Nerdcore? Dementia? What’s the difference?

I have been seriously been thinking about starting another music podcast. One that would play Nerdcore music exclusively. I happen to mention this on twitter the other day, and found, much to my surprise, that a large number of my followers make no distinction between Nerdcore and Dementia Music. This is a problem. This is a big problem. And I am now here to educate you on what Nerdcore is and what makes it different from Dementia Music.

Nerdcore, or Nerdcore Hip Hop, is a sub-genre of hip hop that focuses on geek and nerd topics like video games, computers, science, science fiction, etc. Now note the key words in that last sentence “a sub-genre of hip hop”. That means that the songs in the Nerdcore genre are delivered in the form of Rap. The Rap/Hip Hop style and the topics are more or less what define a song as Nerdcore. There are Nerdcore artists that would argue that Nerdcore is a unique genre of its own, that it is not a sub-genre of hip hop, but that is up for debate. I tend to agree with calling it a sub-genre of hip hop but I am open to persuasion on this.

The music of MC Frontalot, Schaffer The Darklord (STD), and MC Lars are good examples of Nerdcore.

Here are a couple of videos of Nerdcore:

On the other hand, Dementia is basically novelty or comedy music. It is not limited to a particular style or set of topics. (I believe Doctor Demento coined the term Dementia back in the ’70s.) And Dementia has been around a lot longer than Nerdcore.

The music of Weird Al, Ray Stevens, Robert Lund, and the music played on the Dr Demento Show are an excellent example of Dementia.

Here are a couple of examples of Dementia:

Now to be sure, there is crossover between then genres. Some Dementia artists use Rap and Hip Hop for their music or talk about geek/nerd topics. Some Nerdcore artists try to be funny or use humor in there songs (or rhymes). And there are serveral artists the straddle to fence between to the genres.

Devospice and The Great Luke Ski are examples of artists that straddle the line between the two genres.

So in the end, Nerdcore does not equal Dementia and vice-versa. Now you know. And Knowing is half the battle. (The other half is usually made up of blue lasers and red lasers.) G.I. Joe.

Here are some sites where you can get more info (as well as free music):

Nerdcore

Nerdcore on Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerdcore_hip_hop
Rhymetorrents – http://www.rhymetorrents.org
Nerdcorehiphop.com – http://nerdcorehiphop.com/

Dementia:

Dementia Radio – http://dementiaradio.org
The Dementia Wiki – http://dementiawiki.wikispaces.com
The FuMP – http://thefump.com
The Mad Music Archive – http://www.themadmusicarchive.com/

Thanks,

T

I am always amused on Monday mornings how many people ask me questions like “how was your weekend” or “what did you do this weekend”. In most cases, they really don’t care. In fact, they really only expect to say it was fine or I did what I normally do. Most of the time, I can roll with that because my weekends like most peoples are pretty routine, and if we did something really cool we’re going talk about it anyway.

Because of that true lack of interest, I have often wanted to say some shocking like “I shaved a Baboon with sheep shears in an artistic monkey shaving contest and won second place” or that “I flew to LA and hung out with Jacky Chan, Milla Jovovich, and Ron Perlman at a night club called The Crazy Crab” to try and get their attention. Unfortunately, I figure most people wouldn’t notice. They would just go on with their Monday morning routine as normal.

On the other hand, many of you have actually expressed interest in my weekend actives for some unknown reason. (My weekends are really boring most of the time, and last weekend was a pretty typical example.) But since you have express actual interest, I decided to give the run down of last weekend’s events.

Late Friday afternoon my weekend started. I had just reached the top floor of the parking ramp, where I usually park at the Donut Factory, when I heard to tell-tail sound of my friend The Doctor’s TARDIS. The Doctor and his companion Mel greeted me, and they whisked me into the TARDIS with them. After catching up with my friends over tea, we materialized at a secret research facility in deep space being run by the CIA (Celestial Intervention Agency). In his usual manor, and with the help of his companions, The Doctor ended the evil research being done, and he freed the alien test subjects. Problem solved, we headed back, and The Doctor delivered me home with a fresh pizza from Papa Murphy’s Take and Bake. He even arranged for my car to be in my driveway when I got home.

I bid farewell to my friends and went inside the house. Fortunately, my wife had not arrived home yet so I didn’t have to explain to whole TARDIS dropping me off thing. My wife arrived home, and we baked up the pizza. We had a quite dinner. Watched a little TV. And went to bed early.

The next morning we got up. We had breakfast together, eggs and sausage prepared by me, and then I went off to move this blog from wordpress.com to my hosting, and my wife went back to bed.

My wife went to work early in the afternoon, and I drove into town to get a headlight replaced in our Ford Focus (pronouced Fuck-Us). When I got home, my friend Hugh was waiting for me. We had been contacted by a Navel Seal named Logan and Greg Brady. They had send plane to pick us up so we could help with a giant pirahna infestation in Venezuela. We met up with “Dr” Tiffany (yes, the ’80 pop star, now a genetic scientist) in Venezuela, and we went to work. I can’t go into details as the entire operation is classified, but you might have heard about a “hurricane warning” in south Florida. Don’t believe everything the news tells you.

