Tuesday, August 12, 2008
 
GOOD, BAD, NOT EVIL
BAD KIDS
COLD HANDS
The Black Lips
Good Bad Not Evil
Vice : 2007
[Buy It]

From: Matthew Specktor
Subject: Veni Vedi Vici
To: Alex Abramovich
Date: August 12, 2008

Damn, this Black Lips is kicking my ass just now! It's fucking great. Yet...why? I have all the Chocolate Watchband shit, the Remains, Nuggets & Pebbles comps out the wazoo. I never had much patience for, say, the Lyres (OK, the first record's great), the Chesterfield Kings, the Cynics etc.

So why, why, why is this record so good?



STRYCHNINE
The Sonics
Here Are The Sonics
Etiquette : 1965
[Buy It]

MONK TIME
The Monks
Black Monk Time
Polydor : 1966
[Buy It]

I GIVE YOU AN INCH (AND YOU TAKE A MILE)
The Mods
Peck : 1966
Available on: Teenage Shutdown vol. 10
[Buy It]

HELP YOU ANN
The Lyres
On Fyre
Ace of Hearts : 1984
[Buy It]

STORMY WEATHER
The Reigning Sound
Time Bomb High School
In The Red : 2002
[Buy It]

I'LL CRY
The Reigning Sound
Too Much Guitar
In The Red : 2004
[Buy It]

From: Alex Abramovich
Subject: Vedi Vici Veni
To: Alex Abramovich
Date: August 12, 2008

Let me just preface this by saying, I saw a fifty-something guy, in a Range Rover, on 6th Avenue the other day, blasting the Sonics....

I don't mind the Lyres. I love the Monks. (ie, the first white band to turn their entire white band into a rhythm instrument - please watch this video and write me back an actual letter explaining that the Monks are not actually doing Sonic Youth shit while Sonic Youth are still in short pants?) I'll put my Reigning Sound up against your Grizzly Bear/whatevers, anytime. So I think can answer this:

TBL came up in the post-industry-collapse world, where bands have to prove themselves live - stayed on their grind night after night for years and years - and got tight enough to play loose as fuck.

They're smart, and they're funny ("Bad kids/Product of no dad kids"?!?). Their songs are better than we have any right to expect them to be. They're from Atlanta, which is not Boston (which is not LA). They're not fetishists, like the Lyres, and they seem young enough to not have the anxiety of influence thing which makes curator bands like the White Stripe so annoying. I've seen them live, twice - unlike, say, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, they're fucking great - and they've got the whole Beatles-head-shake down. Their original lead singer was killed in some sad-as-fuck drunk driving accident, so they're not untouched by life & other, ensuing tragedies.

They would never link to something they wrote for Slate....

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posted by Alex
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Friday, August 08, 2008
 
1+1+1 = 3
Prince
1 2 3 4
Feist
1-2-3-4-5-6-7 Count The Days
Inez & Charlie Foxx
1-2-3-4-5-6-7 Count The Days
Patti LaBelle & The Blue Belles
1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8
Kool & The Gang
2 4 6 8
The Jackson Five
2-4-6-8 Motorway
The Tom Robinson Band
2+2=5
Radiohead
3x7
Jewel King
3x7
Slim Smith
3 2 1
Organized Konfusion
54-46 That's My Number
Toots & The Maytals
54-46 Was My Number
Toots & The Maytals
Counting Backwards
Throwing Muses
I Fall Asleep Counting My Blessings
Nu Sound (Sun Ra)
Try Counting Sheep
Black Sheep
Roosevelt Franklin Counts
Roosevelt Franklin
A Tip On The Numbers
Slim Gaillard
Hitting The Numbers
The Mississippi Sheiks
The Numbers
John Lee Hooker
Grandma Plays The Numbers
Wynonie Harris
Number Writer
Dan Pickett
Three Is The Magic Number
Bob Dorough
I'se a Muggin' Part 2
Mezz Mezzrow
Ten Little Indians
The Beach Boys
Ten Cats Down
Miller Sisters
50 Ways To Leave Your Lover
Paul Simon
Baby Don't You Want To Go
Dan Pickett
You Know My Name (Look Up The Number)
The Beatles
Rikki Don't Lose That Number
Steely Dan
Secret Number
Come
c. 8.8.08
Available on: Moistworks
Lonesome Cowbows Ink : 2008
[Out of Print]

Labels: ,



posted by Alex
LINK |


Tuesday, August 05, 2008
 
EVERY SHOEMAKER
The Badgers
Ardent : 1968

I GUESS THINGS HAPPEN THAT WAY
Terry Manning
Ardent : 1970

I WALK THE LINE
The Hot Dogs
Ardent: 1973

LOVELY DAY (STROKE IT NOEL)
Alex Chilton/Big Star
Ardent : c. 1974

DON'T WORRY, BABY
Alex Chilton
Ardent : c. 1974

All available on: Thank You Friends : The Ardent Records Story
Ace : 2008
[Buy It]

Moistworks fans - the three or four of you out there - know that we at the Astoria Bureau are big Big Star fans. Needless to say, we were dazed and amuzed when ace reissue label Ace reissued a big bunch of Big Star tracks, only some of which we'd heard on various bootlegs. And hey (hey!): Insofar as anyone has any right to expect much of anything, the other, unheard bands on The Ardent Records Story, are better than you'd have any right to expect.

(Oh, and here's a cover of Femme Fetale:

Femme Fatale
Alex Chilton & Yo La Tengo
Maxwells : 2007)

In related news, thanks to our friends at the Boogie Woogie Flu for hooking us up with this sweet alternate to the alternate demo of Stroke It Noel -

LOVELY DAY (STROKE IT AGAIN, NOEL)
Alex Chilton/Big Star
Ardent : c. 1974
[Demo]

-which Chilton supposedly rewrote at the last moment, when string-quartetitist Noel Gilbert showed up at the studio. Incidentally, Gilbert's quartet is also all over Al Green's records, recorded more or less around the corner, at Hi Records - which always made us wonder if the double-tracked vocal on Big Star's best record, the barely-there Dream Lover-

DREAM LOVER
Big Star
Third/Sister Lovers
c. 1974
[Buy It]

- was some sorta fucked-up homage to Al Green?

What do you guys think? Of Alex Chilton/Al Green records/the Afro-Americanization (or lack-thereof) of indie rock? (By "guys" we mean "Cristina," by "think" we mean, "did you ever make it over to the Apple store?" and by "we" I guess we mean, it gets lonely here, at the Astoria Bureau?)

DOWNS (DEMO)
Big Star
Ardent : c. 1974
Available on: Thank You Friends : The Ardent Records Story
Ace : 2008
[Buy It]

Speaking of: does anyone out there know anything about that Big Star reissue thingie Rhino's supposedly putting out? It's the kind of thingie you'd expect us to know about already, but a little something we at Moistworks know a little something about after six, long years on the United State's internets is, (a) we're sleepy and (b) you give us entirely too much credit.

