Tag: music

So this is the last podcast I will be releasing this year. CMCB has been going for about a year now, it's about a year and a bit, where this is episode 59 or 60, so 52 weeks in the year, I probably started a year and a couple months ago, as I transitioned over from the old podcast, Velocid Podcast. If you listened to that, and you listened to this, if you transitioned with me from Velocid Podcast to CMCB, first of all, thank you. Thank you for hanging out for a year, thank you for listening to all this old stuff, thank you for just listening to me diatribe about some of the dumbest shit in the universe. 

But you may have noticed, if you've been around for any length of time, that every year or so, I fall into a deep spiral of Steven Seagal. Now this happened on the last episode of Ninja News Japan, where I found that there was a Steven Seagal song I had not heard before. So I was listening to a podcast called Behind the Bastards, it's a very good podcast, they look at awful people, and then just go through their lives, and they don't even get particularly critical about how or why they might be awful people, and this is to acknowledge that sometimes they've had shitty lives, sometimes they haven't. 

They did a two-part episode, two hours on Steven Seagal, and I was wondering primarily, is there anything I haven't heard that might make me hate Steven Seagal more? And there wasn't. All the rumors and news and all the things he's done, I actually had heard them all before. I decided I know everything about Steven Seagal's life, really, all the stuff that matters, and I heard this song, and the song's awful, it's just terrible, it's like the worst thing ever, and I thought, you know what, I need to wrap up my obsession with Steven Seagal. I need to not have this part of my life anymore. So I thought for the last episode of CMigbee for 2022, the last full year I've done this podcast, it would be good, let's look at this song by Steven Seagal and then never speak of him again. 

Now, this might be hard. If some news comes out where Steven Seagal does another awful thing or is just particularly stupid or bad, I may be drawn back in. It's not a resolution, I don't really believe in resolutions, but I've decided it's worth trying to move on, and maybe I can hate someone else, maybe I find a new person that I can dislike just as much, if not more, because isn't that what dreams are about, are exceeding expectations, trying to strive and achieve new things more and better, hating people more thoroughly than I hate Steven Seagal? Is it even possible? There's only one way we'll ever know, and that's if we try. So I'm going to try to essentially wrap up my hate of Steven Seagal in a nice little package, put it in the emotional incinerator of my heart, burn it up so there's nothing left but ash, because quite frankly, fuck you Steven Seagal. 

The song I'm going to be talking about is called Strut, and it is a reggae song. Now you might be thinking, oh, Steven Seagal's band, do they do reggae? Well, they do whatever he thinks needs to be done, I think. Dave's up in the background too. Woo! Look at that, look at that beast. So Steven Seagal, I would say, is not of the reggae delineation, denomination, I don't know what to say. It's not sort of his genre. His band is a blues band. Now they are, I would say, in general, talented people. They're there for the paycheck. They're getting paid to do what Steven Seagal wants to be done to make him happy so he will give them more money. This song, Strut, is in a collaboration with a reggae artist called Lady Salt. Now I didn't look too deep into her background, but I just knew without looking at anything, she's there for the paycheck. 

I'm sure reggae is a valid artistic format, but it's only going to make you so much money. So if a guy like Steven Seagal comes along and he says, I'll give you X amount of hundreds of thousands of dollars to do this song with me and pretend you like me, it would be worth taking the money because it's not going to diminish your value as an artist. I think everyone's going to understand what happened and why. And we should all be just taking Steven Seagal's money, if possible, anyways. So if you ever get a chance in the rest of your life, from this point onwards, to take some of Steven Seagal's money, you should take Steven Seagal's money. So I'm going to throw the lyrics up on the screen. This is from a karaoke version of the song. Now what I noticed immediately is that Lady Salt has an introduction section, which I honestly have a little bit of trouble understanding word for word. 

It doesn't actually write out the lyrics until Steven Seagal comes in and they do a little sort of duet back and forth about how much they're infatuated with each other's very specific parts, maybe is the way I would want to say it. So as a thank you to everyone for hanging out, for staying with me for another year of podcasting joy, I'm going to play for you the intro of Steven Seagal's Strut. And then when we get into the lyrics, I'll stop and we'll do a little mini analysis of each part. What I... Yeah, I mean I can't... I don't want to preamble too much. Let's just get into it. So, immediately, you'll notice that Lady Salt has immediately thrown to Mr. Steven Seagal. I shouldn't do the accent too much. That's sort of one of the colonial issues that comes with being as fair complexioned as I am. But it's hard not to because Lady Salt, she's got that really strong accent. It's really attractive in its own way. And you want to kind of join in. This is one of the problems of being a white person appropriating culture. Now, you could say I'm doing that by accident, but let's be really clear. 

