#14: 2013 MUSIC IN MEMORIAM

Scissor Sisters in "Lets Have a Kiki" video

In the age of repurposed, nostalgic pop, two music groups who embraced the era of throwback sound and iconic samples (meanwhile, making each of their tracks incomparably their own), have sadly dispersed (one indefinitely, one permanently) before the dawn of 2013: Scissor Sisters and Das Rascist.

Himanshu Suri, Ashok Kondabolu and Victor Vazquez of Das Racist

Both products of the densely churning music scene of NYC's five boroughs  (S.S. of the Downtown nightlife scene; two of D.R.'s founding members are natives of Queens), Scissor Sisters and Das Rascist remain to be two of the more exciting and profoundly original groups throughout the past decade, each platformed within their own polytropic, multi-categorized (and somewhat self-invented) musical genre.

Babbydaddy, Ana Matronic, Jake Shears and Del Marquis of Scissor Sisters

Years before Lady Gaga brought the glamorous and bawdy kitsch of the underground, cabaret-inspired performance to the stadium-sized culture of mainstream pop, the Scissor Sisters had already introduced pop-driven theatrics to the music world on an international level.  Their image was an amalgamation of Freddy Mercury's showmanship, Elton John's contemporary vocalization while fused with the weighty attitude, rage and beauty of Harlem's 1980s "ball culture" (see post #6 on Paris is Burning).  They reveled in the nostalgia of the late-disco, early-techo sound, from the Grammy-nominated cover of Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb (listen to the original here) to their seedy, late-century Manhattan tribute album, Night Work (featuring songs conceptually inspired by the film Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) while using the provocative work of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe on their album cover).  Scissor Sisters gave proof to the theory that when contemporary pop tunes are heavily laced with provocatively unbridled performance art, psychedelic imagery and satirical smut, the outcome turns the "music" into an "experience" (i.e. Exhibit A: Their performance at the 2005 Brit Awards).

You can easily make the assumption that with a name like "Das Racist", characteristics of politics and/or satirical humor will be looming subjects.  In a way, both assumptions are correct.  However, at the forefront, the trio--Himanshu Suri, Ashok Kondabolu and Victor Vazquez--had a brilliant understanding of producing a contemporary pop/hip-hop hybrid on an indie level, merging tight, memorable lyrics with audacious, pop-driven samples (listen to "You Oughta Know" and "People are Strange").  To appreciate the unrelenting force of Das Racist is to appreciate the track "Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell" (Hollywood Prospectus knows what I'm talking about).  In other words, you can hear that song (where the lyrics are only limited to repetitively talking about being at a Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell) and listen to it again, and again, unable to deny that its completely genius.

-MTK