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posted by Alex
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Wednesday, July 30, 2008
 
SHARE IT
Reverend Coleman
c. 1970
Available on: 45 Kings vol. 1
Fat City : 2001
[Buy It]

SHARE YOUR LOVE WITH ME
Aretha Franklin
This Girl's In Love With You
Atlantic : 1970
[Buy It]

AIN'T GONNA SHARE YOUR LOVE
Hersey Taylor
Future Stars 7" : 1974
[Out of Print]

SHARE CROPPIN' BLUES
Kay Starr
V-Disc : 1944
Available on: American Pop: An Audio History
Music & Arts : 2000
[Out of Print]

I know! Slow to write back, and out of touch but. So much has happened! I though that, instead of telling you all (y'all?) in turn, I'd tell all y'all (ya'll?) all at once on my blog that First of all, I got a new job! in charge of writing press releases for this consortium of bodegas I helped organize out here Second, I got invited to a green party at a house or church something. The Mets are winning! I've been watching Weeds a lot and my favorite youtube shows OMG, the other night Cheryl came over and the delivery guy actually had ceasar salad all over his face! That's the news write me back actual letters and I will totally write you back an actual letter!

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posted by Alex
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Friday, July 25, 2008
 
SONG TO A SEAGULL
Joni Mitchell
Song To A Seagull
WEA : 1968
[Buy It]

Eleanor Friede, the book editor who sent "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" on its nonstop flight to publishing glory in 1970, died on July 14 at her home in Charlottesville, Va. Here's what Gore Vidal had to say about JLS:

It is a greeting card bound like a book with a number of photographs of seagulls in flight. The brief text celebrates the desire for excellence of a seagull who does not want simply to fly in order to eat but to fly beautifully for its own sake. He is much disliked for this by his peers; in fact, he is ostracized. Later he is translated to higher and higher spheres where he can spend eternity practicing new flight techniques. It is touching that this little story should be so very popular, because in its way it celebrates art for art's sake as well as the virtues of nonconformity; and so, paradoxically, it gives pleasure to the artless and the conforming, to the drones who dream of honey-making in their unchanging hive.

Other cosmologies here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

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posted by Alex
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Wednesday, July 23, 2008
 
THEME FROM SHAFT
Esquires LTD
c. 1973
Available on: Grand Bahama Goombay
Numero Group : 2007
[Buy It]

THEME FROM SHAFT
The Chosen Few
Hit After Hit
Trojan : 1972
Available on: Darken Than Blue: Soul from Jamdown (1973-1980)
Blood & Fire : 2001
[Buy It]

THEME FROM SHAFT
Bernard Purdie
Shaft
Prestige : 1971
[Buy It]

JOHN SHAFT
Sammy Davis Jr.
c. 1973
Mr. Bojangles
Universal : 1999
[Out of Print]

SHAFT
Kashmere Stage Band
Available on: Texas Thunder Soul 1968-1974
Now Again : 2006
[Buy It]

SHAFT
Joe Bataan
Saint Latin's Day Massacre
Fania : 1972
[Buy It]

SON OF SHAFT
Video
The Bar-Kays
Stax : 1972
Available on: Best of the Bar-Kays
Volt : 1992
[Buy It]

SHAFT IN AFRICA (ADDIS)
Johnny Pate
Shaft in Africa OST
ABC : 1973
[Buy It]

SHAFT MEETS SUPERFLY
John & Ernest
c.1972

Who's a complicated man but no one understands him but his woman?

Labels: ,



posted by Alex
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Thursday, July 17, 2008
 
CHICKEN
Pink Anderson
Medicine Show Man vol. 2
Prestige : 1962
[Buy It]

EAT THAT CHICKEN
Charlie Mingus
Oh Yeah
Atlantic : 1961
[Buy It]

SOUTHERN FRIED CHICKEN (PARTS I & II)
Bill Thomas & the Fendells
c. 1965
Available on: Movements 2
Perfect Toy : 2006
[Buy It]

FINGER LICKIN' CHICKEN
The Radars
Yew : c. 1969
[Out of Print]

CHICKEN HEADS
Oscar Brown Jr.
Fresh
Atlantic : 1975
[Buy It]

CHICKEN
Ike & Tina Turner
Available on: Rockin' and Rollin'
HHO : 2006
[Buy It]

CHIPS, CHICKEN, BANANA SPLIT
Jo-Jo & The Fugitives
Cobra : 1968
Available on: Jamaica to Toronto: Soul, Funk, and Reggae 1967-1974
Light in the Attic : 2006
[Buy It]

FRIED CHICKEN
Rufus Thomas
Hi : 1978
Available on: Pulp Fusion : Bustin' Loos
Harmless : 2006
[Buy It]

C-H-I-C-K-E-N SPELLS CHICKEN
McGee Bros
c.1927
Available on: Ghost World OST
Shanachie : 2001
[Buy It]
They eat chicken, don't they?
-Col. Sanders, responding to a question about black folks. (Apocryphal)
Well, folks, the review is in: "On Untitled you get to decide whether you prefer Nas thoroughly exploring half-assed concepts or half-assedly exploring thorough concepts." Ouchie. And, man, that 3.8's gotta sting. But, you know, we don't know: Here at Moistworks' Astoria Bureau, we kinda think of "Fried Chicken" as the new summer hotness-

FRIED CHICKEN (FEAT. BUSTA RHYMES)
Nas
Untitled
Def Jam : 2008
[Buy It]
Mrs. Fried Chicken
You was my addiction
Drippin' with hot cholest-
Like Greeks with his falafel
Italians with their tomato
Pasta
What roti is to a Rasta
Trappin' me-
You and your friend Mac'n'Cheese

?

OMG/WTF/LOL/BRB/BBQ/QE2/WMD/WWIII, right? I mean, we're a ways away from "C-H-I-C-K-E-N spells 'Chicken'" now! And, while we're on the subject of eating/racial stereotyping, we might as well address the age-olde belief that black men don't eat pussy....

WHAT'S NEW PUSSYCAT
The Wailers
Studio One : 1965
Available on: Destiny: Rare Sides from Studio One
Rounder : 1999
[Buy It]

CUNNINGBIRD
Charles Mingus
Debut : 1957
Available on: The Complete Debut Recordings
Debut : 1990
[Buy It]

BEAUTIFUL GIRL
CunninLynguists
A Piece of Strange
LA Underground : 2006
[Buy It]

LICK THE PUSSY
Beatnuts
Street Level
Relativity : 1994
[Buy It]

Ok - so - as it happens, not eating pussy happens to be one of the things that a lot of rappers tend to rap about a lot. And that makes a certain amount of sense: In the more misogynistic & minstrelsy corners of the rap universe - that MTV-friendly, jack-in-the-box cartoonland where punks jump up to get beat down, bitches ain't nothin' but hos and tricks, and "feelings" are something you "catch" - going down on your lady friends might just give the impression that feelings are something you've caught.

