(jail)BREAKING NEWS Amanda Knox's prior conviction just overturned! (--> USA wins again! <--)
Live Motörhead: "Jailbait" You can download the studio version here
Here are the headlines that I've come up with so far: "Foxy Knoxy Bounced From Box" "Foxy Knox Walks Free From Cell Blocks"
Note that at about 4:15 in above video, Motörhead also plays their song "America." It's about how you can't get good meth in Canada; you have to bring it up from the USA for any proper Canadian tour. As I said: AMERICA wins again!
OR, you can celebrate her freedom with the Irish rather than the British.
Live Thin Lizzy- "Jailbreak" And you can download (a non-live version of) the above track here
This song title is a bit more accurate as a descriptor of Knox, yeah?, since jailbait causes, rather than suffers, jailtime. Of course, her boyfriend also went to jail... well, he's her ex-boyfriend now... and he's been freed too.
So I'm not sure if she can qualify for "jailbait" status- What do you think?
Went digging through CDs to find something to listen to the other day. Felt in a particular kind of mood, so grabbed some Drum and Bass CDs I hadn't listened to recently, including.... the classic...
Metalheadz two-disc of golden-era Junglist anthems.
(if you are impatient, go to about 1:30 for the big drop...)
This is the kind of CD that nobody sells used. You don't just accidentally end up buying this- so nobody is selling it used, because they happened into it with no idea what it was.
(although the tracklisting for it on amazon.com is incorrect, so maybe 'no idea' is true, in a wholly different sense. The right tracks are listed on Discogs.com.)
You also don't get tired of it, unless you just get tired of whole genres of music. All the reviews of this state accurately: peak tunes; never tire of these; "don't make 'em like this no more"; sick wicked dope; etc. For this genre of music (drum 'n' bass, aka jungle), this would be like a Led Zeppelin greatest-hits package: if you ever like it, you always will, and never any less. So nobody ever bought this and liked it, and then eventually soured on it, bored of it, overplayed and so played-out it.
But how did I get it used then? Well, Everyday Music in Portland sells used CDs, and they will sell you scratched CDs. Sounds bad: is good. They mark out the scratched ones; they sell them for less; and they even will take them back if they skip. You know how almost all of your CDs are scratched, somewhat at least, and how many of those never ever skip. SKUFFS, they call them. Well, this mamajamma was skuffed pretty bad. Two whole tracks just ain't played right, ever. Or at least, ever for me, since I bought it scratched. One that never got all the way through, was Dillinja's "Angels Fell", above. Obviously, the YouTube version no skuff.
But what you can do, see, is copy a scratched CD. Because while the CD player has to deal with scratches in real time, your computer's CD-ROM does not- it will keep patiently scanning, scanning, re-scanning-- until it can find out just what 0s and 1s made up that track, in its prediluvian state. So usually, the copy will be a like-new, scratchless, unskuffled version. That beats a lossless copy- it actually improves your version.
So now, for the first time ever, I can listen to this track all the way through- And so can you.
Danzig's Mother is a suggested video, so is Halo Benders (the laziest band in rock and roll!). What is funny, is that my dad has something to say about both lazy bands, and drum n bass. He said (says) that Pavement et al. "aren't even trying" when they sing. It's true! He also once said a drum and bass song was "Ferris Bueller music", which I took to mean: sounds like that Ferrari music in the movie. Which is false; But what he meant was, it sounded like another drum and bass song Which in fact! Sampled a line from the movie.
I must have got my "right all the damn time" gene from my pops.
Just wanted to mention that, because of my 'research' for the last post, I knew that mayflies have two penises.
2!
And at Quizzo in West Philly last Sunday, we were asked about it! And I knew! And we got a point!
Other than that though, you could say we were 'down and out' in West Philly.
youtube got it: James' Brown - Down and Out In New York City
This is from the James Brown-scored movie soundtrack I mentioned last time. See, he's using 'movie-style' instruments here- orchestra, flutes, etc. Say which you prefer: Curtis' Junkie or James' ...Out In.. in the comments
I think somebody is rocking the oboe?
