TONE LOC DIDN`T NEED THE FUNKY COLD MEDINA TO BE A WILD THING

https://youtu.be/63ZIf2H9S0E?si=GHZ8VlVHMPYhX6RN


Despite normally being a harsh critic of rap music or rock that incorporates elements of rap, at the end of the 80`s a gangster from LA came along and gave me two excuses to have a soft spot for a couple of pisstakey and thoroughly entertaining songs that could be termed rap influenced riff rock. 

Although not to Milli Vanilli proportions, Tone Loc effectively ripped off every good

Montrose and Van Halen riff and recycled them on his 1989 album LOCED AFTER DARK. 

To be perfectly honest, I never bought the album, for a decade and a half I had the two classic mega hits off it on an old cassette which I wore out in my car, but before the
cassette packed it in I burnt FUNKY COLD MEDINA and WILD THING to disc. 

I dont even know or have not even listened to the other tracks on LOCED AFTER DARK.

For the purposes of writing this blog I did have a long awaited listen to the title track on You Tube, good for the sub-genre of music which Tone Loc represented but not as good as the two which tickle my fancy. 

FUNKY and WILD THING were once staples of FM radio, and I mean back in the late 80`s when they were first released, but both songs are notably absent from radio playlists twenty years on.

Maybe that has something to do with the fact that the songs are sexist, macho, grubby and the complete antithesis of new age political correctness. 

Tone Loc even sings about the way of getting more chicks is to put a little Medina in your glass and "they`ll come real quick". 

Perhaps through personal experience Tone Loc takes self depreciation to a new lyrical level when he explained how the hot woman
called Sheena who he picked up with the help of some Medina turned out to be a man.

And one line in WILD THING, the one when Tone Loc sings `saw a girl who was gonna rock my world so I had to adjust my fly' ,proves that Tone Loc was definitely more like Salt and Pepper than Michael Bolton.

WILD THING was an almost identical replica of the Van Halen classic JAMIES CRYIN` off the very first VH album in 1978, with just a few minor re-arrangments to counter any accusations of plagiarism. 

Even though I am not a fan of gangster music and DJ`s deliberately scratching old vinyl records which Tone Loc`s style of music epitomised, I think these two songs
are good for what they are. 

Tone Loc`s next and only big break, if you want to call it that, was a bit part in the Jim Carrey move Ace Ventura Pet Detective some four or five years later. He seems to be about as popular as MC Hammer these days.