Team Rocket

For some reason I had Team Rocket's song, Double Trouble, in my head. While listening to it, I decided to do a post on them. From the demands of their mysterious boss, to the things Jessie and James say, to the names of the Team Rocket characters, much is very Masonic.

There is a "proper" music video for this, however anime fans seem to get off on making their own videos, which makes it difficult to find the one featured on old Pokemon episodes.

The lyrics for the song are fairly repetitive and revealing:

Intro: [boss in a very gruff, evil voice] This is The Boss. And I'm sick of waiting. I want Pikachu. And this time; don't screw it up!

Prepare for trouble

Make it double

Prepare for trouble

Make it double

James: We'll be the richest rogues of all time

Jessie: Creators of a grand design

James: I'll be the king

Jessie: I'll be the queen

Meowth: I'll be the joker...of crime

Prepare for trouble

Make it double

Prepare for trouble

Make it double

Jessie: To protect the world from devastation

James: To unite all peoples within our nation

Jessie: To denounce the evils of truth and love

James: To extend our reach to the stars above

Jessie

James

Team Rocket blast off at the speed of light

Surrender now, or prepare to fight!

Team Rocket's rockin'

Talkin' trouble, walkin' trouble

Double trouble, big troubles gonna follow you

We're gonna capture Pikachu

We're Team Rocket

and we fight for what's wrong

 For mayhem, and madness, and rare pokemon

Jessie: I'm so gorgeous

James: I'm always the man

Boss: You're just the players in my master plan

Team Rocket's rockin'

Talkin' trouble, walkin' trouble

Double trouble, big troubles gonna follow you

We're gonna capture Pikachu

We're always gonna try it

No one can deny it

We can start a riot in Sunday school 

James: Oooh! A riot!

We'll have you believin' truth can be decievin'

Both: Do unto others is our golden rule

James: [ridiculous Ooh-hoo-hoo giggle]

Jessie: This is our most ingenious plan ever! If I do say so myself!

James: Even we couldn't screw this one up, Jessie

Meowth: Will you two stop yappin'?! Here they come!

Prepare for troubllllllle!

Team Rocket's rockin'

Talkin' trouble, walkin' trouble

Double trouble, big troubles gonna follow you

Team Rocket's rockin

Talkin' trouble, walkin' trouble

Double trouble, big troubles gonna follow you

[repeat a few times, interspersed with Jessie and James laughing and speaking the words]

Looks like Team Rocket's blasting off again!

Team Rocket, as most know, are the villains of the long-running series Pokemon. They're conceited yet continuously have their plans thwarted by Ash (in Japanese, Satoshi) and his friends. They also aren't the smartest of villains, as most loved tv villains are rarely the brightest. Of course, as The Boss tells them in Double Trouble, they're "just the players in [his] master plan". Hmm...sounds familiar to Project Monarch to me, as most MK victims are "just players" in the elites master plan.

Team Rocket always introduce themselves (although Ash comes to know them-and their speech- begrudgingly well) with their speech. There's always music playing during said speech, and in some episodes the viewer will see that Jessie and James use a music deck to play in the background. The directly translated from Japanese version of their speech:

Musashi (Jessie): If you ask us something or other...

Kojiro (James): The answer we give will be compassion of the world!

Musashi: To prevent the destruction of our world!

Kojiro: To protect the peace of our world!

Musashi: To carry out the evils of truth and love!

Kojiro: The lovely, charmy villains...

Musashi!

Kojiro!

Musashi: The pair from Rocket Gang soars through the galaxy!

Kojiro: A white hole, a white tomorrow await us!

Nyarth (Meowth): Something like that!

The english version of their speech is repeated through-out their song, Double Trouble, and rhymes:

Jessie: Prepare for trouble!

James: Make it double!

Jessie: To protect the world from devastation!

James: To unite all peoples within our nation!

Jessie: To denounce the evils of truth and love!

James: To extend our reach to the stars above!

Jessie!

James!

Jessie: Team Rocket blast off at the speed of light!

James: Surrender now, or prepare to fight!

Meowth: Meowth! that's right!

In later seasons, they changed their speech for a time.

Direct translation from Japanese to English:

Musashi: There is a voice saying something...

Kojiro: From beyond the horizion...

Musashi: From beyond the big bang...

Kojiro: A voice is calling us

Nyarth: Sorry to keep you waiting!

Musashi: Evil flowers who have courageously bloomed!

Kojiro: In the role of villains who are hard and sweet!

Musashi!

Kojiro!

And Nyarth!

Musashi: The place where Team Rocket is

Kojiro: The world-

Musashi: The universe-

All: Awaits you!

In the English version:

Jessie: Prepare for trouble from the skies!

James: From beyond the stars, a nasty surprise!

Jessie: An evil as old as the galaxy...

James: ...sent here to fulfil our destiny!

Meowth: Plus there's me!

