In 5 Overly Complicated and Footnoted Steps!¹

1. First watch these amazing miami douchesters at a photoshoot (NSFW so go close your office door).

What is that song? Why is it so catchy and raw? When he says, “No Safety Net” the foreign sounding dude seems to know what he’s talking about. Almost like he can see Russia from his doorstep for reals.

2. So you search for the actual video. They’re called Scrambled Eggs? Ew. Wait where are these guys from?

Beirut? As is Lebanon, not as in tousled tweed wearing anachronisms from Brooklyn. Wow. There’s something really double-dark about hearing a band play music this depraved and hopeless and disaffected when you realize their everyday lives are way more perilous and dehumanizing that, say, TVontheradio’s. Their newest video is much more upbeat, but still a bit, manic, off…what are those women doing dancing with them? Why are they crammed into corners and in elevators?

It’s gallows humor. Their hometown is about that size.

3. Do some research, in a Time article: and in spin magazine, and on obscure french blogs. slash radio shows.

They’re pretty cute dudes too. If i was a lady security guard i would totally random search them:

It looks like they’re heavily featured in this Yallah.underground documentary:

4. Go to a sketchy website (Lebanese Underground) and pay $10 for an old album of theirs…then download some free songs: 1, 2
Make a playlist…
Scrambled Eggs by BrightestYoungThings

Put it on your podmachine and leave work early because it’s a snow storm and your boss left hours ago and probably won’t notice. The streets are wet and the snow is stupid. In Beirut today it’s 46 degrees and partly cloudy. They are having problems and going to dance clubs and taking illicit drinks and it means a hell of a lot more to them to play guitar than it ever meant to you and your spoiled friends. You want to get really fucked up tonight. You want to drink absinthe with a hair stylist you loathe then smoke hash and drink Heineken in a bar in the basement and get kicked out and go to the park and hit someone in the face with a snowball and get hit in the eye with a snowball and pass out on a stranger’s couch and wake up terrified and have to drink the rest of the bottle of wine you opened while arguing with the strangers about Indian reservations and why we exist and doing drugs–so you buy a small bottle of Grand Marnier from the corner store and sip it furtively on the way home. Their song “Bleeding Nun” comes on the podmachine, and you start to feel like that piano in the background, one note, dumb, obvious, high and constantly getting pounded, ringing out long after the song is over.

5. Scrambled Eggs is your favorite band.

1. This is the only footnote. Other nominees in this category.