AIN'T NO FUN (IF THE HOMEY'S CAN'T GET NONE)
Snoop Doggy Dogg
Doggystyle
Death Row : 1993
[Buy It]

At least, Marvin Gaye seemes to have thought so. "You could feel him struggling for the courage to say it," David Ritz reported, in his courageous MG bio, Divided Soul.
Finally the words came: he was going to give her "head," oral sex. He convinved himself he could "handle" her, though in mentioning the act, as if to "sanctify" it, he quickly suggested marriage and even pregnancy, singing that he was going to "knock up this woman." This is one of the moments in which he actually called out her name - "Oh, Janis!" - exploding with an anguished shriek, a cry of limitless pleasure and pain. Like a little boy afraid of jumping off a diving board, Marvin built up his courage - "soon," he repeated, "soon" - trying to convince himself he was man enough to do the job. He viewed oral copulation as a complete commitment of his affection. For Gaye, the act was the highest expression of his love since, as he told me several times, it was something he didn't enjoy. It's no accident that "giving head" was joined to the notion of conception and pregnancy, further validating his feelings of sacred romance and familial sanctity. In fact, in November of 1975, Janis did give birth to her second child, Frankie Christian "Bubby," born a day after his namesake, Marvin's Brother.
That, folks, is what we call writing! And, while we're on the subject of writing, let's leave off with Ritz channeling Ray Charles, on the twinned subjects of crazy laws and cunnilingus: "Hell, there are dozens of crazy laws," Ritz writes (in Brother Ray: Ray Charles' Own Story). "I understand in some places it's forbidden to suck your wife's pussy. Well, they can't enforce that one, but if they could, wouldn't it be a bitch?"

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posted by Alex
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Friday, July 04, 2008
 
BO DIDDLEY
Bo Diddley
Checker : 1955
Available on: The Chess Box
Chess : 1990
[Buy It]

HEY BO DIDDLEY!
Bo Diddley
Checker : 1957
Available on: The Chess Box
Chess : 1990
[Buy It]

THE STORY OF BO DIDDLEY
Bo Diddley
Checker : 1959
Available on: The Chess Box
Chess : 1990
[Buy It]

BO DIDDLEY 1969
Bo Diddley
Checker : 1969
Available on: The Chess Box
Chess : 1990
[Buy It]

BO DIDDLEY-ITIS
Bo Diddley
Chess : 1972
Available on: The Chess Box
Chess : 1990
[Buy It]

BO DIDDLEY
Roy Orbison & The Teen Kings
KSOA TV : 1956
Available on : Orbison
Bear Family : 2001
[Buy It]

BO DIDDLEY
Ronnie Hawkins
Roulette : 1963
Available on : The Golden Age of American Rock and Roll: Special Bubbling Under Edition
Ace : 2006
[Buy It]

BO DIDDLEY
Buddy Holly
Released : 1963
Available on: The Very Best of Buddy Holly & The Picks
Prism : 2007
[Buy It]

BO DIDDLEY
Art Neville
Sansu : 1968
Available on: New Orleans Funk vol. 2
Soul Jazz : 2008
[Buy It]

BO DIDDLEY
Drunk Man #2
Stax Reheasal/Audition Tape
196?
[Unreleased]

BO DIDDLEY
Sonny Boy Williamson & The Animals
c. 1964
Available on: The Animals w/Sonny Boy Williamson, Live!
Griffin : 1988
[Buy It]

BO DIDDLEY
U.S. Army Infantry
Run To Cadence w/the U.S Army Infantry
Documentary Recordings : 1996
[Buy It]

BO DIDDLEY (LIVE)
Janis Joplin
1968
Available on: Box of Pearls
Sony : 1999
[Buy It]

BO DIDDLEY
New York City Band w/Luther Vandross
Sunnyside OST
Unreleased : 1979
Available on: New York City Band
Alan Douglas : 2007
[Buy It]

BO DIDDLEY'S A HEADHUNTER
Roky Erikson
Live in Dallas 1979 w/the Nervebreakers
[Out of Print]

BO DIDDLEY 1969
68 Comeback
Mr. Downchild
Sympathy for the Record Industry : 1994
[Buy It]


I was the first son-of-a-gun out there. Me and Chuck Berry. And I'm very sick of the lie. You know, we're over that black-and-white crap, and that was all the reason Elvis got the appreciation that he did. I'm the dude that he copied, and I'm not even mentioned.
- Bo Diddley, 2005

If he copied me, more power to him. I'm not starving.
- Bo Diddley, c. 1956


The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I'm doing now, man, for more years than I know. They played it like that in the shanties in and in their juke joints and nobody paid it no mind 'til I goose it up. I got it from them.
-Elvis Presley, 1956


I hold no grudges. Elvis didn't steal any music from anyone. He just had his own interpretation of the music he'd grown up on. Same was true for me; the same's true of everyone. I think Elvis had integrity. I've heard blacks ask, "Why couldn't the first big rock star be black, since rock comes from black music?" The commonsense reason is the numbers. Blacks are a small minority. The white majority, whether in movies or music, want their heroes and heroines to look like them. That's understandable. Sure, there are exceptions, but few. We blacks want our own heroes and heroines too. Back then, we had Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte. Now we have Whitney Houston and Denzel Washington. Blacks might invent a new style, but chances are, only the white artist's adadptation of that style will result in mass-market success.
-B.B. King, 1996


Nas: You got people running TV and movies who think they know black people better than black people know black people. And that's cool. But it has nothing to do with what's black and what's real. Nobody's giving us a shot, so why sit there and beg for a shot? We're smarter than that. There are so many things we can do. Hollywood is never going to understand a black man's story. They don't want to. So why beg them? Just create it. Write it. Produce it. Direct it yourself. Like Spike Lee did with Malcolm X

Interviewer: Why don't they want to understand a black person's story?

Nas: They're just not interested. It's not white people's fault, it's just that people are arrogant, they have egos - and people in those positions don't think much of other ethnicities. They're in power. And their movies are great. They're not even wrong. They just don't know us.


"Elvis Presley ain't got no soul/Bo Diddley is rock and roll"
-Mos Def

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posted by Alex
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Thursday, June 05, 2008
 
ROYAL CROWN HAIRDRESSING
Little Richard
Available on: The Specialty Sessions
Specialty : 1989
[Buy It]

HOW YOU GONNA GET RESPECT (IF YOU AIN'T CUT YOUR PROCESS YET)
Hank Ballard
Starday King : 1968
Available on: James Brown's Funky People Pt. 3
Polydor : 2000
[Buy It]

BLACKENIZED
Hank Ballard
Starday King : 1969
Available on: Black Power: Music of a Revolution
Shout Factory : 2004
[Buy It]

WEAR YOUR NATURAL, BABY
Towana & The Total Destruction
Romark : 1971
Available on: Soulful Thangs vol. 6
Latin Soul : 2006
[Buy It]

FUCK A PERM
The Coup
Kill My Landlord
Wild Pitch : 1993
[Buy It]

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posted by Alex
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Tuesday, June 03, 2008
 
SOUL PRESIDENT #1
John & Ernest
Rainy Wednesday 7" : 1973
[Out of Print]

THE FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT
Blowfly
Blowfly For President
Pandisc : 1988
[Buy It]

IF I WERE PRESIDENT
The Pharcyde
Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde
Delicious Vinyl : 1992
[Buy It]

I COULD NEVER BE PRESIDENT
Johnnie Taylor
Stax 7" : 1969
Available on: Chronicle
Fantasy : 1977
[Buy It]

The difference between Blowfly and Barack Obama is like the difference between Public Enemy & Eminem: Back when Flavor Flav couldn't give a fuck about the Grammys, it was because he couldn't have imagined winning one. When Eminem recycled the reference, a decade down the line, he'd already scored two of them.

So one thing that'll happen if Obama goes the distance is, a long tradition of African-American songs - rooted in the notion that no black man will ever occupy the office - will grind to a halt. (An old joke, along the same lines: "I firmly believe that, one day, a man in a kippa and prayer shawl will sit in the Oval Office.... Unless, of course, he's Jewish.")