Jessie: To denounce the evils of truth and love!

James: And extend our reach to the stars above!

Jessie!

And James!

And Meowth are the names!

Jessie: Anywhere there's peace in the universe...

James: ...Team Rocket...

Meowth: ...will be there...

All: ...to make everything worse!

Team Rocket has sort-of rivals with another Team Rocket, who wear black versions of Jessie and James' outfits and who are also smarter than Jessie and James. Butch and Cassidy love to mock Jessie and James, making no secret of their "superiority" over the other two.

Notice Cassidy's one eye and upside-down pyramid earring?

In one episode, Jessie and James have a falling out with eachother. Jessie teams up with Butch, while James replaces Jessie with Cassidy. Each "new" team try the speech thing, only to find it doesn't work. By the end of the episode, Jessie and James reunite as do Butch and Cassidy.

In even later episodes, Team Rocket (Jessie and James) switch to two new mottos. I won't bother typing those out part out of laziness, and part because I didn't start this post to talk about each and every version of their silly speeches.

Both Team Rockets, Jessie and James, Butch and Cassidy, were named after famous outlaws of the past. Jesse James was notorious for being a gang leader, bank and train robber, and even a murderer. Butch Cassidy was known for pretty much the same thing. 

Hmmm...so The Boss views the infamous robbers as pawns to be used on his chessboard (as the Elite view MK victims as well as the general public), characters named after murderers, numerous references to truth and love being evil as well as worship of the sky, the persistent attempts at kidnapping Pikachu, not to mention the fact that Team Rocket look as though they're at least 16/17-if not older-basically stalking and harassing Ash (who is 10 in the first season). Oh-and they live in a world where it's normal for young children to leave home to pursue their goal of becoming masters of pokemon, strange creatures they abuse then capture when the targeted pokemon is too weak to continue fighting. The "masters" capture them by throwing weird little balls at them. The pokemon then are trapped in said ball until the "master" sees a use for them, unless the pokemon becomes a favourite by said "master" (such as Meowth is with Team Rocket, and Pikachu is with Ash), then the animal-like creature is allowed to walk with, or be carried by, said master. Pokemon battles are pretty much like dog-fights.

The most common pokeball

All pokeballs

still think its not Masonic?

Sources: Bulapedia

              Wikipedia-Jesse James

              Wikipedia-Butch Cassidy

Twiztid: the Demented Duo

Twiztid, consisting of Jamie Madrox (named after the character from X-Men, also known as The Multiple Man) and Monoxide, refer to themselves as the Demented Duo. I spoke a bit about them in my Insane Clown Posse (ICP) post. Madrox  and Monoxide bicker over which one gets to be Batman. Madrox also goes by Mr.Bones on occassion.

They’re also prone to mis-spelling everything, presumably on purpose, possibly to further dumb-down the fan base, or because they’re from the streets and want to “keep it real.” Regardless of the reasons for their mis-spellings, they also like to merge and sometimes letters in place of words, like “bussyoheadopen” and “yuwannahoe”

Earlier this week, I was listening to their music while getting ready for the day, and noticed some of their questionable lyrics I had mentioned.

Mostasteless has a track featuring ICP called Spin the Bottle. In the song, Violent J refers to himself as “the wizard of the streets”

Another track off Mostasteless is Blink:

“Show me what lies just beyond my eyes/won’t you take me to the world where my spirit lies/is it really fact or a pack of lies/why don’t you”

“you can ask Nosferatu/he knows me”

“When I close my eyes/I can see how everybody dies”

“When I close my eyes/the devil-man appears/and tells me he’s been hiding in my closet for years/My eyes stay closed/then he rambles on/and hands me the lyrics to a Dark Lotus song” 

Dark Lotus is a group featuring Psychopathic artists ICP, Twiztid, Blaze, and once-upon-a-time Marz. Marz didn’t stick with Psychopathic for long, he left them and supposedly talked a lot of shit. Soon after, Psychopathic signed ABK (Anybody Killa), he was brought into Dark Lotus to take Marz’s place. He also recorded over Marz’s lyrics on the first Lotus album, which was then re-released. Vocally, Marz fit Dark Lotus better than ABK (who has a very spitty voice on account of his lisp), however ABK has stuck with Psychopathic and his part in Juggalo Family contains more heart than Marz’s did.

Their album, Freek Show, appears to be biographical. The music video for We Don’t Die is very cryptic.

It features Madrox and Monoxide riding on a Ouji board, as well as burying their selves without the face paint; Jamie Spaniolo and Paul Methric, with the help of other Psychopathic artists. This clearly marks the re-birth of the self-professed Demented Duo. They have a habit of saying Samhain the way that it’s spelled, rather than "Saw-when" the way it’s supposed to be pronounced. Personally, I prefer the way Twiztid say it. I’ve never been a fan of words that are spelled completely differently from how they’re pronounced…I may come across as childish or naïve with this, but honestly when we learn to read we're all told to “sound it out”, so what’s with these silent letters and sneaky spellings?