Steven Seagal's about to come in and sing. And do you think he's singing in his blues white guy voice? His white guy voice is also copying some cultural appropriation there. No, he's not. So the lyrics here become amazing. And so that's why I can't... Again, you can see I'm barely contained here. I'm so excited about the rest of this song. Okay. So I like that there was a little back and forth. There's a little call and response. She speaks, he speaks, she speaks, he speaks in the very last line. They do it together. That's nice. They do it together as sort of a combination of talents. You will also notice that every time he sings, it's like he's trying to make sounds that are song-like, but I would say not actually. But it is hard to hear. Steven Seagal's normal speaking voice is pretty poor. His singing voice isn't much better. So I'm going to speak the lyrics to strut for you. And then we can maybe... If there's nothing to analyze, what am I talking about? Anyway, it starts out with, girl, what you really want all night. And she replies, me want the buddy. Now, buddy was a new term for me. So at first I was like, not 100% sure what that meant, but I kind of already knew what that meant. Make me feel nice. 

Boy, what you really want all night. It's good that they're checking with each other. This is sort of a consensual relationship, which Steven Seagal does not do. Let's just be really clear about that. Steven Seagal has multiple sexual abuse cases, accusations. He also has human trafficking, where he kidnapped a woman. He said, come be my personal assistant, locked her in a room, and tried to keep her as a sex slave. When that case came to time to be prosecuted, he left. He left that state, and then afterwards he left the country. I think he lives in Russia now. I know he has a Russian passport. But at least in the song, it's consensual. Probably because he couldn't get Lady Saw to do on a song that's non-consensual the way he thinks it should actually be done. Me want the punani. See for make nice. She want the buddy. Him want the punani. And me know it nice. I was wondering if Steven Seagal had written those lyrics. I always imagine with songs that I dislike or I think are stupid, the person sitting down and actually writing out the lyrics themselves is Steven Seagal in his author's den with a roaring fire and maybe a glass of brandy. Writing out the lyrics to me want the punani, see for make nice, she want the buddy, him want the punani. 

Now my suspicion is that maybe he didn't actually write this. It's because, as I said myself, I've never heard the term buddy used for the male appendage. So that makes me think Steven Seagal probably doesn't know it either. I just assume Steven Seagal is less culturally aware than I am despite him having traveled around the world a lot more than me. So I think this was either ghost written or Lady Salt had some input about the words that would be more natural for this style of reggae. Let's continue on in the adventure that is Strut. When I hit this part I was confused. There's a little bit of verbal Aikido going on there. He's not only an Aikido master physically, he's also an Aikido master of words. So let me just show you what happened when the girls start to strut. That's pretty straightforward. You could look at her, but you shouldn't do that. What we're missing here is a comma. We have to interpret what's going on. You could look at her, but you shouldn't do that if you put a comma after her. You could look at her, but you shouldn't do that. 

Or he did the verbal Aikido and blend that into one sentence. You should look at her, but you shouldn't do that. It leaves the listener going, oh, I thought it was going one way, then it went another, and that's what Aikido's all about. Think about just that because her clothes are just as pretty. That sentence barely makes sense to me. They're not just to cover her kitty. So don't look at the physical woman herself. Just enjoy the clothing she's put on. She's a beautiful woman. I think that's the message we're trying to get across here. Those are not just to cover her kitty in this case. 

Okay, there's a little bit more. So the lady saw has a bit of a breakdown. Then we get back to Steven Seagal's lyrics, which are painful at this point. Girl, what you really want all night, me want the buddy. That's a repetition of the line. Make me feel nice. Boy, what you really want all night, me want the punani. See for a make nice. Baby the way you walk is so hot. I don't think that's what he says in the song. It's what's in the lyrics, but I don't think it's what's in the song. Then there's actually a typo in this, I believe, because it says, baby the way you waik is so hot. I'm not sure, it's just a typo, it's supposed to be walk. Let's have a shot of rum. Let's get you good and drunk because it's the only way this is going to work out. Then I can make you come with me to the ocean. So you see another bit of that verbal Aikido gets thrown in there. You can't, he is the master of all these things. I can make you come, that's a very sexual thing, with me to the ocean. It's not sexual at all. 

My mind is blown by the depth that Steven Seagal takes. I could not have written a line so good. There is the same trick done by a Canadian boy band that never got popular called, I think it's 3B or something, it's 3 Boys. The line they have is, make you come over to my house. That pause really makes it work. He pulled the same thing here. A group of manufactured teens who are making terrible pop music and Steven Seagal working on the same level. That would be phat, P-H-A-T. I think again, I don't think Steven Seagal wrote that line. You could be my bow cat. Again, I don't know that slang. Nice ittle breeze, bring you to your knees. We are jammin'. There's more to the song. It's halfway through but they just repeat. There's another breakdown by Lady SSAW. I'll just play it a little bit more but I'll probably cut this part out. Say my name's Steve, tell me all that. Lady SSAW's working hard for her money and she's earning it and she's awesome. This is the thing, even if you have zero talent, you can't surround yourself with talented people if you have enough money. 