I'm not sure how far back the tradition goes - for all I know, it's as old as the petitions black folks would send to Abraham Lincoln - but whatever the case, here's a small sampling of songs about the job: John & Ernst's Watergate-era mashup; some presidential potty-humor from the afore-mentiomed proto-rapper, Blowfly; a skit by the (currently reunited) Pharcyde; Stax man Johnnie Taylor, with the sine qua non of presidential soul songs...

Below, a tune written by Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, Cynthia Weil, and Barry Mann:

ONLY IN AMERICA
The Drifters
Atlantic : 1963
(Released in 1972)
Available on: A Change Is Gonna Come: The Voice of Black America 1963-1973
Ace/Kent : 2007
[Buy It]

ONLY IN AMERICA
Jay & The Americans
UA : 1963
Available on: The Leiber & Stoller Story Vol. 3 1962-1969
Ace : 2007
[Buy It]

Here's what my liner notes have to say about it:
Two weeks prior to the Drifters' "On Broadway" reaching its chart peak, the group returned to the studio to record another song by the same four co-writers, but not before it had undergone a revamp. Martin Luther King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, the same year in which police dogs were trained on demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama and Governor George Wallace stood in the doorway of that state's University in an attempt to block the entrance of the school's first black pupils. [A sidenote, from John McPhee's 1969 book about Arthur Ashe: "Wallace is beautiful. He's doing his own thing. He's actually got a little bit of soul. What I worry about is people who say one thing and do another. Wallace is in his bag, and he enjoys it." - ed.] Sympathetic to the Civil Rights cause, Barry Man and Cyntia Weil wrote for the Drifters a protest song, "Only in America," the lyric of which included the lines "Only in America, land of opportunity, do they save a seat in the back of the bus just for me/Only in America, where they preach the golden rule, do they start to march when my kids try to go to school...." When Mann and Weil played [a draft of the song for Leiber and Stoller], the producers opined that it needed humour, suggesting a rewrite from the opposite viewpoint. Thus, the song was remodelled from a WASP perspective and recorded by the Drifters on the very same day that Martin Luther King was placed in solitary confinement in Alabama. Atlantic's Jerry Wexler felt that whether percieved literally or with irony, the track had little airplay potential and could in fact cause trouble for his company and the group, nixing its release.
And so, the Drifters recording was shelved for a decade. The version which did appear, in July of '63, had been recorded by these guys.

It reached #25 on the pop charts.

Labels: , , ,



posted by Alex
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Wednesday, May 14, 2008
 
SPANISH HARLEM
Ben E. King
Atlantic : 1960
Available on: Spanish Harlem/Don't Play That Song
Collectables : 1998
[Buy It]

SPANISH HARLEM
Aretha Franklin
Atlantic : 1971
Available on: Queen of Soul
Atlantic : 1992
[Buy It]

SPANISH HARLEM
Smith Smith
Unity : 1968
Available on: Keep That Lovelight Shining
[Out of Print]

ESCALES (PORTS OF CALL): MODERE TRES RYTHME
Jacques Ibert : 1924
Minnesota Orchestra: Eihi Oue, conductor
Available on: Ports of Call
Reference : 1997
[Buy It]

Atlantic Records was one of the very few indie labels to survive the transition from the 50s to the 60s, and they did it by shifting their emphasis slightly away from black rock and rollers (Ray Charles, Ruth Brown, The Coasters, The Clovers, The Drifters, Big Joe Turner), amping up their arrangements, and coming up with series of in-betwixt, throwin'-shit-at-the-wall recordings. (In conversation, the label's boss, Ahmet Ertegun described them as "synthetic.") And so, Atlantic's first white artist, Bobby Darin, scored with "Splish Splash," and "Mack the Knife," and Ben E. King scored his first hit with "Spanish Harlem," which rose higher on the pop charts than it did as rhythm and blues.

The song was written by Jerry Leiber and Phil Spector, who came up with an ascending melody which reminded Leiber of Ibert's Ports of Call, L'Escales. "It had that particular Spanish sound, so I kept pushing him in that direction," Leiber recalled. "Building the chords, a third up, a third up. He wrote the tune, but I was pushing him in the direction of a contour that was really an imitation of L'Escales. While he was doing this, I got the idea, which was literal. It was Spanish, 'Spanish Harlem,' and I wrote it - wrote it on the spot."

A Spanish melody, set to a Brazilian (Baion) rhythm ("By My Baby," by the Ronettes, would use it, too - "for a while, that rhythm became everyone's idea of what rock and roll was," Leiber's partner, Mike Stoller, would say.) And, of course, strings on top. (According to the American Masters biography of Ertegun - which is 20x better than the half-assed AM bio of Marvin Gaye, which PBS aired last week - the strings annoyed one of Atlantic's founders, Herb Abramson, so much that he left the company.)

Synthetic.

J'OUVERT BARRIO
Roaring Lion
Available on: The Sacred 78s
Ice : 1994
[Out of Print]

Compare "Spanish Harlem" to Roaring Lion's J'ouvert Barrio, which was recorded a few decades earlier.

The drumming, and the tightly-structured call-and-response, are utterly African. The trumpet and saxophone solos are utterly American. The lyrics combine English and patois, and conflate the sacred and the secular. And the violin at the end sounds like something you'd hear on a Django Reinhardt recording.

Synthetic?

MAMBO IN AFRICA
Maya Angelou
Miss Calypso
Scamp : 1956
[Buy It]

I LEARN A MERENGUE, MAMA
Robert Mitchum
Calypso - Is Like So
Scamp: 1957
[Buy It]

FIRE DOWN THERE
The Charmer
Monogram : c. 1954
Available on: Calypso Favorites: 1953-1954
Bostrox : 2000
[Out of Print]

Moistworks readers know that I've got a real soft spot for real calypso. In America, the form was once so popular that it threatened to eclipse rock and roll in the public imagination. Maya Angelou, Robert Mitchum, and Louis Farrakhan (or, Louis Eugene Walcott, who performed as The Charmer) all cut calypso albums.

But, with the exception of Farrakhan (who was once a serious musician, and spent some years playing alongside of bona-fide Calypsonians), American calypsonians aspired to the condition of Harry Belafonte, and the results made "Spanish Harlem" sound like folk music.

BELAFONTE
King Solomon
Carnival Kings & Pink Gin
Cook : 1957
[Buy It]

What I'm really talking about here is cultural colonialism, which brings me to a song called "Barbados Carnival."

I first heard it on Dizzy Gillespie's 1964 album Jambo Caribe!; according to the liner notes, "'Barbados Carnival' was written by [Gillespie's] multitalented bassist-guitarist-vocalist Chris White, whose wildsounding [sic] 'ah! ah!' echoes infectuously throughout this tune. Chris discovered his inspiration for this assertive rhythmic refrain on the island of Barbados in the West Indies." Needless to say, the song's credited to Chris White. But the other day, I came across another recording of "Barbados Carnival" - except for an extra verse, it's almost identical, and while I can't find a date, I'm 99.999% sure it's earlier. Which leads me to think that, if Dizzy Gillespie's sidemen are treating Trinidad's music as their own, personal property - well, draw your own conclusions:

BARBADOS CARNIVAL
Dizzy Gillespie
Jambo Caribe!
Verve : 1964
[Buy It]

BARBADOS CARNIVAL
Mighty Panther
Available on: Legends of Calypso
Arc : 2002
[Buy It]

Labels: , , ,



posted by Alex
LINK |


Wednesday, April 30, 2008
 
GIMME INDIE ROCK
Sebadoh
Homestead 7" : 1991
Available on: III (Reissue)
Domino : 2006
[Buy It]

A few years ago, I spent a few weeks fact-checking at a magazine called Elle Girl. One thing I remember about those weeks is being asked to check an album review which began, more or less, as follows: "How in the world did an indie band like Dead Boy Confessional manage to end up on two soundtracks, a Doritos ad, and Hot 97, all before they'd released their first album?"

