Sugar Beats: Sugar Hill Gang's much-sampled 'Apache'

Another great song, just ripe for summering. Get ready, btw, for sum summer stooping. Unless I get some emergency transfusions of cash, this will be a very "can't afford to go out drinking" summer. So you'll have to join me at mine (...or yours...) for "free beer". I call beer bought from the distributors, "free beer". It's so cheap, relative to bars, that you practically make money drinking it!. That's right, my economic plan: "Drink yourself to prosperity; Spend yourself sober."
(it's complicated)
But where'd all the money go, oh, where? Well, recently, it went to late heating bills (boring), and mo' wax, aka more vinyl (exciting).
Including this little gem....

Apache, by Sugar Hill Gang



Oh, this song. Oh, man oh me oh my. First, it uses a similar bong/drum break to The Incredible Bongo Band's Apache, which itself is sort of similar to The Shadows' Apache...
Dude, you think my Summer Prosperity Plan is complex? Check out the involved history of this song. Interesting, but impossible to sum up. Really, you should always be going to that blog, Soul Sides, because it is just the jam. Old Soul, great rap, dropping knowledge without being boring or snooty or pedantic, and always giving you links to the cuts.
It is as essential as this blog (well, more, actually, but still).

Right! Well, anyhow, in hip-hop and drum and bass
(my deepest musical love- 'drum and bass' aka 'jungle' aka 'DnB'- which none of my friends ever like that much. No 'junglist crew' for me! Not enough of my friends are rude bwoys, turns out)
many many songs have sampled drum breaks from various versions of Apache. Lots sampled the guitar line too. You'll see why- the bongos that this song opens with are solid all by themselves, let alone the other versions of that beat that are dropped throughout the track.
Now, if you are one of these young pups, you will recognize the song not from (nearly infinite) DnB and H-H songs, but from Switch's track. This song was huge from a summer or two back. We still can hear it, on that rare occasion that we Make Time.

Here's the original Switch track... (you gotta wait til 2:02 for the guitar line to drop! It's a dance track after all). Called "A Bit Patchy", as in, APatchy=Apache.



Here is an M.I.A. remix of Switch, introduced by Diplo, who M.I.A. used to date, but doesn't now, and mixed into the end of Kitsune track..... I told you this sampling stuff gets complicated!


(jump to about 1:15 on this one if you want to hear "A Bit Patchy" coming in clearly)