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

YouTube - Tone Loc - Funky Cold Medina (Official Video) [HQ]


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 al-
bum, 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 plageurism. Even though i am
not a fan of gangster music and DJ`s deliberately
scratching old vinyl records which Tone Loc`s st-
yle 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.