I went to the editor and said, "Well, they managed it because they're signed to Atlantic, and have the full resources of our media-industrial complex behind them." And the editor said, "no, no - indie doesn't mean independent. Indie's an aesthetic, and Dead Boy Confessional are the indiest band around."

That Friday, I asked the undergrads in my Writing About American Music class about it; as I recall, they agreed with the Elle Girl editor, unanimously.

LOVE TO THE THIRD POWER
Great Plains
Slaves to Rock'n'Roll
Self-released (cass.) : 1985
Available on: Length of Growth 1981-1989
Old 3C : 2000
[Out of Print]

LOVE TO THE THIRD POWER
Great Plains
Live at the Electric Banana, Pittsburgh 5.22.85
Old 3C : 2005
[Buy It]

The other night, my friend Franklin and I schlepped out to Maxwell's, in Hoboken, to see two old, reunited indie bands - Great Plains and Big Dipper. Both bands had appeared on Homestead's Wailing Ultimate compilation (which had also served as a lot of people's introduction to Dinosaur Jr., Death of Samantha, Salem 66, Volcano Suns, Squirrel Bait, Naked Raygun, and Big Black). Great Plains was a Columbus band, led by the irrepressible Ron House (who went on to front Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments). Big Dipper, a Boston band which included Bill Goffrier (who'd fronted the great Lawrence, KS band, the Embarrassment), and the former bassist and guitarist from an early incarnation of the Volcano Suns (a band fronted by Mission of Burma's drummer, Peter Prescott). There were many other connections: Before it was an aesthetic, "indie" was something close to an ideology - small, geographically centered, and no more or less incestuous than, say, the N+1 crowd. Big Dipper had recorded an epic song called "Ron Klaus Wrecked His House" -
He had a party
He had a band
And a thousand loving friends
He had his reasons
Or so he thought
This should be where the story ends:

Ron Klaus
Wrecked his house
Down on Indiana Street
Ron Klaus
He wrecked his house
Now it's lying at his feet

He threw the doors
Out of the windows
And the windows out the doors
He brought the outside
Into the inside
And the ceiling to the floor...
- and Franklin, who is also a musician (as well as a music writer, and erstwhile philosophy professor) - whom I'd met when I interviewed him for my fanzine, almost twenty years ago - used to cover Great Plains songs with his old band, Nothing Painted Blue:

LOVE TO THE THIRD POWER
Nothing Painted Blue
2 song 7" : 1994
Available on: Emotional Discipline
Scat : 1997
[Buy It]

Maxwell's is a tiny club; you're never more than a few feet from the musicians, and that night, everyone in sight seemed to be a musician: One band finished playing, and the folks who'd been standing beside you climbed onstage. (Climbing on stage isn't a big deal at Maxwell's, where the stage is about six inches from the ground.) Yo La Tego's Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley stood towards the back (YLT's history with Maxwell's goes back 25 years or so); their bassist, James McNew, played a short opening set. (YLT, too, has covered Great Plains songs.) Another friend of Franklin's had flown in from Portland for the occasion, and was thinking of flying in again, in July, to see the Feelies. I'm 35, and it's not often that I get to be the youngest guy at the show, but with a few exceptions, I was the youngest guy at the show - which felt, more or less, like the nicest, noisiest, smallest high-school reunion you could ever imagine. Ron House sang "Letter to a Fanzine" - the song included on that old Homestead comp. - which might have served as something of a generational cri de cour, twenty-some years ago, if more than a few thousand people had heard it (if memory serves, the lyrics were cribbed from an actual letter to a fanzine):
I I like everything that comes out on 4AD -
You like everything that comes out on SST -
You like almost everything that comes out on Homestead -
I like everything I get in the mail for free!
LETTER TO A FANZINE
Great Plains
Naked at the Buy, Sell, and Trade
Homestead : 1986
Available on: Length of Growth 1981-1989
Old 3C : 2000
[Out of Print]

LETTER TO A FANZINE
Great Plains
Live at the Electric Banana, Pittsburgh 5.22.85
Old 3C : 2005
[Buy It]

- and Bill Goffrier sang "Ron Klaus Wrecked His House" with Ron House standing five feet away, in cargo shorts and a pullover:

RON KLAUS WRECKED HIS HOUSE
Big Dipper
Craps
Homestead : 1988
Available on: Supercluster : The Big Dipper Anthology
Merge : 2008
[Buy It]

RON KLAUS DEMO'D HIS HOUSE
Big Dipper
Unreleased Demo (w/drum machine!) c. 1988
Available on: Supercluster : The Big Dipper Anthology
Merge : 2008
[Buy It]

Big Dipper broke up in 1991 or so, after releasing a mediocre, major-label album which resulted in a total loss of indie cred whilst failing, utterly, to penetrate the mainstream (a common enough, pre-Nirvana predicament). Great Plains hadn't even tried to break through to the mainstream - once, they'd pressed a single which never went on sale at all. (You had to write Ron House a letter in order to get it; if he liked it, he'd send you a copy for free.) "How many bands can you name that are consistently unafraid of allowing their songwriting reach to exceed their musicianly grasp," Franklin wrote, in his liner notes to a Great Plains compilation which was released eight years ago (and is currently selling for ninety-nine bucks per used copy, on Amazon). "As they put it in 'Before We Stop To Think' - 'We would write our songs slow, then try to speed them up/We would write our songs soft, then try to make them tough.' This is a pretty fair description of four-fifths of the music that's made the last two decades worth living through, and a better introduction to Great Plains' honest ambivalence about themselves (and the whole punk-rock making enterprise) than anything I could say."

This seems right to me, and I don't see the profit in following it up with a thousand words about indie then, indie now, semantic drift, and my own sense of what we may or may not have lost along the way.

YOU'RE NOT PATSY
Big Dipper
The Waiting Ultimate
Homestead : 1987
Available on: Supercluster : The Big Dipper Anthology
Merge : 2008
[Buy It]

Instead, I sent a draft of this post to a handful of friends, and asked them to provide their own definitions of "indie," in hopes that it'll encourage further discussion in the comments, or elsewhere. Here are the replies, as of this morning:
As in the new millennium catch-all that is the term "indie rock?" I mean, it's a huge field, but when we're talking a specific, sort of defined sound that syncs with that term alone, I think of (often bland) bands like Tapes'n'Tapes, the National, the Arcade Fire, etc. As far as a shared aesthetic, I'd say it's generally straight-ahead guitar music with a few meticulously considered deviations (recently horn orchestrations and Americana influences) that inhabits that sort of middle space between mainstream rock and the experimental underground. In other words, it's pop music for people who define themselves in opposition to pop music."