The lyrics for Mutant X could describe how they came to be Twiztid.

"Watch as they change and mutate/into a freak show/twiztid serial killing juggalo"

"We put the world into submission/We told y'all to listen/Twiztid/mo' mystic superstition"

"I'm a warlock/walk on water with wicked spells/banished to purgatory/borderline of Heaven and Hell/see me for all that I am and all that I do/the Multiple Man comes in multiples of two/Evolution of the soul took place in a cocoon/and we appear from the shadows by the light of the moon/we the nightbreed/walkin' amongst the dead/and nobody can figure out what's going on inside of our head"

In Fall Apart, they frequently repeat “I keep falling apart/I never wanted to die” especially toward the end of the song.

“I need something/someone/to help me with my brain/cuz it’s falling apart”

“I’m falling into pieces and I don’t know why/it’s all because we’re all afraid to die/and if you think about it/it’ll eat you/from the inside out til you don’t know what to do”

What Da Dead Like features Big E and ICP: throught the song, you hear in the background “dun-dun-dun….don’t follow me/don’t follow/dun-dun-dun…don’t follow me/don’t follow” sung as a chant while Violent J speaks about life and death. What he's actually saying is hard to catch behind the chant.

Mirror/Mirror is an album whose title alone indicates Alice conditioning. On the cover, Monoxide looks zoned out and evil while Madrox makes a face that perhaps is supposed to look freaky, or maybe like he’s just playing. I don’t know. All I notice is his spider hair and tongue sticking out, maybe because I have a bit of a crush on “fat” Madrox (not so much when he’s skinny.) The minimal artwork around their picture is the same above as below, except below is upside down.

What’s That?! - “Twiztid/That’s what it’s like/and I don’t want nobody to know/nobody”

4 Thoze of U ft Blaze – “I hate everyone/I hate everyone”

“For those of you that don’t know…/’fraid to go where I go/and you call yourself a juggalo” Where is it that they go that we’re afraid to go?

Two songs off of The Green Book say everything with their titles alone: The World is Hell, and Everybody Diez.

Independants Day features a song called Monsters Ball, which again features ICP (there’s a lot of Twiztid tracks that do). In this, Violent J claims that he “sold [his] soul” to get into said ball.

W.I.C.K.E.D Again, the title of the album says a lot. There’s a track on there called When I Get to Hell, as if it’s inevitable that is where they’re going. In it, they plan on partying with dead celebrities and appear to be inviting us to join them. It’s a song that I often try to skip, as I don’t want it in my head nor do I want to find myself singing along. I do not wish to spend an eternity in Hell. Instead, I think more along Violent J’s line in an ICP track: “This is our Hell now/We’re living in it/but this bullshit’ll be over in a minute” Regardless of it’s dark tones, Twiztid prove that they know how to construct a song, building it  with skill. Not to say that their previous works were crap, because they've always made catchy and sometimes scary songs, but this album truly displays just how far they’ve come from their earlier efforts.

Other songs off Wicked:

Buckets of Blood:

HA Ha HA Ha HA Ha:

My Enemies:

Bella Morte: This song, imo, has a very epic feel and sound. I think it’s Twiztid’s greatest work of art.

Heartbroken and Homicidal

It Don’t Matta: “It don’t matta no more/they gon’ do what they gon’ do/even if I try to go/they gon’ try to go there”

I’m Stuck: “I wanna get up/but they won’t let me/so I feel like I’m stuck/Hoping that one day/I’ll get set free/cuz I’m so ready/can someone help me?”

Heard Enough: ‘The televisions nothing but a straight-up racist”

“waiting for someone to stand up”

‘When it’s all over/wishing you never knew me now/from the first intro/until it all falls down”

“You get hooked/

“Look how we terrorize/tell you all to kill/and you thinking that it’s real”

Set By Example: “It’s not our intention/to leave you infected/it’s the way we feel inside/and it cannot be corrected” Much like Fall Apart off Freek Show, this is chanted repeatedly at the end of the song.

Cryptic Collection 4 

Gimme More: “Plastic/pre-tan/empty/hollow/and you expect me to follow?/Hell no!/Gimme more/Gimme more/Gimme more/Psychopathic style” This one actually like they’re not part of any agenda…or maybe that’s just what they want us to think. After all, the-powers-that-be do like to make us think that we’re being individuals, with our own tastes in music…Psychopathic is a rebel label...the label designed for rebels? I dunno man.

Speculationz: “They say I’m sired by a wizard of sorts”

If They Don’t Come for Me: “If they don’t come for me/it’s all over” 

Just a small selection of some of their lyrics from just some of their albums. I didn't mention Frankenstein on this post, as I mentioned it on my first ICP post.