Which is of course a vaguely phallic instrument. So, if you had two of them, battling it out, dueling banjos style, or a la "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" (which is a song I like, but do not like at Oscar's, which you can no longer smoke at, at all), then it would look a little like a mayfly. Because they have
2!
Oh, and please do not ever forget that oboe players have a posse:
I'm trying an experiment: I'm writing two blogs simultaneously, so that you will have shorter posts, and more of them. We'll see if this works. They are opposed twins, so we'll call them Romulus and Remus. One is posted today, the other soon after.
I first was going to have one of my oft-postponed "X-Battles", where I pit two songs in band-to-band combat. This battle then morphed into these twinned posts; which then morphed into a different X-Battle. There are a series of battles running here: Oregon X Pennsylvania; (both posts) Rain X Sun; (next post) New band X Old band (aka blogbuzz vs reissues); (next) New band doing a Cover X the Original; (this post) Scuzz production X Cleanroom production (both).
Now, we will have drugged drugged drugged band SALEM trying to outdo the BOSS himself (who is probably really sober) .
Above is Salem covering Bruce Springsteen's great "Streets of Philadelphia". Salem has an EP called "Yes I Smoke Crack". Here is a picture of an historic building in Salem, Oregon, with a crack in it:
This band Salem is probably named after Witch-Trials Salem, but Salem is also the meth-addled capital of Oregon. (I'm more concerned with getting things stolen in OR than PA: meth = stealing, and meth is not much of a drug out here in PA, because meth also = country.) Salem the band sound like (recently legalized) Absinthe mixed with Oxycontin instead of sugar; like cough syrup mixed with boxed wine; like My Bloody Valentine mixed with the Knife and with strains of chopped and screwed Southern/Midwestern hip-hop : CHOP the pill; and unSCREW the wine. Oregon is the only state with a two-sided flag. The flag, other than that, is very boring, and why are the letters all crooked??. Salem is the capital of Oregon- and you ask, "Why not Portland, which I've actually heard of? Or at least Eugene, which has a big ol' university in it?" Almost all state capitals are the not-biggest city, and this is done on purpose: it is to counteract the very real and very natural power (economic, cultural, geographical) that cities possess more of than do rural areas. This discrepancy occurs even when the cities hold significantly less people in them than the countryside.
(In Oregon, it is a rough balance, #-wise, between quasi-libertarian rightists and "Little Beirut" leftists: left lives in cities, and so has the upper-hand. IT'S A FACT!!)
Placing the capital outside of the largest city helps to strike a balance of the "naturally opposed humours"; the haves and the haves-less. I steal this idea from Machiavelli. It occurs in both "On Principalities", his most-famous text (aka "Da Prince"), and his "Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius" and is key to uniting his championing of both quasi-tyrannical power and quasi-democratic republicanism.
--this is Prince on a high-school b-ball team:
Ahem! But, see, Rome's battles, with external enemies and with itself (have X have-less; city X country; Citizen X slaves), are appropriate here: Rome itself was a productive clash of discipline (the Boss- how long has he been around? about as long as Rome itself: this requires discipline), and the insanity of a dark violent youth: what do you think propelled and compelled them to take their many older neighbors as enemies, again and again? What do you think pushed citizen against citizen, time and again? (It wasn't drug disputes.) What do you think drove Rome, with little rhyme or reason (but with plenty of instrumental rationality), to move from ruling nothing, to ruling 7 hills, to ruling from England to Africa to India?. So Rome itself must be understood as a clash between Salem and Bruce Springsteen- this much has obviously been established- and the question is, who gets the greater share of the legacy?