- Andrew Phillips, music editor/writer


The way I see it there are two kinds of genres - genres that represent living subcultures and genres that are purely marketing constructions (examples of the latter might include 'folktronica', 'IDM', 'electronica',... genres that no musician really claimed while the terms were first being bandied about, more as umbrella terms than as descriptors of unified movements, although then next-gen musicians sometimes claim these terms for their own, these media-created terms that described no living movement at their inception can actually birth a subculture that really *is* aligned around them). So those type of genres have two faces or phases that occur at different moments. Whereas genre-terms I regard as more meaningful-- things like punk, hip-hop, indie, genres that describe living subcultures where the terms are propagated by the musicians and THEN picked up by the media, which have lifestyle accoutrements and organic social dimensions etc..,, these also have two faces or phases, but they unfold simultaneously. So "indie" viably means two things: the fundamental one is music that is recorded outside of the major label system (& this category is very confused now b/c so many "indie" labels are structured so much like major labels and/or have commercial ties with them, and b/c unlike in the late 70s/early 80s when arguably American indie rock was born, there wasn't the massive touring and commercial infrastructure for indie rock that exists now, which made the term less shaky and more meaningful, with bands genuinely just finding their own way around the major label system not settling for this institutionalized subcurrent to it that exists now...plus with the current shakiness of the label system, categorizing a band by their label-affiliation is making much less sense than it used to.) & so the other thing that 'indie' means now is mainstream, record industry bands who emerged from this organic indie scene, who appropriated certain very visible musicological strains of it, and who are "indie" in the same way that a mainstream band can be "punk", we can say they are a punk band and while being mainstream violates every tenet of organic punk-movement culture, people will know what we mean. I guess the bottom line you're asking which of these definitions is the "right" one, and I think they're both right... what can I say, I'm a descriptivist at heart."

- Brian Howe, poet/critic


Indie is short for "independent." There are four major labels: EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner. If a label ultimately answers to one of those four companies - if one of those companies has the power to make direct decisions about what the label does, or signs its paychecks--then it has a dependent relationship with that company, and the artists affiliated with it aren't "independent" either. That's a definition, not a value judgement, although it sometimes has value judgements attached to it. And it's a very useful tool for understanding where certain recordings and artists and labels fit into the economic matrix - what resources they have available to them, etc.

"Indie rock" has a generally understood meaning, largely associated with what a bunch of guitar bands on independent labels did in the '80s and '90s. It is, in fact, a subset of rock released on independent labels - an aesthetic that got its name from its economic circumstances. But the reason it got its name that way is that the idea of deliberate financial independence from a few large companies was, and sometimes still is, an important part of the intention and meaning of a lot of "indie rock" artists' work. To claim that a band can be "indie" without being financially independent of the major labels is to pretend that industrial capitalism does not exist.

- Douglas Wolk, author/critic


The way I see it, "indie" is a definable genre, not just a declaration of limits vis-a-vis the market (since, after all, there are tens of thousands of variously rebarbative musical units far less market-friendly than anything that can be labeled "indie"). If punk is descended from the Stooges, indie is descended from the Modern Lovers. Both subgenres come down from '60s garage rock, but indie takes the introspective, romantic, self-conscious, self-doubting road. Indie is usually friendly, catchy, and openhearted enough that it seems as though it should be accessible to all and therefore mass-popular in that old AM-radio way, but in fact it represents a formerly centrist aesthetic that's been pushed out to the fringes by a bunch of large historical forces. Its self-doubt, a crucial element, also tends to limit its appeal, and I'll let you guess what demographic unit feels sufficiently secure to countenance it. When something that sounds indie makes it to the big show, it's usually either because a freak weather pattern broke its way, or else because an indie wrapping coats something slick and shallow. Indie is a lot like the kind of American novelists who are kept in print by the French. Jim Thompson may speak to the soul of the nation, but Americans would generally rather read James Patterson.

- Luc Sante, writer


Wait - I thought the "indie" aesthetic being referred to was actually the "alternative" aesthetic; "alternative" more aptly referring to, say, Nirvana on Geffen, whereas "indie" would have referred to Nirvana on Sub Pop. Or is "alternative" now a sanctioned Billboard category like Country and Western? Anyway, as Tom Frank aptly put it around fifteen years ago in THE BAFFLER, "Alternative to what?"

Indie, anyway, does appear often to be a marketing term (albeit an intrinsically fraudulent one) referring more to a certain flavor of product issued by the majors (whether labels or studios) than to independently produced and released works. As far as the aesthetic it espouses or implicitly promises, it seems generally to be a tepid one, at least by my lights (same with the average "indie" movie).

(I think, incidentally, that the idea may be spreading to publishing as well -- look at Soft Skull's acquisition by Counterpoint. They're really acquiring an attitude, not necessarily just a backlist.)

I have to confess to being somewhat disturbed by your students' unquestioning absorption of the corporate line in this instance, particularly since it's music in which they, especially, have historically had a stake. The carelessness with the language is surely opportunistic for the record companies, but inexcusable in students charged with the task of thinking critically. We're in Orwell territory here; If "indie" doesn't actually mean it, then "organic" doesn't have to either, and we can all easily extrapolate from there.

- Christopher Sorrentino, novelist


My heart wants to side with the indie-economic-model hardliners but my head says that, semantically, that fight is lost: "Indie" has been redrawn by common usage just as "alternative" was before it - the most common musical strains in an oppositional subculture crossed out of that subculture, and the label crossed with them. "Indie" now connotes such a hodgepodge of economic, social and aesthetic associations that it is irrelevant. We can be rueful about that over beers, but that's about all.

So everyone please abandon ship on the word "indie" just as happened with "alternative." The principle of autonomy doesn't have to go with it.

Then again, considering that the four major labels are at the moment losing their hegemonic power like oil tankers spilling crude into the sea, maybe that's not currently the most compelling battle. If your main paycheck is coming from your songs being sold to commercials and TV shows, but you're on a non-major record label, are you still meaningfully economically independent from large entertainment
conglomerates? And as critical as we want to be of popular-culture economics, the indie/alternative subcultures have had their share of pathologies and snobberies that might warrant as much a "good riddance" as a sentimental tear.

The bigger question is whether the autonomy of the "indie" movement from mass entertainment was in fact as sociopolitically progressive and artistically liberating (not the same thing) as people attached to it believed in the 80s/90s - the populist question. And even if it was, as the major labels flounder to redefine themselves, what does true independence in the age of digital reproduction look like? What might "selling out" be?

Maybe the expiration date of the word "indie" provides a good, temporarily unlabelled moment to look at things anew.

- Carl Wilson, author/critic


Apologies for being obvious, but Indie used to mean 'not on a major label' - and the DIY attitude that that implied - and that was the only time we all knew precisely what it meant. When the major labels sniffed money, and bought the bands, it couldn't mean precisely that anymore - perhaps the word should have been more strictly applied at this time: "you were Indie yesterday, but since you signed that contract, you're now Modern Rock" - so it came to refer to the type of music which embodied that spirit, or was at least influenced by it, whatever the profile of the label.

"...with the current shakiness of the label system, categorizing a band by their label-affiliation is making much less sense than it used to."
Hits the nail on the head, and true for a long time.

