Got Your Money

Angela demanded that I post this week about Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Got Your Money.”

Unfortunately, I don’t really have anything to say about this song, other than to recall that Angela (or maybe it was me) was very surprised to learn that the woman singing the hook in “Got Your Money” is none other than Kelis, who is somewhat more well known for being a staple of late-night comedy. You know, I’m pretty sure I’ve never actually heard “Milkshake” all the way through.

Side note: apparently they have video ads for Nerds now? As in, the candy?

Anyway, whenever I try to think about “Got Your Money,” I always end up thinking about the Big Boys song “We Got Your Money.”

This song was played on the Mutant Hardcore Flower Hour a couple of weeks ago when I was a guest there, and I believe has become something of a staple since the breaking of the story that KTRU was being sold. I have to admit that that sort of bums me out, because that song is about freaks triumphing over squares. . . which is pretty much the exact opposite of what’s happening with KTRU.

“We Got Your Money” always kind of confused me anyway. If the frat boys paid to get in to the show, why would it bother them that the Big Boys got their money? Isn’t that kind of, y’know, how it works?

Anyway, speaking of Big Boys songs used in the opposite context of that in which they were written, take “Frat Cars,” which was covered by Austin punk quartet the Yuppie Pricks on their 2008 album Balls.

Frat Cars

I think this album is pretty hilarious, but as I felt the need to point out in my review of it, this is an anti-frat song, so it doesn’t really fit with the Yuppie Pricks’ gimmick, which is performing in character as rich, fratty jerks.

But perhaps the Pricks are just demonstrating an awareness that, as I also noted, the yuppie prick’s day in the sun has long since passed, supplanted by the age of the hipster. Which is on my mind because today Gawker proclaimed what everyone else has known for three years- everyone is moving to Austin. We all know that comments on the internet are loathsome- that’s why we at NAP try to avoid writing any articles that call for them- but each internet comments section is loathsome in its own way; in this case, one finds the following:
1. Austinites complaining about people moving to their “community” of several hundred thousand people and turning it into a big city, which is was never supposed to be (read: kooks)
2. Austinites complaining about the city government’s failure to improve its infrastructure in order to suit the big city that it is obviously becoming (read: bitching about the traffic on one road at rush hour)
3. People complaining about the influx of uptight anti-noise Californians (read: yuppies)- still
4. People complaining about hipsters (read: hipsters complaining about other hipsters)

I find a certain elegance in the chiasm of the idea that Austin could simultaneously be becoming too hip, too square, too provincial and too cosmopolitan at the same time, yet still not be able to boast a single decent Vietnamese restaurant. I have found playing in bands in Austin to be a frustrating, bordering on pointless, experience, and I have found going to shows here to be a pain in the ass, but Austin needs a push to get over the hump between snoozy never-never land and legitimate big city, and nothing gives you quite so much of a push as a million or so extra people all headed in the same direction. It ain’t never gonna be 1983 again.