Turbonegro are a sorta punk, sorta metal band. I just got into them recently, but supposedly they have 8 albums. (That's more than you.) This is how the lead singer typically performs: (With that physique, you might be forgiven for being surprised that he didn't die BEFORE Betty Page...) They are somewhat daffy, but it stays fun and doesn't get old. Partly because, musically, they are way rad. But even the lyrics, which are where the tomfoolery enters into it, rarely are straight-up stupid. Turbonegro are daffy in that they talk about sex and coke and erections (independent of sex- see below) and "ROK und ROLL" and ask questions like "Do you do you Dig Destruction?" (to which they answer "Latino lovers often do" ???). They obviously aren't taking it all so very seriously, but they aren't in it just to joke either. So when, in "I Got Erection", they say:
"Every time I walk down the street - Erection - When I think of blood I think of love - Erection - When I set a house on fire - Erection - When I dig a hole in the ground - Erection - When I hear that death punk sound- Erection"
they are probably mostly joking. But when they say that 'Turbonegro Hate The Kids' (you know, 'the kids'), I get the feeling that they mean it.
They played at Madison Square Garden a little while ago, which is a slightly odd venue for them. And, slightly related: when uploading "(I Fucked) Betty Page" (click to download), A pop-up ad informed me that The Hold Steady (who I don't know about, but am sure that they are "The Kids" and very dumb and bad and all that) and their tour are sponsored by Duracell. they are sponsored by the Pink Rabbit!
This is why we all need bands like TURBONEGRO, by the way. Well, one more for the road- and I promise, you all will like this song; it has homoeroticism, international travel, the bars of "New York, New York" (they call it that because they are from Norway, by the way).
A friend of mine fell off a scooter. She's okay, but she did injure her
coccyx.
It's not funny.
Also not funny is how good Wilson Pickett is.
R I G H T ?? !! ?? (I tell you, I am not one bit joking when I say: my grandfather has the exact same suit. He wore it to my high school graduation, and damn, if he didn't look sharp.)
This is an album I picked up a while ago. Again, it came from the Second Mile thrift; not too surprising, since the album before this one was called "Wilson Pickett in Philadelphia" (it was produced here by Gamble and Huff). That probably helped him gain a little more regional recognition.
"Don't Knock My Love", on the other hand, took him back to his ruts (that's "roots", pronounced Southern Style) - it was produced at the famous Muscle Shoals Studios.
When I first put on this record, I'll admit that I thought it a little slick.
I don't know what the hell I was thinking, because it's in fact more than a lil' gritty. Maybe it was the suit that threw me (the suit above, obviously: that's the cover of the record of which I speak). Well, as Wilson himself told me, You Can't Judge A Book By Its Cover.mp3 (download).
I know that you have all been slavering at the mouth, waiting for my next blog. It would have come sooner, but I have been busy. Busy traveling, and reading, and buying more music.
I was recently chided for ‘still’ buying music, but I don’t mind.
Because I know I’m right; I'm in the black and all that. (See below for an apologia of music purchasing- it's not what you expect...)
Thinking that it is goofball to buy music is simply false; in fact, I might go so far to say it's a LIE!!
Plus, what would I spend my money on instead? I am running out of room for thriftstore kicks. I have already constructed a Foucaultian counter-archive (that means ‘lots of odd books’ about prisons, sexuality, state institutions, ‘abnormal’ individuals, militaries, and history history history). You know that I would just spend the $16.25 (no sales tax) on stickers from the dollar store (or worse, dollar store hardware/tools), caviar from Asian Invasion, SEPTA tokens, ceramic knickknacks or bric-a-brac, etc.
(just reflect for a moment upon how good this last part of this last sentence sounds and looks: “Caviar from Asian Invasion” [‘a’ and ‘i’ make such a good vowel-team!], and just say “Ceramic knickknacks and bric-a-brac” out loud. “My, what a Pleasant Blog!”)
I don’t need that junk.
Oh, what $16.25? I got *3* CDs in Portland for that paltry sum. All by one of my new favorite groups: GUN CLUB .
