James Montgomery's Transitive Property of Awesomeness theory
Photo: MTV News

On The Record: Defining Awesome

A few days ago, while visiting the offices of [name redacted], I was given the opportunity to hear a few songs from the upcoming Smashing Pumpkins album, Zeitgeist. Of course, part of the deal was that I was not allowed to discuss those songs in any way, shape or form.

Needless to say, that made writing this week's edition of Bigger Than the Sound rather difficult, because there's plenty I could tell you about the three tunes I heard. But, in the spirit of confidentiality (and for professionalism's sake,) I agreed to keep my mouth shut. And yet, now a few days removed from it all, I've decided that I just can't do it.

I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you that the trio of songs I heard off Zeitgeist were totally awesome.

But that got me thinking. Just what is awesome? Ask 100 people and you're likely to get 100 different answers. For Eric Schmidt, it's a 13-minute Britney Spears concert. For Sarah Hatter, it's key racks, stemless wine glasses and, uh, "vintage rock star sweat." And for Billy Corgan, well, who knows what it means, but here's a photo of him wearing a wig and flashing the devil horns, which is pretty awesome in its own right.

And to me? Well, that's a pretty tough question. Granted, I use the term "awesome" about 562 times a day, yet just what do I mean when I say it? Is it a term of endearment ("Dusty Rhodes is awesome") or a statement of disdain? ("Jason Frasor blew another save for my fantasy baseball team? That guy's awesome.") An expression of excitement ("I found $20 on the street — awesome!") or dread? ("I have to go see my neighbor's band play at Mercury Lounge tonight. Awesome.)

Well, yes. And no. As it turns, out, "awesome" is a pretty difficult thing to define (which is, in itself, pretty awesome.) And yet, as a service to myself and those around me, I decided to try. So after spending the weekend furiously jotting down ideas (read: watching basketball), here's what I came up with: my very loose, extremely inclusive, not very concise definition of "awesome" ...

Awesome is, by nature, measured in degrees of absurdity, ego and overall WTF-ness. It is Tad Kubler from the Hold Steady's use of a double-neck guitar for no particular reason, the post-wrestling career of the Iron Sheik and/or Red Sox pitcher Mike Timlin's camouflage T-shirt in the "Faith Rewarded" DVD. Awesome is an all-or-nothing proposition ... things classified as "sorta awesome" are not so, because awesomeness does not elicit middle-of-the road sentiment. (Therein lies the difference between "awesome" and "great" or "cool." A sandwich is great; a Philly cheesesteak is awesome.) Awesome is the larger-than-life, the epic, the gluttonous. It inspires heated debate, hatred and fisticuffs. It is stupid or profane, yet is aware — nay, OK — with those facts.

It can be applied to monolithic acts of rock-and-roll excess, career-ending exercises in ego and/or musicianship (double/concept albums are awesome) and unnecessary, overly annoying noodling. Anything that ends in an epic flameout is awesome. Almost all wrestlers are awesome, provided they plied their trade before 1999. The Boston Red Sox are awesome, if only because they are not the New York Yankees (and also because a large portion of their pitching staff enjoys bow-hunting). Overtly cute J-Pop is awesome, because it reveals the child within us all. Fist-pumping, embarrassing rock is awesome. Public-intoxication arrests (and their accompanying mug shots) are awesome. Pretty much everything you'd find in a hazy dorm room — tapestries, incense, Bob Marley posters — is awesome.

After hammering that out, I also devised a rating scale — a "Scale of Awesome," if you will — to serve as both a guide to understanding it all and a graphic representation of the transitive property of awesome (which is confusing and awesome in its own right). It bears mentioning that while all items included on the list are awesome, a 1 equals "least awesome" while a 10 indicates "face-melting awesomeness."

And, yes, I know none of this makes sense — which is why it's awesome.

1.0: Pokemon, The Early November's 3-CD The Mother, the Mechanic and the Path, the intro to ... And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead's Worlds Apart album.

2.0: Jose Lima circa 2000 (or 2004), Big John Studd's beard, Coheed and Cambria's "Welcome Home."