I got back from Venezuela pretty late and went straight to bed.

Sunday morning my wife and I played hooky from church. (Well, I do that most weeks because I really don’t like that church she goes to, so it was a bigger deal for her.) And we headed up to the cities to grab brunch at Granite City. (The brunch was quite good. And there is nothing like having a mug of beer with breakfast.) Unfortunately, we had jumped on another couple’s (who did not show up) reservation and, as we were finishing our meal, two gentlemen show up and accused us blackmailing there boss. After a wild cash through the city, driving a sports car into a river, and a vist to an questionable entertainment establishment we managed, with the help of Marky Mark (AKA Mark Wahlberg), to stop the bad guys and extract ourselves from a rather dangerous situation.

You might be surprised to find out how much more angry people get about reservation jumping than they do about say attempted murder.

Finally, we then headed home and ordered pizza for dinner. My wife had to go to meeting at church that evening, so I sat down to write. I finished a 100 word story for Snark Tank Radio. Shortly, after than I got a call that there had been a zombie incident in Port Gamble. I grabbed my boomstick, anti-bite suit, and machete, and headed off to help out. Fortunately, I was able to put down a number of zombies and help rescue six survivors in only a couple of hours.

After than I headed home. I was really tired when I got home so took a long hot shower, took some pain killers (my back was killing me), and went to bed.

Well that’s my weekend. It was more or less my regular boring weekend routine. Well, Sunday is usually a little quieter, but the weekend before last was kinda crazy as well with that whole dragon incident. I hope you can now see why I really don’ talk about my weekends much.

Thanks,

T

What is this all about? Well, that is a excellent question my friend, and I would like to answer it but you will have to bear with me a moment so I can lay some groundwork.

Hello. My name is Taylor Kent. You might know me from such great podcasts as Snark Infested Waters and Snark Tank Radio and Saturday Night in the Snark Cave (all of which I created, host, and produce); or you might know me from roles I played in various productions at BrokenSea Products or GyspyAudio or on Zombie Astronauts Frequency of Fear; or you might know me, if you happen to be from the future, for my best selling novels. And if you don’t know me well … Hi. My name is Taylor. It is nice to meet you.

Now to be clear, I am a geek. I am into: horror, science fiction, b-movies, video/computer games, writing, podcasting, audio production, audio drama, anime, comic books, zombies, Nerdcore, Dementia music, etc. And I am an explorer. Yes, an explorer. Okay, not an explorer in the sense of traveling to wild and exotic places and having awesome adventures (a la Indiana Jones), but in the sense of “I like to try different thing and see where they take me.”

I am also an entertainer. I like being the center of attention and making people laugh and tell cool stories and stuff like that. My outlet of this is my podcasts (which have been going strong since mid 2005), my writing (which has been on and off since the summer of my sophomore year of high school and is receiving a lot more focus right now), and, well, this blog.

And finally, I am a Christian. I know. I know. Does that mean this place is going to be filled with boring diatribes about how everyone is going to Hell and they need to be saved by Jesus. Well, no. (But everyone is going to Hell unless they are saved by Jesus.)

Oh yeah, I am a software engineer by day. That pays the bills right now. And I really don’t talk about that much.

All with all that said, what is this all about? Well, it is a place I can interact with you outside of the context of my podcasts, and, to be honest, away from the word “Snark”. Not that there is anything wrong with the word “Snark”. In fact, I am a bit obsessed with the word “Snark”. (I did name my self the Snarky Avenger and the Fandom Snark, and most of my podcasting efforts have “Snark” in their name.) And I am snarky. But I really wanted to get away from that for a while. I wanted a place were I can be Taylor, snarky or not, and because of that “Are Those My Gardening Gloves?” was born.

Now, I bet you are wondering about the name. I already explained about the “snark” think, and as I brainstormed possible names several good ones came up. I didn’t like any of them. So I turned to my favorite online cartoon series of all time (at least until I find something better), Waterman. In the Waterman series there is a band named 16 Buttons of Justice. (And yes, I have a signed copy of the one 16 Buttons of Justice album ever put out.) In episode 7 of the series 16 Buttons of Justice return with there new Television show, and in it they say the phrase “are those my gardening gloves?” In tribute to both 16 Buttons of Justice (Raccoon X Espinoza and Devon P Farmer) and the Waterman series, I have taken “are those my gardening gloves?” as a name for this place.

My hope is to make this a fun and interesting place you will enjoy visiting on a regular basis.

Thanks,

T

P.S. Here is episode 7 of Waterman for your viewing enjoyment:

P.P.S. You can find all of the awesome Waterman Series as well as Waterman Studio’s Puppets in the Park at http://www.watermanstudios.com/watermanseries/toons.php

P.P.P.S. Snark!