And now Indie, or Alternative, is a "branding tool" that annoys. But those who still use the word in conversations (rather than marketing meetings) are generally understood to refer to music made regardless of the mainstream, for the love of doing it, regardless of technical perfection, profit etc.... or any combination of the above. I can't speak for those who use it in marketing meetings, but I assume they refer to that, but also to another meaning, which as with all sales terms is a slippery catch-all concept, comprising everything from "people with goatees and tattoos who are, to our delight, happy to make money" via "The spirit of the Kids and their Nike revolution" and "What's New" to "That music I may or may not like that will make me money".

One is a devil-may-care philosophy, the other its commodification - sorry: I can't think of a less Cultural Studies word right now! (Commoditization may be more up to date in Business School.)

Maybe Alternative Music nowadays is like Alternative Medicine?

- Wesley Stace/John Wesley Harding, author/musician



The first entry cited in the OED comes from a 1928 edition of the NY Times: "Indies, independent producers of pictures." More to the point however is a 1945 Billboard heading: "Indie diskers new collection ache for publishers royalty." What's relevant is the association of the term with vendors rather than with artists themselves. Additionally, there is the English idiomatic use which refers to scruffy but apolitical music as far back as Happy Mondays and Stone Roses. The term is now used internationally in this manner to class music as a broad commercial category. I think the term is helpful in the U.S. for drawing a line between groups who are oppositional (punk, free jazz) and groups who are totally cool with making it (indie). It's worth mentioning, however, that "indie rap" still seems to describe a fairly cohesive venue for intelligent, countercultural music (J Live, The Coup). But I think the elliptical return of the early citations is relevant: film and music, in a standard bid for commercial synergy, converge somewhere around the end credits of most romanticized youth dramas (Garden State's anointment of The Shins being only the most obvious example). As it stands now, indie means operational freedom from social consciousness; it's about as atomized and self-interested as the Victorian Novel. Actually, we can go slightly further by noting the current coincidence between Jane Austen films (affirming the virtues of marriage and estate ownership) and the commercial fiefdom of indie (affirming the virtues of Urban Outfitters and Apple). Both, I think, offer the consumer a provisional show of "hardship" (or authenticity) before moving on to an easy retirement.

-Blake Schwarzenbach, musician/professor


my "alternative" OED, different than the usual overground edition cites "in-die" as opposed to "out-die" ie to die on the inside generally defined as selling fewer records than everyone believes you should have and/or having driven a seemingly popular or commercially viable style or approach into mercantile disrepute versus "out-die" to die on the outside to sell more records than is seemly or good for the state of your carbon footprint and/or soul in the larger sense of such things hence the paradigmatic in-die band would likely be big star -- taking beatle-esque pop hooks, attractive hair, hetero love motifs and settling into underperforming "cult" inner-death (i.e. no one else really cares) status while paradigmatic "out-die" band is certainly the rolling stones -- who dragged oppressively morbid delta blue fetishivism and drug-death-spiral somehow through four decades and counting of overdog arena-selling "outer-death" (i.e. we're all appalled to have to witness their dollar-soaked decrepitude)

a simple measure of the difference is often the function of a cover song -- out-dying cindy lauper propelling in-dying jules shear number onto the charts vs. in-dying galaxie 500 or yo la tengo burying out-dying kinks or george harrison tunes in the "in-die pantheon"

one of the paradoxical cases is the velvet underground, long understood as the "ur-in-die" band but they were actually out-die -- leveraging john cage dissonance, cellos, homosex motifs and bad singing into some shred of popularity and lasting fame -- yet the innumerable bands adopting them as a model have achieved treasured "in-die" status (i.e. gloriously no one cares)

(meltzer would have taken this and run for fifty pages, whereas I have to get to work)

-Jonathan Lethem, novelist


We're curious as ever to know what you think... In the meanwhile here's one, last song by Big Dipper:

A SONG TO BE BEAUTIFUL
Big Dipper
Craps
Homestead : 1988
Available on: Supercluster : The Big Dipper Anthology
Merge : 2008
[Buy It]

Labels: ,



posted by Alex
LINK |


Wednesday, March 26, 2008
 
HELP
John Lennon
The Complete Home Recordings
[Unreleased]

HELP ME
Ray Sharpe w/the King Curtis Orchestra feat. Jimi Hendrix
Atco : 1966
Available on: Blues & Soul Power
Atlantic : 2003
[Buy It]

HELP THE BEAR
Ted Taylor
Atco : 1966
Available on: Blues & Soul Power
Atlantic : 2003
[Buy It]

WATCH THE DOG
Sandy Gaye
Moonshot : c.1969
[Out of Print]

DO THE HAWG
Eddie Kirk
Volt : 1963
Available on: The Complete Stax-Volt Singles 1959-1968
Atlantic : 1991
[Buy It]

PASS THE HATCHET
Roger & The Gypsies
Sevem B : 1969
Available on: The Instant & Minit Story
Charly : 2005
[Buy It]

SKIN THE CAT
Jimmy Merchant
Bo-Mar : ?
Available on: Shakin' Fit
Candy : 1992
[Out of Print/Download it here]

SPILL THE WINE
Live
Eric Burdon & War
Eric Burdon Declares "War"
MGM : 1970
[Buy It]

WRAP IT UP
Sam & Dave
Stax : 1968
Available on: The Complete Stax-Volt Singles 1959-1968
Atlantic : 1991
[Buy It]

PATCH MY HEART
The Mad Lads
Stax : 1966
Available on: The Complete Stax-Volt Singles 1959-1968
Atlantic : 1991
[Buy It]

CLOSE THE DOOR
The Holmes Brothers
State of Grace
Alligator : 2007
[Buy It]

. . . . . . . . . .

WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS
John & Sean Lennon
The Complete Home Recordings
[Unreleased]

Labels: , ,



posted by Alex
LINK |


Tuesday, March 18, 2008
 
XXX YO! INTERNET RAPS XXX

FREAKS OF THE INDUSTRY
Digital Underground
Sex Packets
Tommy Boy : 1990
[Buy It]

We @ Moistworks hold these tracks to be self-evident:

JIGGABLE PIE
AMG
Bitch Better Have My Money
ZYX : 1991
[Buy It]

But seriously, the bitch really better had have my money.

TALK LIKE SEX
Kool G Rap & DJ Polo
Wanted Dead or Alive
Cold Chillin' : 1990
[Buy It]

"I'll leave you like a rape victim." That, from back in the day.

IF YOU BELIEVE IN HAVING SEX
2 Live Crew
As Nasty As They Wanna Be
Lil' Joe : 1989
[Buy It]

A girl back there who, asked if she *liked* sex said, "Of course/Doesn't everyone?" She was interested in overpopulation. But ask yourselves, people - do *you* people believe in having sex?

MAHOGANY
Erik B. & Rakim
Let The Rhythm Hit'Em
MCA : 1990
[Buy It]

if so:
Al Green = Love.

