conceived parody songs, and actors who look nothing like the folks they're portraying. This Ain't Lady Gaga has all of this and more. So, does this film's campy value make it worth the embarrassment (and cost) that comes from procuring actual, old-fashioned porn in this day and age? Let's take a closer look. (But not too close.)

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​Back in January, we published a post headlined "Should Robert Pattinson Play Jeff Buckley or Should He Play Kurt Cobain?". This is what we said back then:

This generation's Robert Redford, Robert Pattinson, is periodically rumored to star in every movie pitched in Hollywood with a young heartthrob leading part. Batman Reloaded? Get me Pattinson! The Salvador Dali story (featuring gay stuff with Federico Garcia Lorca)? Get me Pattinson! (actually, that one got made). The Robert Pattinson story? Get me Pattinson! (and we'll get Charlie Kaufman to make it meta). So, of course when people start planning biopics of well-known young musicians who died untimely deaths, the buzz immediately starts a-buzzing around Robert Pattinson. The latest example: Jeff Buckley's mom weighing in on the likelihood of Pattinson playing her romantic hero son.

Today, that possibility is getting closer to reality. The "Jeff Buckley Biopic" project has been assigned a director, and Buckley's mom is definitely one of the producers:

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BY AARON HILLIS

Until now, quirky French artist, electro-house musician, and filmmaker Quentin Dupieux--more commonly known by his pseudonym, Mr. Oizo--had reached his widest audience with a series of Levi's commercials in the UK featuring a head-banging yellow puppet.

Dupieux/Mr. Oizo's career should only get stranger with his Cannes-approved feature Rubber, a truly WTF comic thriller about a tire that springs to life and rolls through the desert, blowing people's heads up with its newfound psychokinetic powers.

I sat down with Dupieux near Chelsea to discuss his reason for making a film that boasts having "no reason."

The premise seems like the result of a Mad Libs exercise. Why a tire?

At first, I wanted to make a story called Day of the Cubes, about a space invasion. One day, people wake up and there are cubes floating everywhere.

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TheGrio

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[Here at LA Weekly, we're honored to count with the services of LA's Top Jazz Journalist, the inimitable Brick Wahl. We asked Brick to weigh in on the Esperanza Spalding Grammy upset. Brick has been an Esperanza fan from way back, and he was happy to put it all in context for us (and those annoying Bieber people who have for once been trumped by--gasp--truly soulful music).]

So, Esperanza Spalding won the Best New Artist Grammy . And not the Jazz Grammy either, the real Grammy. The big one, at the Staples Center, with all those klieg lights and reporters and Barbra Streisand and after-parties and cocaine. We knew she'd been nominated. Hell, there's always a couple genuine talents nominated. Then they go and give the award to A Taste of Honey or some act that all the square old geezers who vote for the things can actually understand. We stopped paying attention decades ago. But then your editor asks what you think of Esperanza Spaulding winning that Grammy. Uhhhh....well, she deserved it, because she really is that good.

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​We at West Coast Sound are suckers for design, and therefore we're dismayed by most poster art for current movies. The best of those movies (and, inexplicably, Armageddon) get given the Criterion Edition treatment and their art gets a classy makeover. But what about all those that are perhaps a little less deserving of the Criterion treatment? Movies such as Vanilla Ice's Cool As ice? Well, the enterprising folks that gather around the Fake Criterions website have come to the rescue. Behold Vanilla Ice's "Cool As Ice": The Criterion Edition:

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​It's that time of the year again: Oscar nominations are out! And we know what you're asking yourself: Did Randy Newman get another Oscar nomination for a song that sounds like all his other Oscar-nominated songs? Did he get a nod once again (we can do this post every year--and in fact we do) for a song like sounds like every other song Randy Newman has churned out for Disney for the past 20 years? Did they nominate him for a song that essentially sounds like Fred Armisen impersonating Randy Newman and singing about bunnies in suits. Well, did they?:

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​This generation's Robert Redford, Robert Pattinson, is periodically rumored to star in every movie pitched in Hollywood with a young heartthrob leading part. Batman Reloaded? Get me Pattinson! The Salvador Dali story (featuring gay stuff with Federico Garcia Lorca)? Get me Pattinson! (actually, that one got made). The Robert Pattinson story? Get me Pattinson! (and we'll get Charlie Kaufman to make it meta). So, of course when people start planning biopics of well-known young musicians who died untimely deaths, the buzz immediately starts a-buzzing around Robert Pattinson. The latest example: Jeff Buckley's mom weighing in on the likelihood of Pattinson playing her romantic hero son:

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