You'll notice I'm in this room alone, not because I don't have friends who are talented but I have no money to pay anybody for anything. But regardless, I'm not going to play the rest of the song. Again, it just repeats about the vague sexual innuendos and it does the same thing. You can see the talent there. The good part of the song is Lady SSAW and Steven Seagal comes in and mumbles his way through as he does with every movie he's made in the last 15, 20 years. I think the fact that I will never speak of him again will be good for me. It'll be good for society. Maybe it's time to move on and maybe I can find someone new to obsess over about how they don't deserve any of their fame or fortune. I do always wonder, I have a little black spot in my heart that makes me go, am I jealous of Steven Seagal? Because I don't think it's jealousy. I think the problem is his fame is undeserved in his movies. Any accolades he got, he only had two mediocre films at the peak of his career. 

Again, all undeserved. Anyone who thinks he's good at anything, that's undeserved. Then maybe I am jealous because I feel like I didn't get my chance to make shitty action movies, which I absolutely would have loved to do. We need a palate cleanser. I can't leave you like that. It's the end of the year and you've just heard half of one of the worst songs ever written by one of the worst men who's ever existed. We can't end like that. We need to find joy. I recently watched a film called Miami Connection. It is considered one of the worst films ever made, but it has a spirit that makes people like it because I watched it with two coworkers, two friends, and we all really enjoyed what we were seeing. Now, it is about a band in Miami and they get a gig working, I assume regularly, at this bar. 

Now, the band is focused on music and taekwondo, which is a very specific set of interests. Clearly, this is a vanity project. The relationship link between these two things, Steven Seagal's music career, vanity project, and this movie, also a vanity project. One, awful. Every aspect of it is disgusting and gross. The other one, despite it not being very good, the sincerity comes through and you end up kind of liking it anyways, which is what I love. It's even more so for the music. The person who wrote the song, who wrote the musics, the songs, I got to get my plurals right, the person who wrote the songs, the music for the movie, did an amazing job. They are actually very talented. They write good. It's a very 80s product. It was made in the 80s, but for the 80s, this is like peak music and it's stupid, but enjoyable, and the music's catchy and it sticks in your head and you're going to be thinking about this song called Against the Ninja for a very long time from the film Miami Connection. 

I'm going to have to stop for a second. I was supposed to stop a little earlier, but I actually got a little excited about this song. Let's hit the lyrics for this one. Let me point out, in the movie, it's opened with a ninja group attacking what is a drug deal. One of the realizations I had is you can almost judge the quality of the film by how well their fake drugs are packed within the film. Like a high quality film, they'll have those bricks that are doubled, triple taped, and they have to cut it open with a knife and then maybe the policeman who finds it, he tastes it and goes, that's good cocaine. Then other ones, the lower tier, they'll have Ziploc bags that are full. Lower tier beneath that would be a Ziploc bag that's only half full. 

There is one point in Miami Connection where there's just a pile of cocaine sitting on top of a table, which would of course blow away because they're outside. That again gives you a sense of the quality of the film we're talking about. The ninjas come in, they attack all the people doing the drug deal, which made me think that the ninjas were the good guys, but then they just stole the cocaine and went off on their own. This is reiterated in the song. The band is singing this song. It's kind of our introduction to the band Dragon Sound. The problem I have with this song is that at this point in the film, they are not introduced to any ninjas. To sit down and write a song about ninjas, not necessarily knowing ninjas exist, is already a really weird thing to do, but then to make your chorus, Tai Kwan, Tai Kwan, Tai Kwan, Tai Kwan, is just a level above. 

This guy sat down, he wrote down Tai Kwan four times. As you can see in that song, it kind of works. This song, in its own way, kind of slaps. It's really hard to argue. I would love to see some modern artist remix this into a new song, take elements of this and make it into a modern version of Against the Ninja that would have some bass in it, some dubstep, but that's already 15 years old. That's how old I am. I was watching a video the other day and they were making fun of dubstep. That's actually probably why it's in my head. They were talking about an old video game and if you like dubstep in what I assume like 2005 to 2010, it would be in this game. Anyways, let's analyze the lyrics. Against the ninja, we will fight the battle to win, which is always a good idea. You don't want to fight it to lose. Against the ninja, we will fight to battle the sin, which I found a very interesting lyric because the inherent necessity of including sin is sort of implicitly implying that the ninjas are just evil from within. Then we get to the chorus, taekwon, taekwon, taekwon, taekwon. 