FOOL GET A CLUE
Digital Underground
Future Rhythm
Radikal : 1996
[Buy It]

And now, with a lot less love:

HOUSEWIFE
Dr. Dre
Chronic 2001
Interscope : 1999
[Buy It]

And a whole lotta lovelessness:

AIN'T NO FUN
Snoop Dogg
Doggystyle
Priority : 1993
[Buy It]
I know the pussy's mine
So I'ma fuck a couple more times
Then I'm through with it
There's nothing else to do with it
Pass it to my homie, now you get it
'Cause she ain't nothing but a bitch to me
And y'all know that bitches ain't shit to me...
FREAKY PUMPS
Fat Lip
The Loneliest Punk
The Lab : 2005
[Buy It]

That, from from the original sex rap post.... And if that don't slap the fuzzle from your muzzles, here's a few more xxx internet raps xxx :

SIDE TO SIDE
Blackalicious
The Craft
Anti : 2005
[Buy It]

TALK LIKE SEX PT. II
Smut Peddlers
Porn Again
Priority : 2001
[Buy It]

WORK THAT POLE
The Beatnuts
The Originators
Landspeed : 2002
[Buy It]

The Beatnuts, in general, are genuinely unpleasant: Where's their medal?

FUCK THE PAIN AWAY
Peaches
The Teaches of Peaches
Xl: 2000
[Buy It]

[For [all the bearded] ladies.]

ICE CREAM
Raekwon
Only Built 4 Cuban Linx
RCA : 1995
[Buy It]

Someday, the words "I Love you like I love my dick size" will be inscribed on some Staten Island tombstone....

XXX YO! INTERNET RAPS XXX

Labels: , ,



posted by Alex
LINK |


Tuesday, March 11, 2008
 
PIMPS (FREESTYLIN' AT THE FORTUNE 500 CLUB)
The Coup
Genocide & Juice
Capitol : 1994
[Out of Print]

FANCY
FANCY
Bobbie Genrty
Fancy
Capitol : 1970
[Buy It]

CLOUD NINE
Mongo Santamaria
Columbia : 1969
Available on: Greatest Hits
Sony : 2000
[Buy It]

LOVE POTION #9
The Coasters
The Coasters on Broadway
King : 1972
[Out of Print]

NINE BELOW ZERO
NINE BELOW ZERO
Sonny Boy Williamson
Chess : 1960
Available on: The Essential Sonny Boy Williamson
MCA : 1993
[Buy It}

LOOK PON PUSSY
Niney The Observer
Available on: Trojan X-Rated Box Set
Trojan : 2002
[Buy It]

TREAT HER LIKE A PROSTITUTE
Slick Rick
The Great Adventures of Slick Rick
Def Jam : 1988
[Buy It]

GOVERNMENT CENTER
Jonathan Richman
Living Room Demos 1973-1974
[Unreleased]
These can never be true friends: Hope, dice, a prostitute, a monkey.

-Indian proverb

Labels:



posted by Alex
LINK |


Monday, March 10, 2008
 
HAMBURGER TO GO
The Rolling Stones
c. 1969
[Unreleased]

RAW HAMBURGERS
Kool & The Gang
De-Lite : 1969
[Out of Print]

HAMBURGER
Philemon Wahbe
[? : ?]
Courtesy of WFMU

THE HAMBURGER SONG
Bobby Moore & The Rhythm Aces
Searching For My Love
Checker : 1966
Available on: Go Ahead and Burn: Soul Music from The Shoals to Chicago
RPM : 2004
[Buy It]

Anyone with opposable thumbs can tell you that Queens is the UNited State's internets' capital of international cuisine: We've got Chinese shit, Thai shit, Korean shit, Moroccan shit, Egyptian shit, Cuban shit, Columbian shit, Greek, Spanish, and Italian shit, Russian shit, Polish shit, Croatian shit, Mongolian shit, international cuisine from a weird, Asian region where Chinese people rub up against some Indian shit, and an Irish joint that serves the fuck out of some hamburgers. Out here, where the street meat tastes sweeter than whatever filet mignons you've been chewing on, life is still sweet.

LIFE IS STILL SWEET
White Hassle
Life is Still Sweet
Orange : 2000
[Buy It]

Sweet, but also sour, because I can't help the feeling that all these Chinese, Thai, Korean, Moroccan, Egyptian, Cuban, Columbian, Greek, Spanish, and Italian, Russian, Polish, Croatian, Mongolian, Chinese/Indian, and Irish joints are always about to close down. Pastey-ass people flocking to New York's outer boroughs don't like the ethnic flavor. They like hot dogs, milk shakes, holding hands, and taking Town Cars full of that Whole Foods back from Manhattan. I never understood why people from Indiana would move to New York, mate, move out to the outer boroughs, and commence to transform those same outer boroughs into looking exactly like the Indiana shit they just spent the first twenty-five years of their lives escaping. But then, the fat-assed Americans I see in Times Square come here all the way from Utah, Iowa, Alabama, just so they can max their Capital One credit cards out at Applebee's and the Gap. Next time someone crashes airplanes all into your shit and asks "think why we hate you?," kindly direct them to Utah, Iowa, Alabama.

TAKE A TRIP
Utah Smith
Checker : 1953
Available on: Slide Guitar Gospel 1944-1964
Document : 1995
[Buy It]

TONY GAVE A PICNIC
Ralph Sheckel
Iowa : c.1970
Available on Art of Field Recording vol. 1
Dust to Digital : 2007
[Buy It]

I'LL FLY AWAY
The Original 5 Blind Boys of Alabama
Available on: The Sermon
Specialty : 1993
[Buy It]

Still, people in the outer boroughs are holding their own. Last year, Moistfriends The iNTERNETS CELEBRITIES were seen all over the outer boroughs, singing the praises of ghetto big macs and bodega food pyramids. At some point, they began documenting their efforts on film:

BODEGA
GHETTO BIG MAC

Now touring the festival circuit, Bodega was filmed across the street (and a million miles away from) Yankee Stadium. Needless to say, it's a must-see. And, made on a budget of dollar-and-change, Ghetto Big Mac - which tells you how to assemble your own Big Mac, which costs upwards of $3, for a dollar and change - is a film so influential that you can see its influence here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

People, I ask you: is there, out there, a more influential group of internets celebrtities?

SHUT THE FUCK UP, JARED!

Don't answer yet! Because these guys - I don't know who the fuck they are - but these guys are setting the UNited States' internets on fire with documentary shorts like Shut The Fuck Up, Jared! and (the somewhat less successful) Whopper Freakout. Sure, we've seen South Park take aim at Jared-from-Subway, but South Park can't really compete with the many food-related incidents breaking out over the uS internets. Like the homages to "Ghetto Big Mac," posted above, a good number of these incidents involve intrepid whites who've ventured far outside their comfort zone to bring us glimpses of the real nitty-gritty. Our personal favorite? A micro-masterpiece called Goin' to McDonald's in the 'Hood.

THIS WHOLE FUNKY WORLD IS A GHETTO
Bobby Patterson
It's Just a Matter of Time
Paula : 1972
[Buy It]

Yes, white people are poppin' and lockin' all over all over town these days and, over on the internets, brothers and sisters are doin' it for themselves. Gentrification works both ways, you know - or at least, it did, c. 1975 or so. Either way, people, what is there, really, to complain about?

MOVIN' ON UP
Ja'Net DuBois & Oren Waters
c. 1975
Available on: All-Time Top 100 TV Themes
TVT : 2005
[Buy It]

MOVIN' ON UP
Robbin Thompson
The Vinyl Years
Out There : 2003
[Buy It]

MOVIN' ON UP
Born Against
The Rebel Sound of Shit & Failure
Vermiform : 1995
[Buy It]

MOVIN' ON UP
M'Lumbo
Sacrifices to the Neon Gods
Mulatta : 2006
[Buy It]

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posted by Alex
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