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Last week brought the news that a Chicago outfit called the Smoke Jumpers had recorded a track called “My Flow So Tight,” a “James Brown Is Dead”-ish piece of piffle that became newsworthy because of its chorus asking for the ass-kicking of one Chris Brown. In the five days that have passed, the song has been gaining steam both on the radio and at the iTunes Store—and it’s also been causing steam to come out of the years of the Texas outfit called the Smoke Jumpers, a garage-rap outfit from Austin.
The Smoke Jumpers have spoken, and oh man are they sick of the celebrity-industrial complex:
The Smoke Jumpers…In regards to the Chris Brown diss track
Their music is actually quite good, and it’s certainly better than the techno-y tabloid-baiting nonsense put forth by its dopplegangers. (I like “Nowadays,” which is streaming from their MySpace page, a lot.) Anyway, the wannabe pugilists are now calling themselves the Jump Smokers—get it? yeah, it makes no sense—and so that’s settled for now.
Let’s turn this into a learning opportunity! In case you, like me, were wondering just what a smoke jumper might be, the U.S. Forest Service is here to help!
Smokejumping was first proposed in 1934 by T.V. Pearson, the Forest Service Intermountain Regional Forester, as a means to quickly provide initial attack on forest fires. By parachuting in, self-sufficient firefighters could arrive fresh and ready for the strenuous work of fighting fires in rugged terrain. The smokejumper program began in 1939 as an experiment in the Pacific Northwest Region, and the first fire jump was made in 1940 on Idaho’s Nez Perce National Forest in the Northern Region. In 1981, the first woman smokejumper in the nation successfully completed the training program at the McCall Smokejumper Base in Idaho.
The Forest Service also notes that smoke jumpers need to “possess a high degree of emotional stability and mental alertness.” Does releasing a crass-in single that gets tons of tabloid attention count as “alertness”?
Jump Smokers [Official site]
Smoke Jumpers [MySpace]
Smoke Jumpers [U.S. Forest Service]
I never would have thought people would be clamboring for such a weak name. Then again, I would have said the same thing about the Cool Kids or Teenage Cool Kids or whatever.
What an unpleasant couple of hillbillies. At least now I know that some people in Texas don’t care about things.
What, Smump Jokers was taken?!
See, I associate “Smoke Jumpers” with the name of the fictional movie in the Entourage universe in which Vincent Chase (Adam Grenier) attempts his Hollywood-blockbuster comeback post-Medellin and gets into a pissing match with a German director named Werner.
But hey, that’s just how my (pop-culture-besotted) mind works.
@HarveyWallbanger: ha ha!
off topic, but i like how the music geeks at allmusic panned the hell out of the new junior boys while the nerds at pfork gave it a 7.5
The Jump Smokers are racist. Anyone who criticizes or threatens Chris Brown is.
@doublewhiskycokenoice: Oh-need-ers
@MhS: Or maybe the Oneders.
@goldsounds: I wonder whatever happened to the Oneders?
@chachwitablog:
sorry to be the “dour” feminist with apparently no sense of humor, but:
i’ve been really uneasy about this song, the it does advocate the lynching (there’s some language about a noose in there) of brown for misbehaving towards (an admittedly black) lady. most lynchings were framed as punishment for black men’s supposedly inappropriate behavior towards women. that’s pretty dicey territory they’re getting into in that song. chris brown should be _prosecuted_, not “get his ass kicked”.
Maybe they should have caleed themselves “the Dirt Farmers”