"ain't shit worse than a waste of talent still, life goes on without it still, real ni**as do somethin' about it- Smash Brothers doin' somethin' about it" That's from Illy by S.A. Smash.
HEY are you listening? I said, You Can Still Download The Songs. Download them thru the link w/ the song title- the MediaFire link. Easy Breezy.
Camu Tau was half of S.A. Smash (with Metro) and he died this May. He was a sick, sick rapper with a unique style. His gruff and fierce style was helped out (on the S.A. Smash album) by fittingly on-point production from El-P and PRZM (who also died recently).
He also did an album with Cage that's supposed to be pretty good, but the album I know best is "Smashy Trashy".
"Smashy Trashy" is a good album, all the way through. What is unusual about Smash shows up right away- "seen you acting up, from the bottom of a plastic cup": Smash get drunk, get WASTED (see [How'm I gonna] "Get Home"). Most rappers don't get wasted - they don't rhyme about it at least - but why not? because rappers have to act (act) hard, all the time. Remember, like Fat Joe told you:
"Said my ni**as don't dance, we just pull up our pants and, Do the Roc-away. Now lean back, lean back, lean back, lean back..."
But Smash ain't fronting- if they wanna dance, they gon' dance. And if they wanna drink, then they are getting right ready ripped. I mean, they have a track called "A.A.", nahmean? And it's Natty Ice, Steel Reserve, not Moet and Kris: so they're real ("You seeing where I'm layin', and you sayin' I'm making it up?"). Anyhow, they might get splitfaced and they might dance, lose their keys, chase groupies (ugly or not: a thug doesn't care, I guess).
Oh yeah, they're thugs too though- but weird thugs. Like misanthropic sadists, not just rough to avoid getting hassled, or rough to own a corner. No, they threaten you with weird shit like getting a "shovel in the face", chasing a punch to your face with a glass of stout (also to your face), and so on. Cos enough of this same-old-same-old "thugg"ery. Rappers talking about guns you don't use: it's experiencing diminishing returns these days, right? So Smash keep the violence-- and we keep the little thrill from thinking about some UltraViolence-- but flip it into something more interesting. More like this (from "Clout.mp3"):
"now that everybody rhymes, it's time to battle for souls, start a single-file line and pay me after the show... the monster and we conquered half of the globe with an attitude like that'll get you clapped in the dome we be the menace, we like the sound of shatterin bones... my intentions are infected and I'll pass it along You askin if the passion is gone? Motherfuck you and that watered-down rappin you on pipe ni**as smoke crack to this one, fake ni**as practice packing a gun the aggravated immigrant, African son, smoke a blunt with you, punk, put a stab in your lung" Etc.
(see how the rhyme scheme switches from the sound "oh" to "own" to "on" to "un"? Not Easy: Guys can flow, right?
And if you're rapping about new thangs, you should have some new-sounding beats under you: S.A. Smash produced 10 of the tracks, getting serious help from El-P on a few others. ("Illy" is produced by him.) The beats lurch around- makes sense, they were probably wasted when they hit the studio- jumbled and dense. Guitar comes in and out, but this isn't rock and rap- that never works, does it. No, but here, the guitars=gutter. You know El-P's style, and the album has that feel, and that level of quality too, no matter which producer did which track. Yeah, El-Producto did "Illy", but that other dope jam "Slide on 'Em (Escapade).mp3", which has a truly awesome rhyme on it (by Vast Aire), that jam was a S.A. Smash production.
Well, Camu's gone. Here's a few tracks, by him solo.
I said Refix, not Remix. We call it Refix cos' we remixed the word "remix" (hereafter "RMX"). Heady stuff, I know. AKA "I'm the DJ, He's the Rapper". What's the mix sound like? Big drums. Disco sirens. Ass-on-Fire-Tracks. Is this the Future of Hip-Hop ??? ...
