It seems that throughout the latter 20th Century all disenfranchised youth have fought the power with music. They changed not only the musical landscape, but social and cultural ones too. In the 30s we had the Afro American with Jazz and Blues, the 50s it was time for white kids with their Rock and Roll. In the 60s it was Protest music and the hippies, whilst the 70s had Hiphop for the Afro-Americans and Heavy Metal for the English. The 80s Punk and 90s Grunge and Dance seems to include everyone. Each group influenced the other, they weren’t ever socially exclusive. But there’s a group missing from this cacophony of social rebels. There’s one group that was excluded, although they’ve had the greatest impact on music, particularly modern music, which the world has ever seen. They are, of course, the nerds.
Yes, Nerds. You may dismiss my claim, but without nerds there would be no amplifiers. There would be no samplers or computers. There would be no internet. These tools are essential to making modern music, and it’s all because of geeky kids with glasses, pocket protectors and slide rules. But now the nerds do have a form of expression, and it’s on the rise. It’s called Nerdcore, and one of its principle players is Damian Hess, aka MC Frontalot.
Nerdcore was coined by Hess at the turn of the 21st Century. “At first it felt silly,” Hess says of the term “and now I feel lucky to have coined it. It turned out to be the type of phrase that a group of people could latch on to and repeat and take part in somehow.” Its popularity can be seen through the simultaneous growth of the internet. Participating in Song Fight! (www.songfight.org) Hess gained fame. Song fight! is a website that posts a title online, and artists compete for fame (no prizes are offered) by writing a song with that title.
Although Hess has only posted 7 songs, his popularity blitzed all other contenders. His song, ‘Yellow Lasers’, about finding love at a Star Wars convention, garnered him more fame than he could imagine. “The first night I heard about song fight was the night “Yellow Lasers” was due the next morning, so I stayed up late and I made that song. Somebody emailed it to Penny Arcade (one of the webs’ most popular webcomic with over a million hits per day) and they started talking about it in their news post, then they decided I was their official rapper. I emailed them and said I’d write their theme song for them.”
Not only did MC Frontalot write the Penny Arcade theme song, he was invited to play at the Penny Arcade Expo, a massive gathering of nerds now attracting over 70,000 people per year. That’s as big as our Big Day Out! He’s toured the USA and has now had a film made about the experience called ‘Nerdcore Rising’. “The film makers (Negin Farsad and Kimmy Gatewood) are these two lovely women from New York. They’re both stand up comedians and they heard about nerdcore hiphop and thought that it would make a good topic. To me it sounded very silly, but they were very serious about it and have been getting a lot of attention for the whole nerdcore scene.” The film features the likes of Weird Al Yankovic, MC Lars, Jello Biafra, the Daily Show crew and more talking about the nerdcore phenomenon.
As to the longevity of nerdcore, Hess believes “the logical thing for nerdcore would be for it to peak and suddenly disappear and just be a cute little fad that had a couple of articles written about it, but who knows? I keep thinking that every year and keep getting surprised by it continuing to have legs. Certainly there’s endless staying power for being a nerd; it is part of the human condition,” he laughs, “but in terms of prominence and being on view in public, it doesn’t seem logical. People would certainly think it was funny to make nerds cool for a little while and then go back shunning us as they have always done.”
“Maybe the world did change a tiny little bit after the dotcom boom and maybe now technology doesn’t seem quite as that thing for kids with glasses,” he continues. “Notice that two of the most loved zombie film directors of every nerd I ever knew have gone from these obscure filmmakers loved by weirdos to Hollywood A-List directors – Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson. They’re two of the highest paid directors in Hollywood and maybe that is emblematic of something that is happening. But if I have to put bets on it I have to keep betting that it’s all going to crash down around us – it’s the only logical conclusion,” he chuckles again.
MC Frontalot’s next album ‘Secrets From The Future’ is due out in April, and Nerdcore Rising will be seen in independent movie theatres soon.