3.0: Gilbert Arenas in actuality, '60s band Quartermass, Hideki Okajima, Bentley Green Hall & Oates' "Head Above Water," Bob Seger's Face The Promise, Against Me!

4.0: Gilbert Arenas in theory, Ozzy Osbourne's 1984 mugshot from Memphis, Tennessee, the Afghan Whigs' "Brother Woodrow/Closing Prayer," 50 Cent's insane body-building obsession, the Secret Machines' In The Round Tour, R. Kelly's Happy People/U Saved Me.

5.0: The asides on R. Kelly's Wikipedia page (particularly "Kelly is well known for his explicit carnality creating such hits as "Bump N Grind," "Feelin' on Yo Booty" and "Ignition (Remix)"), Mastodon's entire career, roughly 78 percent of the Mars Volta's Frances the Mute, the artwork of Storm Thorgerson, the Plastic Constellations (and, by association, the Deuce Cities blog), NASCAR.

6.0: Pavement's "Half a Canyon," Stephen Malkmus' "1% of One," the guitars on My Chemical Romance's "Famous Last Words," the cover of the Rye Coalition's Jersey Girls EP, Helium's The Magic City, the J. Geils Band changing their name to Geils for 1977's Monkey Island album — and then changing it back one album later.

7.0: Glenn Frey's "Smuggler's Blues," Steely Dan's "Deacon Blues," the album version of My Morning Jacket's "Off the Record," Ozzy Osbourne during his mid-'80s "scary face" heyday, ninjas.

8.0: David Ortiz, Digital Underground's "Humpty Dance," pirates.

9.0: Mr. Edward Van Halen's solo on "Eruption," Kiss' Music From "The Elder."

10.0: Tecmo Super Bowl, this picture.

B-Sides: Other Stories I'm Following This Week

Amy Lee and Eddie Van Halen to form new band, simultaneously fire each other on a weekly basis. (See "Evanescence Split With Guitarist, Drummer; Amy Lee Says Band Is 'Alive And Well' ")

Marilyn Manson, Slayer join forces for a totally evil summer tour, plan stops in graveyards, the dark recesses of your soul, Sleep Train Amphitheatre. (See " 'Satan Is Alive And Well': Marilyn Manson, Slayer Announce Summer Tour Dates")

Linkin Park, My Chemical Romance join forces for a totally ev— no, wait. It's just Projekt Revolution, brought to you by Monster energy drink. Spooky! (See "Linkin Park, My Chemical Romance, Taking Back Sunday To Headline Projekt Revolution")

I was gonna include an "E-mail of the Week" here but BTTS #3 is already running plenty long, so I'll just link to this amazing "Singer Wanted" ad one of my co-workers forwarded me yesterday. Warning: only open if you are "serious and have DEDICATION!" (Oh yeah — long hair too.)

And finally, there won't be a BTTS for the next two weeks, as I'm gonna be getting married and then heading off on my honeymoon (which is, needless to say, awesome.)

Hate my awesome list? Hate me? Hit me up at BTTS@MTVStaff.com and let your displeasure be known.

• The Smashing Pumpkins
• 50 Cent
• My Chemical Romance
• Digital Underground

De La Soul
Photo: Mo Daoud

Rumors of Tommy Boy's demise, it seems, have been exaggerated.

"We just opened the new doors at Tommy Boy on Monday," label founder Tom Silverman said on Thursday. However, the company — which was built largely on the strength of hip-hop acts such as De La Soul, Naughty By Nature, Digital Underground and Coolio — has sold most of its sonic assets and is shifting its focus to its other strength, dance music.

Warner Music Group, Tommy Boy's longtime partner, acquired the 21-year-old label's recorded music and music publishing catalogs for a little over $10 million, along with the majority of its hip-hop roster: De La Soul and Prince Paul are going to Elektra, while Tony Touch, Coo Coo Cal and Everlast are headed to Warner Bros.