REFIX - I'm the DJ, He's the Rapper.zip (all tracks) Flashing Lights (Benzi Refix) ^ Kanye West & the Clipse Raw Shit ft. Talib Kweli ^ Jaylib What's Your Fantasy ^ Ludacris Ft. Shawna Take It to da Floor ^ DJ Killa Naz ft. Young Jeezy & Bone Crusher Rump Shaker ^ Wrex 'N' Effect Whistle Song (There it Go) ^ Juelz Santana Ass on Fire (Busta Rhymes & Pharell) ^ Ghislain Poirier RMX Turf Drop ^ E-40 ft. Lil' Jon What We Do [Explicit] ^ Freeway, Beanie Sigel, JayZ Stop Snitchin' (Milkcrate Mix) ^ mixed by Aaron Lacrate (from "Bmore Gutter Music") Are U Ready [Hollertronix Mix] ^ mixed by Low Budget (from "Bmore Gutter Music") It Takes 2 ^ Rob Base & DJ EZ Rock Top Billing ^ Audio Two
This is not the version you have - didn't I already tell you?: it's the REFIX version - This track is just the Clipse rapping, no Kanye. We need those Brothers Clipse to add some more grimm coldness to the track : Icy. Dey know, yayo... This comes first, because it's a song you all know, but not the version you all know, so it double-catches your ear. IS HE OR ISN"T HE??? Watch the video, reminds me of 'karma police' by Radiohead (oh, back when I still cared). Slower-than-life + cars + the meeting of a violent end. Kanye's so arrogant (fair enough, not complaining) that he probably thinks that Radiohead are biting his style.
But the Clipse are key right now. Check some mixtapes: THEY GOT IT FOR CHEAP. Two of them, but they're brothers, so who can tell who is rapping? (hint: NOT ME) They need to be more like Dre and Snoop, who told you "It's Dre/ It's Snoop" mostly every third rhyme.
Jaylib (J Dilla and Madlib) bringing some niceness. If you don't know about Stones Throw records, well, you could. The best rap label I know of right now; better than Def Jux even. Jux can get its head a little too far up its own ass sometimes. Plus, there are more rappers/producers on Stones Throw. Listen here (there is even a dope podcast you can get) . Plus, this one has Talib Kweli rapping on it. Best living rapper: hands down (but, like, 'hands in the air' too).
Luda- off Diplo's Fabric mix. But was it a remix?- no.
Take it to the Floor - DJ Killa Naz Feat Lil' Jon & Bone Crusher is more or less a rave choon! Hip-hop is stealing from techno forever these days. Like how what flyers call 'electro' bites techno, and 'disco-punk' got white kids to dance by toning that shit (both disco AND punk) down. Timbaland, years ago, claimed to never had heard drum and bass, obv lying. But we'll let him lie, because in a field where you have to claim innovation, and no predecessors (which is weird ,since you have to 'know your history' and 'keep it real'), and where even British rappers
couldn't learn to rhyme until a white guy came around in 2002, you cannot really claim you are inspired by the click and booooom beats from across the pond. That would not be real: it would really be not real.
Rump Shaker- Oregon Nathan told me the Neptunes produced this track. I was thinking, wow, how misinformed! I love Nathan, and Nathan loves hip-hop, but that song is as old as we are, and so are the Neptunes so, it's impossible! NATHAN 1 CHRIS 0 Nathan was right, oh so right. Nathan should create a diss-track where he freestyles about what a know-it-all know-nothing I am. I could help produce it.... Plus, between this song and the gunshots coming up later, you basically have listened to M.I.A.'s Paper Planes (which, by the by, the best RMX of is the DFA discofied version, and there are many hott RMXs of that song). So this song is like Neptunes/ N.E.R.D. in training.... Also, in terms of the mix itself, this song will get people back on the floor. Some people are scared of the RaveRap whistles from the previous jam. But, see, "Rump Shaker" won't lose the people who nuh afeared of RaveRap, because the horns on "Rump Shaker" are flute/whistle-like. Fun for EveryOne, riiiiigh?
