Soundtracked

Ice Ice Baby/Too Cold

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This week's theme: One Hit Wonders

Ok you guys...before we get started, here's a question: Who has been waiting longer...you kind folks waiting for me to post any kind of blog entry in 2016, or me holding my hands together waiting for another WDC Soundtrackers event?

There are no wrong or right answers here...just awkward moments. Like One Hit Wonders...while some are legit decent songs and somehow the artist couldn't capitalize on newly-found popularity, most are associated with an awkward phase in life: the performer in question, or perhaps more fittingly, you yourself. And like many teenagers in the early 90's, I was not immune to them; in fact, I think I built an entire adolescence on them (the awkward moments, not 1HWs).

Every teenage generation has their inescapable songs...our lives are saturated with music we enjoy for a few minutes, and maybe a few minutes more, until we realize they're all over the fucking place and we can't get away from them. Vanilla Ice was one of those characters. A huge crossover success based on one song, a daring lie of a backstory, and a ridiculous image that was part wannabe dancer/model/rapper/whatever, and part professional wrestler (Who dresses like that when he's not dancing?). I say "Ice Ice", you say "Baby"...I say "too cold", you say "too cold".

Glad we got the call-and-response portion of this entry cleared up.

I know I've touched on this before, but I'm not so ashamed as to not bring it up again. I had a Vanilla Ice phase. I had the weird hair with crazy shit all shaved into the sides and back, like the barber stylist at the mall salons was blind or somethin'. I had the blonde streak dyed into my hair. I owned To The Extreme  ...on cassette. And I had the fashion-forward Skidz overalls/shorts  , which I of course wore with one strap unhooked (mine were a little lighter shade of blue, with white and black plaid). Don't judge.

And I had the lines shaved in the eyebrows. Don't ever forget. #tragic

Vanilla Ice was all over...radio, tv, magazines, school dances, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies. And I'm sure I've told this story before too...the one where I dated a cheerleader for a little while and we had the same Vanilla Ice t-shirt that we so did not plan on wearing on the same days. I was on the wrestling team, so I could sorta (not really) get away with wearing it and not look like a douchebag (my hair and eyebrows took care of that), but she looked so much better in it than I did, although her shirt read more like "VAnilLA IcE" on the front than mine because, well, large boobs and all.

The beauty of life is that our tastes tend to mature as we as people mature, and my moving on from this phase stemmed from two significant events: 1) He came to Buffalo on tour with fellow One Hit Wonderer MC Hammer (a concert I was, at the time, upset that I was missing), where he performed a sloppy cover of Public Enemy's "Don't Believe The Hype" (he just...he shouldn't have done that...talk about appropriating a culture ); and 2) my littlest brother, who was maybe two or three at the time, got into my backpack and tore up to shreds my Extremely Live   tape (kid had some excellent foresight). So forward I went, and thankfully I eventually found myself enamored with music that had more sensibility and staying power.

You'd think that's where this story would end too, right? Nope . About five or six years ago I went on a trip with my girlfriend at the time to visit her parents down in Miami. Driving through the city one night, I made them stop so I could take a picture of the A1A Beachfront Avenue road sign , just because. We may leave our past, but sometimes it still pops up just to remind us of where we are.

"If there was a problem, yo I'll solve it."
Lyrics.  

And who else could get that much mileage out of their one hit hip hop song that they could turn around a few years later and add some guitars, tattoos, and sneers, call it a rock remix, and build layers into their irrelevancy? Only Mr. Rob Van Winkle.