The Endless Algorithm - "Scottie Spliffen" by Dikembe
The Endless Algorithm is a new essay series from Kool Kids Music Club
Welcome to The Endless Algorithm, a new essay series from Kool Kids Music Club.
Each installment focuses on a single song, with the algorithm in my brain making some connection between each selection. Basically, I’m spelling out what’s happening in my mind when you give me the aux chord.
The first thing listeners hear on Dikembe’s 2011 track “Scottie Spliffin’” is Jason Seagal talking about his drums. Specifically, it’s a sample of Jason Segal’s character Nick, from the cult 1999 one-season-wonder series Freaks and Geeks, talking about his love for his comically oversized drum kit. “This is the essence of who I am now,” he explains.
"Look, these teachers... these teachers want us to work, you know? And I say fine... I'll work. But you gotta let me do the kind of work that I wanna do. And for me, Lindsay, it's my — it's my drum kit, man.”
That sentiment is some straight-up teenage bullshit. It reminds me of a Chris Rock joke: “You can be anything you’re good at, as long as they’re hiring.” As Nick would learn in a later episode, “they” were not.
I point this out because there was a point in my life where I would have agreed with Nick. Born in 1981, I’m technically a millennial but I sit right on the line between generations, and Nick’s “let me do my own thing, man” vibe is pure Gen X. I’m generally not the sort of person who subscribes to the idea that when you were born can somehow influence your world-view — ironically, a very Gen X POV — and the father-of-two part of me thinks Nick seriously needs a backup plan. Nevertheless, I can’t help but respect his need to go his own way, even if it does seem delusional.
Delusions didn’t seem to be a problem for Steven Grey and Ryan Willems when they formed Dikembe in 2010. Based in Gainesville, Florida home of the University of Florida, and known for birthing boomer rockers (Tom Petty, Stephen Stills, members of the Eagles), punk bands (Against Me!, Less Than Jake, How Water Music) and the annual punk rock music festival The Fest, Grey and Willems were already playing together in Wavelets, who had more of a twinkly, midwestern emo vibe. Dikembe was supposed to be a fun side project one that combined Grey and Willems’ love of bands like The Promise Ring, Braid and The Starting Line with their hometown’s tradition of woolier pop-punk.
Chicago Bowls, the band’s debut EP was recorded in their drummer’s bedroom and it shows. The whole thing breezes by in under 10 minutes, one barnstorming into the next. “Scottie Spliffin” (in case it wasn’t already clear, every song title is built around combining marijuana slang and Chicago Bulls players) kicks off the whole thing, setting the stage with that Freaks and Geeks sample, which also closes the record.
Whatever my aged quibbles, it’s a fitting mission statement. Grey wrote the lyrics to the song on his first day of junior college, which totally tracks. “I got lost on the way to class,” he told SB Nation Chicago in 2011. “I find myself writing mostly about the little things I do that bug me. I think that writing about this stuff helps to bring it to my attention. I guess I feel like I can work on fixing it that way.”
Chicago Bowls entered a musical landscape experiencing its first blush with emo nostalgia. A new generation of bands like Algernon Cadwallader, Into It. Over It., You Blew It! and so many more were giving the genre new life while artists like The Get Up Kids, Texas is the Reason, and American Football were reuniting and experiencing a well-deserved victory lap.
There is a stream of music criticism that has always been allergic to emo’s self-flagellation. But by the 2010s, that old guard had yielded some ground to a new crop of writers who’d grown up on emos late 90s/early 2000s emo/pop-punk/post-hardcore — I’d put myself in this category — and were primed for this new generation of bands who were breathing more inclusive, less toxic (though there would still be plenty of toxicity) into old forms. It was new and brash and nostalgic and warmly familiar all at the same time.
To the best of my knowledge — and in keeping with the artists who inspired them —none of the bands that came out of that first wave of emo revival bands really made much of a dent outside of punk/hardcore/emo circles.
Dikembe followed Chicago Bowls with the full-length debut, Broad Shoulders in 2012, which leaned on the same formula with pretty spectacular results. They remained busy, dropping two more albums and a string of split singles with bands like Modern Baseball, You Blew It! and The Hotelier. But by the time of 2016’s Hail Something they barely resembled the scruffy band that had started life writing songs named after Midwestern sports heroes and weed. They took four years off before returning with Muck which continued to push the band in new directions. They’re still going strong today.
The guys in Dikembe found their drum kit and they’re still marching to their own beat.
Next up in the Endless Algorithm queue… “In the Garage” by Weezer.
Ian Gormely is a freelance music journalist based in Toronto.
Write to koolkidsmusicclub@gmail.com for questions, criticisms, and submissions.