Whistle Song- this rides the "rave synth TO horns TO whistle" train. CONTINUTITY IS KEY- CONSISTENCY IS KEY- KEEP IT SIMPLE (and/or) STOOPID
And so we keep it minimal and BOOM with Ghislain Poirer - Ass On Fire, a Canadian DJ and produceer and RMXer- I put up something off his Myspace on my Myspace the other day- yeah, you remember, huh? That one hott jam. Both Pharrell and Busta are funny on this one. AFTER convincing these girls to 'party' with him and Busta ("take off your jacket"), then Pharrell asks "What's your name? Word?" (probably says 'word?' because it's a stripper name, right?, and so it's something like Phantazia or Bunny) Every line in this song is a crack up. (get it CRACK up - because the song is about ASSES and EVERY ASS has a CRACK - like the Liberty Bell). Busta Rhymes is not exactly slept on, but he's also a better rapper than people give him credit for. Put it this way- what was the last time you heard anyone discussing his skills? Yeah, me either. So this one is Neptunes/NERD full blown, even though it is a Ghislain Poirer refix.
E-40's "Turf Drop" has some similar big drums. This is how you keep the mix smooth moving from one songs to the next. Especially important when the tracks are not Dj-mixed together, but just laid side by side on your ITunes etc. THe drums work so well one after the other that I was vaccuuming (while listening to this mix, and Of Course, thinking, mang, what a sick mix) and thought it was still the same song. Both songs have such GoodLowBass that you can can hear the bass over power tools like a vaccuum. PROOF OF THE GREATNESS OF THESE SONGS, YES?
Freeway - What We Do Freeway not only has a Muslim beard, but is also from Philly- these two things win him big points. (Beards Is A Must, ya heard?) This song makes poeple go nuts when it's LOUD. You could totally play it at a wedding reception. Why? Because it is old and new: Old means that they would have played it at 700 Club back in the day (before they started busing in people from wherever), and new means that New Silk City AND arts garage both put it on B L A S T. Warning you though: Free will snatch the dishes out your kitchen if his kids are hungry. Between this song and "Stop Snitchin'", another warning: I'm just sayin that girls, your guy is feelin pretty tough right now, and he will probably want to do it when you get home.
We on the Philly to B'more X-press now! Free to Gutter, etcet etcet. Two tracks quick back-to-back. So very white tees: songs with gunshots-as-percussion! So very white tees: tracks with a sirens on them! Drugs are 'wrong', but still , his drugs do not mean that you can snitch.
The Baltimore tracks are from Bmore getting repped hard by Philly.
Didn't like this at first, was way let down. It is just too much all at once, even though it is really two separate mixes. Now I like it a lot more, but mixed in a bit it really kills. Over an hour straight can be a bit much. Bmore all day e'ery day is too much...
Then some older bidness here. I have never understood this line from "It takes Two": "I don't smoke buddha, can't stand sess YES". Is he being sarcastic? Before, I thought, definitely sarcastic, because I thought he was saying he can't stand SEX. It's one thing to say you don't puff in a rap tune, but another to (non-sarcastically) say that you hate doing it. One is statistically anomalous, the other, simply unacceptable, unthinkable even.... But now I see that he is just saying 'weed' twice, in two different ways (buddha and sess).
Music; musing; must-haves.
The curatorial agenda. Sealing up a void whose vacuity was a source of distress to no one. The seed I am most likely to sow is a certain jargon. Built on tilt. The center of a new universe of counterfeit. Increasingly random and increasingly increasing.
THE SNAPBACK, ISSUE 1
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I created Soul Sides 20 years ago because I wanted an outlet to write about
my favorite records. The blog era feels bygone — and I clearly stopped
regularl...
Hotel Bar Sessions, Ep 31: Whose History?
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The HBS hosts sit down with Dr. Charles McKinney, Jr. to talk about whose
history is (and isn't) being taught.
Following on the heels of a recent and ...