"It was either buy or sell for either party," Silverman explained. "Based on the economy and where we were and where Warner was and where the contract was, it worked out best for us if we sell. When I did that, they bought the company, but they left me the name and some of the artists. We're taking all the dance acts and [Memphis MC] Indo."

Amber, Thunderpuss and Masters at Work are among the dance artists who'll stay under the Tommy Boy banner, while Silverman will remain Tommy Boy's CEO. Despite the multimillion-dollar payoff, he couldn't retire from the music biz — it's in his blood.

"I love it too much," he explained. "That's what I'm into. It's what I've been doing for 22 years. It's what I really like to do. The hip-hop business really changed and became very expensive and risky and not as profitable. I saw that coming a while back, so I created a company that's much smaller, under 20 people. We can make money selling 125,000 records or less. We can make money selling 50,000 records if we're real careful about our spending. With a small company, we can be more creative and have more fun and not be caught up in bureaucracy."

Although he's frustrated at what he calls a stale time in rap, he's hoping to once again break a superstar act but is going to be "very selective" in his search.

"I'm still interested in hip-hop, but I want the next sh--," he said. "I want something that's gonna take it somewhere fresh if I'm gonna get behind it. I can't compete with Def Jam, it doesn't make sense. That's a no-win game."

At one point, Silverman could not lose, putting out records by acts such as hip-hop godfather Afrika Bambaataa and Stetsasonic in the mid '80s. But it was his late 80's and early 90's run that put Tommy Boy in the annals: Naughty By Nature, Queen Latifah, Coolio, House of Pain and Digital Undergound were all introduced to the world by Silverman.

"I think Tommy Boy is a hip-hop icon in itself," Naughty's Vinnie said of the label. "They were groundbreaking and one of the first labels to step up for hip-hop like that. Coolio, Digital Underground, all of them, it was all love [between us]. It wasn't a cutthroat kind of thing. We were fighting for each other, because it was an intimate situation."

"We were hip-hop history, and unfortunately a lot of hip-hop is history at this point," Silverman said. "I'm interested in hip-hop only if it can reinvent the future, not if it's a reflection of the past. Much of the hip-hop that's out there right now is closer to what mainstream R&B was in 1981 — when we started — than the true essence of hip-hop."

• De La Soul
• Naughty By Nature
• Digital Underground
• Coolio

More information has surfaced regarding the fatal shooting that took place early Thursday morning outside a San Francisco club where Digital Underground member Money B was celebrating the release of his new album.

San Francisco Police Inspector Maureen D'Amico told MTV News on Friday that while Money B was one of two dozen witnesses questioned about the incident, he is not a suspect in the murder.

Ronald Blackburn, 31, of San Leandro, California, was shot during an incident which took place around 2 a.m. on Thursday morning outside San Francisco's Glas Kat Supper Club. He died at San Francisco General Hospital shortly afterward.

Inspector D'Amico confirmed to MTV News on Friday that police believe shots were fired from an S.U.V. that Money B and his entourage were leaving the party in.

A report on Thursday by local radio station KCBS cited witnesses who said a scuffle broke out after one person began banging on that S.U.V.

No one had been charged with Blackburn's murder as of press time; police are currently investigating an unnamed suspect, according to Inspector D'Amico.

• Digital Underground

Two members of the rap collective Digital Underground were apparently arrested over the weekend after fondling a woman backstage after a show at the Arkansas State Fair in Little Rock, Arkansas.

• Digital Underground

After two and a half years on the road supporting his album "Odelay," Beck and his band were eager to leave the highways and byways behind and get back into the studio.

The result is the lo-fi, live-in-the-studio album "Mutations" which hits record stores this week. Beck won't be touring behind the album or releasing any videos from it, but the record does reveal the softer side of the singer who experiments with everything from bossa nova beats to quieter acoustic songs on "Mutations."

One sonic experiment that will not turn up on "Mutations" is Beck's remix of the Digital Underground classic "The Humpty Dance," but he hasn't given up on it yet.

"I was supposed to do it, yeah," Beck told MTV News' Kurt Loder of the remix.

There will be much more from Beck on this weekend's edition of "MTV News 1515."

• Beck
• Digital Underground