Now, you know there's not a little bit of satisfaction there. Trust me, that's coming soon. I'm going to actually rewind this just a touch so we can get that next part. Okay, om doors my god. Okay. Oh my God, I'm worked up. I honestly am. It is just so much fun as a song, but let's hit it. So there's fire in their eyes. This is the ninjas. There's fire in their eyes. There's no mercy in their hearts. These are not people who are going to give in or be kind to you. They tell their dirty lies to finish what they start. This movie has designed a very specific kind of ninja, and it's just an evil organization. Evil is their drive. Hell-possessing souls. Again, very connect that to the sin from earlier on, and you're starting to see an interesting trend where these ninjas are being compared directly to Satan or demons. War keeps them alive, fulfilling twisted goals. The twisted goals in this film initially was to steal cocaine, and then secondary, to beat up a band that took place of another band in their sort of their regular gig. We will stop the senseless killing. We will end this evil war. We will stop the senseless killing. We'll even out the score. 

Now, again, they didn't make it clear that they knew ninja existed at all. So there is one point later in the film, which was quite funny because the ninja just roll up on motorcycles, because there's nothing more stealth than motorcycles. They stop the car and then they just say, ninjas. And that tiny moment, that single word of exposition made it clear because this song had set up what the ninjas were in this Miami connection universe. But we're getting onto the next chorus where you get a lot more satisfaction. So let's hit that. Against the ninja, we will fight the battle to win. Against the ninja, we will fight to battle the sin. We strive for worldly needs to stop the vicious fight. Our sanity would cease. Taekwondo is our way of life. We will stop the senseless killing. We will end this evil war. We will stop the senseless killing. We'll even out the score. 

Okay, that was a lot because we got the chorus again, but I couldn't stop the chorus. And it blends into the next set of lines very well. So against the ninja, we will fight the battle to win. Against the ninja, we will fight to battle the sin. So that's just a repetition of earlier. We strive for worldly peace. Excellent. To stop the vicious night. Hostility would cease. Taekwondo is our way of life. And something I learned from the movie Miami Connection, that Taekwondo is here and here. It's in our hearts. We will stop the senseless killing. We will end this evil war. We will stop the senseless killing. We'll even out the score. Then we hit the chorus again. Then we hit the refrain again. But I got to let it go for the rest because for the duration, there is one part that is super important that I'm not going to ruin for you. 

So let's just... I'm going to sing along a little bit. If you're at home, you've got all the lyrics now. You can sing along too. And I think if you're in your car, sing as loud as you want. Just really get that Taekwondo spirit out there. Against the Ninja, we will fight the battle to win. Against the Ninja, we will fight to battle the sin. Against the Ninja. Against the Ninja. Against the Ninja. Against the Ninja. Taekwondo, Taekwondo. Taekwondo, Taekwondo. Taekwondo, Taekwondo. Taekwondo. And this is the part I really didn't want to end it. The guitar solo. You cannot have an A-Solo without a guitar solo. We will end this evil war. We will stop the senseless killing. We're leaving not the score. Against the Ninja, we will fight the battle to win. Against the Ninja, we will fight to battle the sin. Against the Ninja. Against the Ninja. 

Like every great 80's song, it just ends. They're just like... And then we're done. We're all exhausted now. By looking into the writer of the music, because all the songs are good. Like that song is good. It's just weird that it's about Taekwondo. But all the songs are good. And we looked into the guy who wrote the songs and did perform the songs. I think he played every instrument on them. The band is up there as all the Taekwondo friends. Also ironic, I don't know why I forgot, but they're also all orphans. Just to make it that much more cartoony in what they're actually saying. But he went on to write a whole bunch of Christian music. So the interplay of the religious sort of iconography, the imagery, the religious imagery in this song against the Ninja is not accidental. This is how this guy thinks. Like he thinks in good and bad, God and the devil, Taekwondo and ninjas. And yet it still works. 

You can actually take this exact song, swap out Taekwondo for Jesus, and the ninjas for the devil, and it would just work exactly the same. You now got a Christian hit. Which I think that's how that guy made his career for the rest of his life. And good on him, because that song is awesome. And it has completely erased the concept of what I was speaking about earlier. Because now we've hit that point where I will never say his name again. I will never speak of him again. He is essentially a ninja. And we are against the ninja, and they are gone. And I know one thing going into the new year, and I think you know it too now, deep down in your heart, Taekwon, Taekwon, Taekwon, Taekwon, Taekwondo. So that is our end of year edition. Hopefully we will get another episode out next week. It will be a new year. We are starting fresh. I hope you had a good Christmas, if you celebrate Christmas or whatever holiday you celebrate. I hope you have a good new year. Take care of yourself. Take care of other people around you. And just remember, Taekwon, Taekwon, Taekwondo.